POTTER United Families

As soon as the government realized that Tielemans was the real
originator of the idea of the Patriotic Confederation they arrested him
at The Hague and threw him into prison also.
In addition to Louis and his friend, the government seized the
publishers of Louis, Coche-Mommens of the “Courrier des Pays-
Bas”; Adolphe Bartels of the “Catholique des Pays-Bas”; baron de
Neve, publisher of "Le Catholique" newspaper; and E.
Vanderstraeten of "Le Belge" newspaper.
Their offenses included suggesting the Confederation or praising it,
and allowing people to send money to their journals. Until February
9, Louis' treatment in prison had been good, even mild, but now for
the first time he was indeed treated as an enemy of the state.
He took a particular dislike to the Procurator of the King,
Schueremans, who he felt was an inherently cruel person. In his
Souvenirs Louis writes that between February 9 and February 26, he
was questioned eleven times, sometimes for two or three hours at a
time.
The memoirs of Schueremans related that the government was fully
aware of the delicacy of the situation. Van Maanen went to Brussels
at the end of February to confer with Schueremans, and at the end of
the next month, the Prince of Orange arrived in Brussels to see what
was happening...
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