As Bonaparte had said before, few peasants were educated. Their understanding of the world lacked any broad perspective. These hardworking farmers never looked beyond their own farms and the markets they liked to visit. They were content with their present lives and meekly obeyed the Church's teachings.
For these people who belonged to the past, their only hope was to live well in an unchanging world. To them, "change" was not necessarily a good thing.
The people of France naturally assumed that priests were all deceivers and that the villagers would be easily fooled. After occupying Belgium, they tore down many cathedrals and seminaries and preached "liberty and equality" to the Belgian people, provoking fierce local resistance.
The Jacobins were in power at the time. Condorcet envisioned using Enlightenment philosophy to shape the civic spirit of the entire nation, but Robespierre and Marat opposed this.
In short, that educational reform was a catastrophic failure. The thousands of new elementary schools that had been envisioned never materialized. France's existing secondary schools, colleges, and even military academies were abolished. Only central schools teaching science, commerce, and agriculture were established, and identical ones were opened in Belgium and the Rhine region.
This was also the focus of Robespierre's reforms—equality, including equal examination results regardless of ability. Yet the shaping of character had to be flawless.
The general in charge of attacking Belgium was Jourdan, the son of a surgeon. One month before the Thermidorian Reaction, the Austrian army deployed in the Low Countries was savagely bombarded at Fleurus by artillery organized by Carnot and Saint-Just. The earth truly shook. Although Austria had superior equipment, its army was beaten into a rout.
After that battle, the forces of France retook Brussels and, almost at the same time as Robespierre's downfall, occupied Liège and Antwerp.