Ridiculous things were done at the meetings of the Jacobin clubs. The advocate Charles burns his diploma, and says he wants no title but _sans-culotte_, and then goes on to propose that the names of all the squares and streets of Brussels be changed. There should, he told his friends, be Places d'Athènes, de Rome, de France, and Rues de Jean-Jacques Rousseau, de Brutus, de Voltaire, de l'Opinion, de la Philosophie, du Divorce. One wiseacre demands that the ancient constitution of Brabant be burned on the following Sunday during the ceremony of 'The Benediction of the Flag of the _sans-culottes_.' 'Let the bust of Van der Noot be also burned,' he added; on which another statesman rises, and exclaims: 'Je demande, moi, qu'on promène le Manneken de Van der Noot avec celui de la Pinaud, sa bonne amie.' Clearly the _sans-culotte_ of Brussels was a mere tinsel imitation of the genuine article at Paris. At Paris all was tragedy; Brussels amused itself with a burlesque. But as time went on, and it dawned upon these would-be Jacobins and _sans-culottes_ that the Revolution meant fighting in the armies of France, and that everything in Church and State was to be turned upside-down, they began to lose their tempers, and long before October, 1795, when the formal incorporation with France took place, they were quite tired of masquerading as Jacobins. Five years later they were as weary of the Directory as they had been of the Convention; but when, in 1803, Napoleon came to Brussels, he was well received. There was, however, a good deal of sham enthusiasm on that occasion, and his most successful visit was in 1811, when he brought the Empress Marie Louise with him. Brussels then showed that, in spite of the Brabant Revolution, the House of Austria had a strong hold on the affections of the citizens. 'Voilà Marie Louise d'Autriche!' was heard in the streets. The town gave fêtes in her honour; and one evening, when the Empress was at the Monnaie, and had brought with her a bouquet of tulips from Harlem, which fell over the edge of her box, gentlemen ran from all parts of the theatre and picked up the fragments, which they made into button-holes. 'L'Impératrice parut charmée de cette galanterie Bruxelloise,' says the local account of this incident. Napoleon was at Laeken with Marie Louise when the campaign in Russia was resolved on. The story goes that on receiving the news that the Tsar refused to carry out the Continental System, he began at once to whistle the air of 'Marlborough s'en va-t-en guerre,' and ran out into the grounds of the palace in such a rage that he nearly knocked the Empress down. It was at Laeken that the fatal declaration of war was signed.