[citation needed] At the moment of the July revolution in 1830, Belgian revolutionary Louis de Potter and his brother exiles, who were on the road from Mainz to Switzerland, changed their route, and entering France by Strasbourg, proceeded direct to Paris.

This histrionic display of amity on the part of La Fayette and others, though the mere result of the tinsel policy of the hour, was mistaken for sterling coin by the Belgian exiles.

As unaccustomed, as they were perhaps undeserving, of the extraordinary respect shown them both at home and abroad, their vanity was inflated beyond all measure, and they consequently attributed to their own particular virtues that incense which was but the mere ephemeral exhalation of the times.

They little dreamed that the triumphant epoch, for which they so ardently sighed, would be the signal for their political discomfiture, and that the tide of popularity, after bearing them up on its stormy billows for a few shortlived hours, would as suddenly ebb, and leave them stranded and forgotten.

[1] In the meanwhile they leagued themselves with the most exaggerated spirits in France, and openly avowed their republican principles, through the medium of the Tribune, a French paper devoted to the movement party.

In short, had it depended on their will, Belgium would have risen in mass, and France would have thrown an army of occupation into that country; a war of conquest, under the pretext of giving liberal institutions, would have been declared; and those rich and fertile lands, where agriculture, industry, commerce, and the arts are now rapidly recovering their former splendour, would have been converted into a theatre of devastation and the most abject vassalage.

Whilst this was passing at Paris, the most influential unionists who desired to proceed constitutionally, were busy concerting plans for a vigorous parliamentary campaign.

[1] Considering the independence of their country as chimerical as its union with Holland, and actuated by motives not altogether devoid of self-interest, a number of Belgians longed for a rejunction with France, under whose powerful ægis Belgium had already lived secure.

Under the plea of curiosity or business, some of them, therefore, hastened to Paris, where they held consultations with the most distinguished men in and out of office, and eagerly sounded the opinion of the government as to its external policy.

More confident than politic, more ambitious than patriotic, and more intent on the object of that ambition than on the interests of their country, they not only mistook the line of policy best suited to France, but were as much mystified by the evasive replies of the French ministry as they were deceived as to the strength of the movement party.

[1] It is true, that the promises of the movement leaders, who over-rated their own influence at home, as much as they were deceived as to the real wishes of the majority of the Belgian people, were calculated to mislead the reunionists; but the latter ought to have had sufficient perspicuity to discover that there was no prospect of France entering into their views unless the war party obtained a complete ascendency.

On the one hand, any renewed holy alliance or invasive coalition against France, would have been as unpopular on the Continent as in Great Britain; whilst it would have knit the whole French people in one terrible phalanx, whose repulsive reaction might have brought destruction on every crowned head from the Rhine to the Neva.

On the other hand, however much the people of Europe may have applauded the effort made by those of France to assert their liberties at home, had a French army approached the Meuse, though under the pretext of propagating liberal opinions, the first clang of their advancing trumpets would have rallied against them the whole trans-Rhenan population, and would have regenerated all those antipathies that twice brought the allies to the gates of Paris.

[1] After the independence of Belgium in 1830, there were fears that the new country would come under French influence, thus leading to a disruption of the European balance of power of the Concert of Europe.

[8] Ultimately, France's involvement in Belgium proved unable to repel the German attack, and both nations were defeated when the Wehrmacht launched Fall Gelb.