On Sunday, February 27 the Brussels Democratic Association held 
its first public meeting since the news of the proclamation of the 
French Republic. It was known in advance that an immense crowd of 
workers, determined to lend their active help to all measures that the 
Association would judge it proper to undertake, would be present. 

The government, for its part, had spread the rumour that king 
Leopold was ready to abdicate the moment the people wished it. This 
was a trap set for the Belgian democrats to make them undertake 
nothing decisive against such a good king, who asked nothing better 
than to shed the burden of royalty, provided that he was honourably 
left a reasonable pension. 

At the same time the king’s government had ready a list of people 
whom it considered proper to arrest that very night as disturbers of 
public order. It had agreed with M. Hody, the chief of public 
security, to have on this list the foreigners as chief instigators of an 
artificial riot, as much to cover the arrest of Belgians known as 
resolute republicans as to awake national susceptibilities. This 
explains why, later on, his excellency M. Rogier, who is no more 
Belgian than His Majesty King Leopold is French, had published an 
ordinance which commanded the authorities to watch carefully the 
French and the Germans, the former compatriots of M. Rogier, the 
latter compatriots of Leopold. This ordinance recalls, in its form of 
wording, the laws on suspects.°2? 

This clever plan was executed in a manner the more perfidious 
and brutal in that the people arrested on the evening of February 27 
had abstained from any provocation. 

It might be said that pleasure had been taken in arresting these 
persons in order to maltreat and abuse them at leisure. 

568 | Karl Marx ‘ 

Immediately after their arrest they were showered with punches, 
kicks and sabre-blows; they were spat in the face, these republicans. 
They were maltreated in the presence of the philanthropist Hody, 
who was delighted to give these foreigners proof of his powers. 

As there were no charges against them it only remained to release 
them. But no! They were kept in the cells for six days! Then the 
foreign prisoners were separated from the rest and taken directly in 
Black Marias to the railway station. There they were again put into 
vans, each in a separate cell, and sent in this way to Quiévrain where 
Belgian police received them and dragged them to the French 
frontier. 

When at last they were able to collect themselves on the soil of 
liberty, they found they had in their pockets nothing but expulsion 
papers, dated the eve of their arrests. One of the expelled persons, 
M. Allard, is French. 

At the same time the government of the Petty King proclaimed, in 
the Chamber of Representatives, that the Belgian kingdom, including 
the two Flanders,’ was the best of all possible republics, and that it 
possessed a model police force, directed by a man such as M. Hody, 
at one and the same time an old republican, a phalansterist and a 
rejoined Leopoldist. The chamber wept with joy, the Catholic and 
liberal papers were in ecstasies about the domestic virtues of King 
Leopold and the public virtues of his servant Rogier. 

The Belgian people are republicans. The only Leopoldists are the 
big bourgeoisie, the landed aristocracy, the Jesuits, the officials and 
the ex-Frenchmen who, chased out of France, now find themselves 
at the head of the Belgian administration and the press. 

Metternich is delighted to find so opportunely at the French 
frontier a Coburg, a born enemy of the French revolution. But he 
forgets that the Coburgs of today no longer count except in 
questions of marriage. 

March 12, 1848 : 
time