After the eight years of uncertainty which followed the first signature of the XXIV Articles--eight years during which all parties joined under the permanent Dutch menace--two currents of thought divided Belgian opinion. The first attempted to minimize the military responsibility of the country, and, trusting blindly to the promise of the Powers, to reduce to a strict minimum Belgium's military charges in men and money. The second saw clearly that, without an adequate army and the necessary defences, Belgium would be unable to fulfil her obligations in case her integrity should be violated, and would suffer in consequence; it realized that any weakness in the country's defences increased the temptation of some Powers to break their pledge. It is easy to understand that the first school was generally more popular than the other, and rallied not only the sincere idealists who thought such a contingency as the tearing up of solemn treaties absolutely impossible, but many unscrupulous politicians only too anxious to use the popular catchword "Not a penny, not a soldier," or "Niemand gedwongen soldaat," for electoral purposes. The Belgians had always been stubbornly opposed to conscription; it will be remembered that they resisted all attempts at enforcing it in the past and that it was the main cause of the War of Peasants (1798) against the "Sans Culottes." To a people which, by tradition, was strongly adverse to militarism and centralization, it was only too easy to misrepresent measures of self-defence, urgently required by the European situation, as the first step towards autocracy and oppression. The partisans of military safeguards found themselves, therefore, in a minority, and their only support was the personal influence of the Belgian kings, who, from the first days of the new régime till the eve of the war, never ceased to emphasize the evident danger of disregarding the country's international responsibilities. It is true that, with the lapse of time, the danger became more and more threatening, but, on the other hand, the "anti-militarists" found a fresh argument in the fact that, during so many years, the country had been able to weather the storm.
The first trouble arose in connection with the Socialist revolution which broke out in France in 1848. In the previous year, Marx and Engels had established their headquarters in Brussels, where they drafted the "Manifesto of the Communist Party." The Belgians, however, were not prepared to adopt it, and the revolutionaries decided to invade the country from the South. Bands organized in France and secretly encouraged by some French leaders attempted to cross the frontier near Mouscron, at Risquons Tout, but their advance was easily checked by the Belgian forces.