Goeidag/Bonjour,

Have you ever heard about the United States of Belgium ?

The year is 1789, inspired by the generous ideas of the next door french Revolution, the belgian people launch their own revolution, mostly in reaction towards the reforms imposed by austrian emperor Joseph II in our country.

Under the name “Révolutions du Brabant”, the movement succeeds in ousting austrian troops from Belgium and proclaims the birth of the United States of Belgium in january 1790.

Sadly it won’t last long, not even one year later, Austrians are back in force and the division between Statists ( conservatives ) and Vonquists ( democrats ) are too strong for the young republic to effectively put up a fight.

But those same divisons won’t prevent the representatives of the USB from picking as their new motto : ” **Our Salvation is in the Union** “.

Quite ironic unless if you consider they were probably very aware of how their own divisions were weakening the fresh new state.

But because Latin is way more classy, of course they went with the latin version : ” **In Unione Salus** ”

Wich translates to … ” **In the Onion, Salvation** ”

Some 55 000 coins were minted with this error before some actual latinist spotted it. Probably too ashamed to recognize their mistake, the representative then agreed to change the motto completely for a very conservative ” **Domini Est Regnum** “.

If we consider that the source of that motto and our current motto ” **Unity Makes Strength**” is to be traced back to Homere, the complete citation actually was ” **Unity, even of mediocre people, makes strength** “.

A good reminder not to take ourselve too seriously imo.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United\_Belgian\_States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Belgian_States)

6 comments

  2. That onion thing sounds made up to me. Unio is a Latin word that just means unity. Unione is just a ‘vervoeging’ that goes with ‘in’ (ablatief iirc?).

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