598 REVIEWS OF BOOKS , October his third volume, a vehicle for suggesting theories which may be verified by subsequent research in the archives : nevertheless for some periods or aspects of his work, where there is a dearth of printed materials, he has not hesitated to investigate original sources for himself. In this volume it has hardly been necessary ; for the amount of light thrown on the period by French, Belgian, Austrian, and German historians and scholars needs little supplementing. Consistently with the main scope of the history, the author throughout treats -all the inhabitants of what is now known as Belgium as one people, with a strong, if sometimes dormant national self-consciousness. How far such a theory is justified by the facts this is not the occasion to discuss : the history must be taken as a whole before we should care to say how far M. Pirenne has made out the case implied in all his volumes covering the period from the Eoman time to the present day. It is sufficient here to indicate the value of this volume in assisting the historian to disentangle the confused web of politics and intrigues and wars, of which Belgium was the centre during most of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It is a commonplace of history that during the greater part of this period the Low Countries were the cockpit of Europe ; what is less appre- ciated, and what the author brings out with effect, is the wonderful recu- perative power of the wretched inhabitants of these war-worn regions. Even in war-time, as one observer noted, the population went on cultivat- ing their land, though they were almost certain of not being able to gather their crops owing to the exactions and devastations of the invading armies, a characteristic which they and the inhabitants of French Flanders had not lost in the late war ; while directly a brief respite came from war they at once set to work attempting, with much success, to rehabilitate their industry and commerce. This faculty of the inhabitants, quite apart from the better-appreciated strategic causes, accounts very largely for the attention devoted by the greater powers to this small corner of Europe. Hence the importance attached by the Dutch in the eighteenth century to the Barrier treaties; as a strategic defence against France the Barrier fortresses were practically neglected by the Dutch in the eighteenth century, but as a means of raising contributions from the industrious inhabitants and of interfering with their formidable competi- tion with Dutch trade, they were deemed invaluable by that commercially- minded nation. One of the most interesting instances of this fear of competition from the Low Countries, not only on the part of the Dutch, but still more from the English, was the trouble caused by the Ostend East India Company and the influence it had on the general politics of Europe, until this pathetic attempt of Charles VI to revive the trade of the Austrian Netherlands was suppressed. This incident of the Ostend Company, as related in this volume, shows well the merits and limitations of the author's scheme. The story is told quite briefly, yet adequately for the main facts, but if one wanted to explore the subject thoroughly one would have to go to the authorities, which are fully set out in the foot-notes. So again for Marshal Saxe's lightning campaigns in the Low Countries during the war of the Austrian Succession : they are summarized in a couple of pages, but so clearly and with such an insight into the strategy involved that
