Jean-Nicolas Bassenge

Jean-Nicolas or Nicolas Bassenge (24 November 1758, Liège - 16 July 1811) was a politician from the Principality of Liège. He was active in the Liège Revolution then the French Revolution.

From an upper-middle-class family, he studied at the collège at Visé, headed by the Oratorians. In 1781 he prepared La Nymphe de Spa for abbé Raynal, a letter in which he made an apologia for Enlightenment philosophy. This brought him much difficulty, despite the protection he enjoyed from the prince-bishop François-Charles de Velbrück. Exhausted by the minor persecutions his poetry suffered, he left for Paris, where he became friends with the most famous writers of the era. After Velbrück's death, conflict broke out between the new prince-bishop César-Constantin-François de Hoensbroeck and the people of his principality. Putting his pen at the service of his fellow citizens, Bassenge published pro-liberal pamphlets and at the same time studied the history of Liège, giving extracts of his historical research in his Lettres à l'abbé de P... (1787–1789).

An ardent defender of republican ideas, Bassenge returned to his birthplace on the outbreak of the revolution there in 1789, to support the insurgents. There he was elected as a deputy for the third estate in the conferences of the three orders and he, Fabry and Chestret quickly became the leaders of the liberal forces ranged against the prince-bishop. The Estates put him in charge of pleading their case before the imperial Reichskammergericht at Wetzlar, then in Berlin and finally at the congress of Frankfurt - he failed in his mission. The Société des amis de la liberté et de l'égalité de Liège then gave him the task of editing a report on the question of a merger with France, in which he supported such action. In December 1790 the Austrians reinstated the prince-bishop in Liège. Bassenge was excluded from the resulting amnesty and had to flee to France again, with many of his fellow liberals. In Paris he was put in charge of drafting the proposal for Liège's merger with France and then presenting it to the National Convention. At Sedan in 1791 he prepared an address from the inhabitants of Liège to Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor, in which he protested against his arbitrary reaction to the Liège revolution.

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