Already, as First Consul, Napoleon devoted great attention to external trade. Ostend, which had been bombarded by the British in 1798, was restored, and after the peace of Amiens Antwerp enjoyed a few years of remarkable prosperity. In 1802, 969 ships entered the port; in 1803 the customs receipts rose to over 6,000,000 francs, in 1804 to over 8,000,000, and in 1805 to over 15,000,000. But the emperor's decree of November 21, 1806, establishing the Continental blockade, after the Battle of Trafalgar, converted Antwerp into a powerful naval base and a great centre of naval dockyards, without any benefit to the rest of the country. The activity of the nation was again confined to agriculture and industry. In this latter domain the period is marked by the introduction of spinning machinery by the Gantois Lievin Bauwens, who succeeded in obtaining models of the new British jennies. This was the origin of the prosperity of Ghent. While, in 1802, only 220 persons were employed in this industry, there were over 10,000 in 1810. Another innovation was brought about by a British engineer, William Cockerill, who, in 1799, initiated the use of new carding and spinning machines in Verviers. Many French cloth manufacturers were sent to the Walloon town by the French Government in order to study the new process. [_WATERLOO_] There are no periods of Belgian history where intellectual and artistic production reached such a low level as under the Napoleonic regime. How could it be otherwise at a time when official patronage directed every activity towards imperial worship? In France, such worship, stimulated by brilliant victories, might have inspired some sincere manifestations, but in Belgium, where the people submitted to the French regime only as to a necessary evil, military glory could not provoke any genuine enthusiasm. It was more than compensated for by conscription and arbitrary imprisonments. According to La Tour du Pain, prefect of the Dyle, the Belgians were "neither English, nor Austrian, nor anti-French--they were Belgian." In the way of administration and judicial organization, they learnt their lesson, but it was a distasteful lesson. They were too wise to disregard the benefit which they might derive from the simplification of procedure brought about by the reforms, and they remembered them at the right time, but they remained stubbornly hostile to a foreign domination which could not be supported by any dynastic loyalism, and most of them greeted with enthusiasm the arrival of the allied armies which penetrated into the country in January 1814, after the battle of Leipzig. This enthusiasm was considerably cooled by the time of Waterloo, when it was known that, in order to constitute a powerful State on the northern frontiers of France and to reward William of Orange for his services to the allied cause, Belgium's destinies would henceforth be linked with those of the Northern provinces. This decision, already declared in the