And now it was supposed that the Belgians would settle quietly down,
and form one people with the Dutch, who spoke a language so like their
own Flemish, and who came of the same race. But not a bit of it. The
Dutch were mostly Protestants, and almost all the Belgians were
Catholics. There were disputes about questions of religion from the
very first. Disagreements followed on one subject after another; and,
to make a long story short, in fifteen years there was a revolution in
the Belgian provinces of the new kingdom.
The Belgians proclaimed their wish to make a kingdom of their own, and
once more the Great Powers met to consider what was to be done with
them this time. The meeting was in London, where five very shrewd and
wily gentlemen, from England, France, Russia, Austria, and Prussia,
sat and talked to each other for week after week about what they
should do with this broken kingdom, which was, as it were, thrown on
their hands. They were far too polite to quarrel openly; but Russia,
Prussia, and Austria would have liked to force the Belgians to keep to
what had been arranged in 1814, while England and France were on the
side of the Belgians.
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