National Gazette

Several concurring foreign accounts say, that, from all appearances, the people of Austrian Flanders consider the death of Leopold the 2d, as an event favourable to their hopes of throwing off their dependency on the Germanic powers. They are even said to have reared the regenerated French standard, and to have determined to put themselves under the protection of France rather than continue longer subjected to a foreign despot. At Brussels, matters have been carried so far, that hand-bills have been stuck up every where in the streets, exhorting the people to shake off the yoke of the House of Austria, and advising, if they could not render themselves completely and finally independent, at least to incorporate themselves with a nation [the French] who had learnt to think and act up to the dignity of human nature—

To counteract this serious spirit of revolt, near sixty thousand troops were already quartered in the Austrian Netherlands, when these accounts came away, and numbers every day arriving, with every species of military stores, adequate to a great undertaking.