There are those who like History as it is and those who prefer it with a few amendments. This is the case of Vladimir Putin, who decided, this Wednesday, March 6, to straddle historical reality by several meters. On the occasion of the World Youth Festival, organized in Sochi, on the shores of the Black Sea, the Russian president stated, as if it were obvious: “Belgium has largely appeared on the world map as an independent state, largely partly thanks to Russia and Russia’s position.” QED.
Except that History, the real one, proves him wrong. “A rewriting of History”, immediately denounces the daily The evening. Several Belgian personalities were quick to react by giving the head of the Kremlin a little remedial course: “Russia offered military aid to the Netherlands to crush the Belgian revolution. It’s the insurrection in Poland which prevents the sending of troops. We can read that as ‘We would have pulverized you, but we had to take care of the Poles first'”, mocks the Belgian historian Jonathan Piron, on the social network (ex-Twitter).
A failed attempt at help
Indeed, if we go back in time, we quickly understand that Vladimir Putin’s assertions border on fantasy. Before the proclamation of its independence on October 3, 1830, and since the Congress of Vienna in 1815, Belgium belonged to the Kingdom of the Netherlands, under the crown of William of Orange. On the Old Continent there reigns a climate of tension conducive to revolts. Thus, in the wake of the revolution of July 1830 in France, the Belgian provinces in turn revolted at the end of August.
Fearing that the revolutionary desires flourishing in the four corners of Europe would destabilize the order established at the fall of Napoleon I, Tsar Nicholas I considered providing aid to the Dutch sovereign. The one nicknamed “the most logical of autocrats”, according to the expression of the German historian Theodor Shiemann, and who counts among his disciples the current master of the Kremlin, thought for a time of sending his troops to Belgium in order to put down the Belgian revolt.
Poland, preferred over the Netherlands
But now complications arise, jeopardizing the Russian tsar’s plans. In Poland, anger rises and gains power at the end of 1830. The Russian Empire feels a revolt brewing within its borders. Mobilizing troops in the United Kingdom of the Netherlands would deprive Russia of part of its imperial army in the event of a Polish insurrection.
Preferring to protect his back, Nicolas I turned around. Rightly so, perhaps, since, on November 29, the Poles rose up against the Tsar’s regime. The insurrection heralded the beginnings of a Russo-Polish war which would last several months.
Not a troop of the Russian imperial army therefore came to the rescue of William I, whose men were chased from Brussels on September 26 by the revolutionaries, who a few days later proclaimed the independence of the Belgian territory. Without any help from the Russian Empire. Between fantasy and reality, there is definitely only one step…