of the 24 Articles (see Belgium). From this date until his death, King Leopold spent all his energies in the wise administration of the affairs of the newly formed kingdom, which may be said to owe in a large measure its first consolidation and constant prosperity to the care and skill of his discreet and fatherly government. In 1848 the throne of Belgium stood unshaken amidst the revolutions which marked that year in almost every European country. On the 8th of August 1832 Leopold married, as his second wife, Louise of Orleans, daughter of Louis Philippe, king of the French. Queen Louise endeared herself to the Belgian people, and her death in 1850 was felt as a national loss. This union produced two sons and one daughter—(1) Leopold, afterwards king of the Belgians; (2) Philip, count of Flanders; (3) Marie Charlotte, who married Maximilian of Austria, the unfortunate emperor of Mexico. Leopold I. died at Laeken on the 10th of December 1865. He was a most cultured man and a great reader, and did his utmost during his reign to encourage art, science and education. His judgment was universally respected by contemporary sovereigns and statesmen, and he was frequently spoken of as “the Nestor of Europe” (see also Victoria, Queen).
See Th. Juste, Léopold I er, roi des Belges d’après des doc. inéd. 1793–1865 (2 vols., Brussels, 1868), and Les Fondateurs de la monarchie Belge (22 vols., Brussels, 1878–1880); J. J. Thonissen, La Belgique sous le règne de Léopold I er (Louvain, 1862).
LEOPOLD II. [Leopold Louis Philippe Marie Victor] (1835–1909), king of the Belgians, son of the preceding, was born at Brussels on the 9th of April 1835. In 1846 he was created duke of Brabant and appointed a sub-lieutenant in the army, in which he served until his accession, by which time he had reached the rank of lieutenant-general. On attaining his
majority he was made a member of the senate, in whose proceedings he took a lively interest, especially in matters concerning the development of Belgium and its trade. On the 22nd of August 1853 Leopold married Marie Henriette (1836–1902), daughter of the archduke Joseph of Austria, palatine of Hungary, by his wife Marie Dorothea, duchess of Württemberg. This
princess, who was a great-granddaughter of the empress Maria Theresa, and a great-niece of Marie Antoinette, endeared herself to the people by her elevated character and indefatigable benevolence, while her beauty gained for her the sobriquet of “The Rose of Brabant”; she was also an accomplished artist
and musician, and a fine horsewoman. Between the years
1854 and 1865 Leopold travelled much abroad, visiting India and China as well as Egypt and the countries on the Mediterranean coast of Africa. On the 10th of December 1865 he succeeded his father. On the 28th of January 1869 he lost his only son, Leopold (b. 1859), duke of Hainaut. The king’s brother Philip, count of Flanders (1837–1905), then became heir to the throne; and on his death his son Albert (b. 1875) became heir-presumptive. During the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871) the king of the Belgians preserved neutrality in a period of unusual difficulty and danger. But the most notable event in Leopold’s career was the foundation of the Congo Free State (q.v.). While still duke of Brabant he had been the first to call the attention of the Belgians to the need of enlarging their horizon beyond sea, and after his accession to the throne he gave the first impulse towards the development of this idea by founding in 1876 the Association Internationale Africaine. He enlisted the services of H. M. Stanley, who visited Brussels in 1878 after exploring the Congo river, and returned in 1879 to the Congo as agent of the Comité d’Études du Haut Congo, soon afterwards reorganized as the “International Association of the Congo.” This association was, in 1884–1885, recognized by the powers as a sovereign state under the name of the État Indépendant du Congo. Leopold’s exploitation of this vast territory, which he administered autocratically, and in which he associated himself personally with various financial schemes, was understood to bring him an enormous fortune; it was the subject of acutely hostile criticism, to a large extent substantiated by the report of a commission of inquiry instituted by the king himself in 1904, and followed in 1908 by the annexation of the state to Belgium (see Congo Free State: History). In 1880 Leopold sought an interview with General C. G. Gordon and obtained his promise, subject to the approval of the British government, to enter the Belgian service on the Congo. Three years later Leopold claimed fulfilment of the promise, and Gordon was about to proceed to the Congo when the British government required his services for the Sudan. On the 15th of November 1902 King Leopold’s life was attempted in Brussels by an Italian anarchist named Rubino. Queen Marie Henriette died at Spa on the 19th of September of the same year. Besides the son already mentioned she had borne to Leopold three daughters—Louise Marie Amélie (b. 1858), who in 1875 married Philip of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, and was divorced in 1906; Stéphanie (b. 1864), who married Rudolph, crown prince of Austria, in 1881, and after his death in 1889 married, against her father’s wishes, Elemer, Count Lonyay, in 1900; and Clémentine (b. 1872). At the time of the queen’s death an unseemly incident was occasioned by Leopold’s refusal to see his daughter Stéphanie, who in consequence was not present at her mother’s funeral. The disagreeable impression on the public mind thus created was deepened by an unfortunate litigation, lasting for two years (1904–1906), over the deceased queen’s will, in which the creditors of the princess Louise, together with princess Stéphanie (Countess Lonyay), claimed that under the Belgian law the queen’s estate was entitled to half of her husband’s property. This claim was disallowed by the Belgian courts. The king died at Laeken, near Brussels, on the 17th of December 1909. On the 23rd of that month his nephew took the oath to observe the constitution, assuming the title of Albert I. King Leopold was personally a man of considerable attainments and much strength of character, but he was a notoriously dissolute monarch, who even to the last offended decent opinion by his indulgences at Paris and on the Riviera. The wealth he amassed from the Congo he spent, no doubt, royally not only in this way but also on public improvements in Belgium; but he had a hard heart towards the natives of his distant possession.
LEOPOLD II. (1797–1870), of Habsburg-Lorraine, grand-duke of Tuscany, was born on the 3rd of October 1797, the son of the grand-duke Ferdinand III., whom he succeeded in 1824. During the first twenty years of his reign he devoted himself to the internal development of the state. His was the mildest and least reactionary of all the Italian despotisms of the day, and although always subject to Austrian influence he refused to adopt the Austrian methods of government, allowed a fair measure of liberty to the press, and permitted many political exiles from other states to dwell in Tuscany undisturbed. But when in the early ’forties a feeling of unrest spread throughout Italy, even in Tuscany demands for a constitution and other political reforms were advanced; in 1845–1846 riots broke out in various parts of the country, and Leopold granted a number of administrative reforms. But Austrian influence prevented him from going further, even had he wished to do so. The election of Pope Pius IX. gave fresh impulse to the Liberal movement, and on the 4th of September 1847 Leopold instituted the National Guard—a first step towards the constitution; shortly after the marchese Cosimo Ridolfi was appointed prime minister. The granting of the Neapolitan and Piedmontese constitutions was followed (17th February 1848) by that of Tuscany, drawn up by Gino Capponi. The revolution in Milan and Vienna aroused a fever of patriotic enthusiasm in Tuscany, where war against Austria was demanded; Leopold, giving way to popular pressure, sent a force of regulars and volunteers to co-operate with Piedmont in the Lombard campaign. His speech on their departure was uncompromisingly Italian and Liberal. “Soldiers,” he said, “the holy cause of Italian freedom is being decided to-day on the fields of Lombardy. Already the citizens of Milan have purchased their liberty with their blood and with a heroism of which history offers few examples. . . . Honour to the arms of Italy! Long live Italian independence!” The Tuscan contingent fought bravely, if unsuccessfully, at Curtatone and Montanara. On the 26th of June the first Tuscan parliament assembled, but the
