MM Video: Leopold II of the Belgians

The Enemies of King Leopold

A number of people have used the image of King Leopold II of the Belgians and his rule of the Congo Free State to attack, not only colonialism/imperialism and the King himself but monarchy in general and the Belgian monarchy as a whole. Given that, it is worth looking at who were, in his own time, the most outspoken enemies of King Leopold II and what sort of men they were. Two were most prominent and effective in their criticism. One was the British Consul to the Congo Free State Roger Casement who wrote a report damning the colony which had far-reaching consequences. So, who was Roger Casement? Many of you, particularly those hailing from the British Isles, may have heard of him.

Roger Casement was an Irishman, born in Dublin to a Protestant military officer (his Catholic mother had him re-baptized in the Roman rite when he was 3) in 1864; the same year Leopold II became King of the Belgians. The connections of his father allowed him to become a British diplomat and he spent most of his career both in Africa and Brazil raising the alarm about mistreated native peoples. It is safe to say that he was, very early on, an enemy of monarchy and colonialism in general. This caused quite an international sensation and King George V of Great Britain even gave him a knighthood but Casement, evidently, was less than grateful for this honor from his monarch. After he retired from diplomatic service in 1913 he became a full-time republican revolutionary in Ireland.

Oddly enough it was the Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland that had been among the most forceful in picking up and joining in on his condemnation of the Congo Free State yet he devoted the rest of his life to the destruction of this very government. He became a major figure in the Irish republican, nationalist crowd and raised money in the USA for the revolutionary cause. This would have been enough to condemn him as a traitor in Great Britain but things became worse with the outbreak of World War I when he actively sought out and negotiated an alliance with Britain’s greatest enemy, the German Empire, in the planned rebellion in Ireland. He even tried to convince Irish prisoners-of-war to form their own unit to fight alongside the Germans against the British. Those plans culminated in the Easter Uprising in 1916 and the proclamation of the first Irish republic.

This uprising, as everyone knows, did not succeed and Casement along with numerous others was arrested, tried and convicted of numerous charges, the most serious of which was treason. The trial also led to the discovery of his diaries which proved Casement to have been a rampant homosexual and pederast, perhaps even a pedophile. He was found guilty and hanged for treason against his King and country in quick order. In short, hardly the stuff of which heroes are made unless you are an anti-monarchist republican revolutionary it seems.

The other most significant figure in the business of opposing King Leopold II and the Congo Free State was Edmund Dene Morel. He was a British journalist, English on the side of his father, French on that of his mother, and had been born in Paris. He also eagerly spread stories, each more horrid than the last, of atrocities in the Congo, all of which he blamed squarely on the King, and he founded the Congo Reform Association in which capacity he made effective use of the report by Casement among his many activities. He recruited numerous famous literary figures to champion his cause, a long list of almost exclusively liberal and very anti-monarchist individuals. He left this work in 1911 and from there his story mirrors that of Casement to a large extent.

Despite being a British subject and born in France he was, very early on, openly sympathetic toward Germany. He wrote in support of Germany during the crisis over Morocco in 1912 and as the build-up to the First World War began he was again openly pro-German. His hatred of King Leopold evidently extended to the whole nation of Belgium as he advocated abandoning them to the Germans, did not think Britain or France should lift a finger to help defend the country and argued against France of Great Britain going to war against Germany. He became very much associated with far-left pacifist groups in Great Britain, particularly the Union of Democratic Control. When it was discovered that his longtime friend Casement had been plotting with the Germans to cause rebellion in Ireland and after he was hanged for treason because of this, Morel began to be suspected of being a German agent.

Morel was put in prison for a time for his anti-war activities and though he was on the side of some issues that were ultimately proven correct, he continued to drift farther and farther to the radical left. He later admitted that he had been a lifelong socialist and remained adamantly so up to his death in Devon in 1924. Now, it must also be said that the misdeeds of these men in no way excuse the misdeeds of King Leopold II, but they are not often even mentioned by those who hold them up as great heroes. However, the core ideologies of these men ultimately caused more death and more misery than even the most exaggerated accounts of the crimes of Leopold II. It is also noteworthy that most monarchists will certainly not hold up the late King as an example of monarchy at its best and yet the enemies of monarchy will hold up socialists, pederasts and traitors as heroes of their own.

Monarch Profile: King Leopold II of the Belgians

It is safe to say that no other Belgian monarch is as controversial as King Leopold II. He was born in Brussels on April 9, 1835 to King Leopold I and Queen Louise-Marie and named Louis Philippe Marie Victor. His childhood was not a very happy one. His mother thought his prominent nose made him look deformed and his father referred to him as “the little tyrant”. Whereas his brother Philippe was jovial and popular and his sister was the charming and studious favorite of their father, Leopold was shy, awkward and walked with a limp. He seemed to be always compared to his siblings and his widely respected father and never favorably. It is not surprising that much of his future reign would be devoted to succeeding in the task his father was never able to, namely making Belgium an imperial power.

In 1853 Prince Leopold entered the senate to begin gaining some experience at statecraft and on August 22 married the teenage Archduchess Marie-Henriette of Austria. The couple went on to have four children; Princess Louise-Marie, Prince Leopold, Princess Stephanie and Princess Clementine. However, their marriage was not a happy one. Some said Leopold could be charming when he wished but he seldom seemed to wish it in the domestic setting, he was an unfaithful husband and had a rather scandalous private life before and after the passing of his long suffering wife in 1902. It was on December 17, 1865, after the death of his father, that Leopold II took his oath as the new King of the Belgians but there were troubles from the very start. The delegation he sent to Mexico to announce his accession to his sister, Empress Carlota, was attacked by republican bandits and massacred. There was an uproar in Belgium and Leopold II closed the recruiting office for the Belgian Legion, which his sister naturally regarded as almost an act of betrayal; her brother leaving her high and dry in a distant and increasingly hostile land. When the Mexican adventure ended in disaster and Carlota returned home insane with grief over the loss of her husband and adopted country Leopold took relatively little notice of her.

Leopold II was obsessed with achieving international greatness for Belgium and in 1876 he convened an international conference on the exploration of central Africa. This led, the following year, to his sending out the intrepid Henry Morton Stanley to sign treaties with local chieftains and lay the foundations for colonial expansion. Stanley did his work well and in 1885 the Berlin Conference recognized Leopold II as King-Sovereign of the Congo Free State which was to be in personal union with the Crown of Belgium. This effectively made Leopold II private owner of a vast central African empire some 80x larger than his entire country. In 1890 King Leopold II organized a military campaign from the Congo Free State to eradicate the Arab slave trade in central Africa which was still booming at the time.

This expedition was a success but Leopold also set up a framework for the economic development of the Congo which eventually led to immense profits from the rubber trees there (which greatly took off after the invention of the bicycle and automobile) but also immense cruelties inflicted on the Congolese population. It is for this horror that Leopold II is most remembered these days but a few key facts should be kept in mind. First of all, a lot of the numbers that are tossed about as to the number of people who died are quite often simply absurd, at times ranging from 50% to the entire estimated population of the Congo. Obviously, if these extreme statistics are believed absolutely no one would have been making any profit at all. Perhaps most importantly though is that Leopold II was not inflicting these atrocities intentionally. That is often the image that is portrayed with the King being compared to Hitler. Undoubtedly the King was a hard man and often an unsavory character but it is an absolute lie that the horrors of the Congo were purposely carried out by him. Where he can be blamed is in setting up the system whereby his local officials were paid based on the amount of rubber they produced -which would have seemed to make economic sense but which provided an incentive for unscrupulous officials to brutalize the natives in order to enrich themselves. Also, contrary to what many believe, Leopold was troubled by the reports that began to circulate about the savagery going on in the Congo but, and he can be blamed for this, he was all too willing to believe advisors who assured him these were malicious lies.

Eventually, however, the reports and international criticism became too great to ignore and in 1904 (though he is seldom given credit for this) it was King Leopold who sent a commission to the Congo to investigate these reports. Many have dismissed these inquisitors as hand-picked “yes men” Leopold knew would never report anything negative. Again, this is untrue as the commission met with native people and leaders as well as colonial officials and returned with a very balanced report. They cited the advances made by the King’s investments; the roads, schools, hospitals and local infrastructure that had been created, the humanitarian work done by the often heroic missionaries but it also reported that a great many abuses were going on as well, many people had died, many mutilated and many more exploited. Once this was done King Leopold issued new regulations to correct this situation and in 1908 the Congo Free State became a colony, the Belgian Congo, under the control of the government rather than being the personal property of the King.

All of this is said in an effort to be fair -not to sugar coat the facts. One does not have to intentionally wipe out an entire population to be a ‘bad guy’. Whether it was his cold, autocratic nature toward his family or his scandalous private life there is no doubt King Leopold II would have been seen as an unsavory character regardless of what happened in Africa. The suffering was immense but the fact remains that his guilt lies in setting up a system which inadvertently encouraged exploitation rather than a deliberate campaign of genocide. Such accusations in that direction are certainly untrue. He was not a completely heartless man and was reluctant to have even criminals whose guilt had been proven put to death. He wanted Belgium to become an imperial power and to embellish his country and this he certainly did. Long known as the “Builder King” many of the most magnificent buildings and national monuments in Belgium, such as the Cinquantenaire were built by Leopold at his own expense.

However, on the international stage Leopold II was mostly unpopular among his peers. Part of this, it must be said, was due to jealousy over his success and the fact that many larger countries felt little Belgium had achieved a status out of proportion to her size. Much of it though was due to the King himself, because of the private scandals and the suffering in the Congo associated with him. In personal dealings the King put people off and made them uncomfortable, partly because of his own character and partly, no doubt, because of the image portrayed of him in the anti-monarchy and anti-colonial press. Nonetheless, he insisted that he cared nothing for popularity, though this may have been a defense mechanism rather than a genuine sentiment. One other thing Leopold II always stressed was his belief in a military policy of armed neutrality with defense based on military preparedness rather than simply trusting international agreements. As he was on his deathbed the conscription act he had long sought was finally passed. In this area too the coming Great War would prove the unpopular monarch to have been correct.

Also, five days before his death, Leopold II married his long-time paramour, a woman of ill-repute by whom he had two illegitimate children, in a religious ceremony (there was no civil marriage). He died on December 17, 1909. He said he wanted only a small, private funeral but he was given the full royal treatment though there was not exactly widespread grief at the passing of this man who seemed to have been unpopular since the day he was born. His own family was aware of how the reputation of the Belgian monarchy had suffered during his reign. When he came to the Belgian throne in 1865 King Leopold II declared that, “all that I desire is to leave Belgium larger, stronger and more beautiful”. If that was his only standard of success Leopold II was a successful monarch as he did do all of those things. However, his name will forever be tainted by the many scandals of his reign, paramount amongst them being the horror that existed in the Congo Free State. Thankfully, his successor would be a man of impeccable character, embodying everything that a good King should be.

MM Video Series: The Belgian Kings

Monarch Profile: Grand Duke Leopold II of Tuscany

Effectively, though not officially, Leopold II was the last Grand Duke of Tuscany. He was born in Florence on October 3, 1787 to Grand Duke Ferdinand III and Princess Luisa Maria Amelia Teresa of Bourbon-Two Sicilies. He had a normal childhood and in 1817 married Princess Maria Anna of Saxony by whom he had 3 daughters. He succeeded his father as Grand Duke on June 18, 1824. Always popular amongst his people, Italy was in the throws of revolutionary, nationalist agitation yet even the liberals had to regard Leopold II as the most benign of the monarchs of the Italian princely states. He was very hard working and allowed a measure of freedom of speech, freedom of the press and allowed political exiles to return. Nonetheless, he could not keep revolutionary fervor out of Tuscany altogether.

Tragedy struck in 1832 when Grand Duchess Luisa died and the following year the Grand Duke married Princess Maria Antoinetta of the Two-Sicilies by whom he had a further 10 children. Leopold II showed himself willing to work with the liberal elements in enacting constitutional government after the kingdoms of Piedmont and the Two-Sicilies did the same. He showed himself to be an Italian nationalist by supporting the war by Piedmont against Austria in Lombardy but despite the Tuscan troops fighting well the overall campaign was a failure. Riots broke out and the Grand Duke had to call in moderate liberals to form a government in the hopes of keeping the revolutionary republicans at bay. The situation seemed to be falling out of control with the republicans gaining strength, the Austrians victorious and even the Pope being forced out of Rome by revolutionary mobs. Leopold II finally left Florence in 1849 saying that after hearing from the Pope he could not agree to the demand for a constituent assembly.

Anarchy prevailed in Florence and a republic was declared. A dictatorship was set up but even this could not keep order following the defeat of King Carlo Alberto of Piedmont by the Austrians. The public, which largely never stopped holding Leopold II in high regard, called on their Grand Duke to return to establish a liberal, constitutional monarchy and prevent a foreign invasion. However, Leopold II had already made agreements with the Austrians who were marching on Tuscany. On May 25 the Austrians entered Florence. Three days later Leopold II returned with a new outlook on life. To put it bluntly, there would be no more ‘mister nice guy’.

In April the following year he agreed to the indefinite occupation of Tuscany by 10,000 Austrians and that fall he dissolved parliament and signed a new, very pro-Church concordat. When he asked the Austrians if the constitution might be maintained the Austrian prime minister grimly advised him to ask the opinion of the Pope, the King of Naples and the dukes of Parma and Modena; all of whom had been deposed after giving to calls for constitutional rule. In 1852 the constitution was formally revoked and a crackdown ensued on all liberal, revolutionary elements. Some continued to cling to a constitutional monarchy under an Italian nationalist grand duke while others insisted that Leopold II had to go and be replaced by republican rule.

Things began to come to a head again in 1859 when France and Piedmont-Sardinia went to war against Austria. Leopold II was powerless to prevent a considerable number of Tuscans from volunteering to join the fight against Austria. A political coalition finally demanded the Grand Duke to enter the war against Austria yet again. Leopold II first felt he had no option but to go along but then came new demands for his abdication in favor of his son, an alliance with Piedmont-Sardinia and promises of some vague notion of cooperation with a new organization of Italy. Leopold II rejected the demands on by late April the Italian tricolor was appearing all over Florence. The soldiers kept order but Leopold could see where things were going and left with his family for Bologna. With no bloodshed a provisional government was set up which quickly called for union with the rest of Italy. Leopold II abdicated in favor of his son on July 21 who then became Grand Duke Ferdinand IV of Tuscany but he never reigned or ruled at all, his sole official act being to issue a formal protest from Dresden in 1860. Leopold II spent the rest of his life in Austria and died in Rome on January 29, 1870.