Jeanne de Bellem

She had a long-term relationship with the revolutionary leader Henri Van der Noot and exerted a great deal of political influence upon the rule within the United States of Belgium 1789–1790.

From 1787, Bellem was a well-known writer of political pamphlets, which encouraged the Belgians to follow the example of America and rise in rebellion toward Austria; she wrote the famous revolutionary poem: "Peuple Belgique/cour tyrannique/faisons commet l'Amerique".

The involvement of Jeanne de Bellem in the state affairs of the republic was controversial and she was the target of a lot of abusive caricatures by the opposition who used her as a way of criticizing Van der Noot and the government.

It was said that Jeanne de Bellem, Henri Van der Noot and their (male) colleague Eupen lived in a menage-a-trois.

Upon the return of the Austrians and the death of the republic in 1790, Jeanne de Bellem was separated from Van der Noot and fled with her daughter Marianne to Breda in the Netherlands.