The downfall of Belgium's first Prime Minister (October 1831): Fading from history?

Comment les mots effacent de l’Histoire un Premier ministre

Abstract

The political downfall of Belgium’s first Prime Minister, Louis De Potter, remains a mystery. Why does a revolutionary hero, brought to power by popular acclaim, « slip » from the pinnacle of Belgian politics into exile, only to suffer the worst punishment for a politician - oblivion? Barely a month elapsed between his triumphant entry into Brussels and his resignation from the Provisional Government (October 1831). This article seeks to shed light on this mysterious fall. Based on a rhetorical-pragmatic analysis of his Lettre à mes concitoyens, and a comparison between the explicit and implicit levels of discourse, we will examine the loss of power. Our analysis attempts to demonstrate that the resignation letter, apparently a simple farewell, is in reality, a masked call for the establishment of a dictatorship inspired by the Jacobin French model of 1793. With this choice, masked in the text, yet anchored in the words, he clashes with the premises of the Belgian people.