• Military Menu                       

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Industry
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• WMD
• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

King of the Belgians

While today the monarch has no executive powers and plays a largely ceremonial role, he is a rare uniting factor in the linguistically divided country which in recent years has seen more powers devolved to regional governments. In recent years the King has taken a rather active role in the fractious poliical life of his kingdom, quite unlike the purely ceremonial roles of most the the other crowned heads of Europe.

Unlike other Monarchs, the title of the Sovereign in Belgium is "King of the Belgians" rather than 'King of Belgium' – this indicating that it is a popular Monarchy. The royal house "of Belgium" was formerly the House of Saxe-Coburg Gotha. Of all the occurrences in the nineteenth century which changed the map of Europe and the government of European states, those which made Belgium an independent kingdom and gave to that country princes of the House of Saxe-Coburg were pre-eminently fortunate. In 1830 they rebelled, and, by the assistance of Great Britain and France, they got their independence from the Dutch. A constitutional monarchy was established in 1831.

Three parties divided Belgium: the French party, strengthened by numbers of Frenchmen who had arrived from France, which desired the union of Belgium with France, or (because the Catholics were opposed to their union with France) to have the second son of the king of the French, the duke of Nemours, for king of the Belgians; the second, at the head of which stood De Potter, was in favour of a democratic republic, preserving the Catholic religion as the religion of the state; the third, the most numerous, but which had not the courage to come forward boldly, wished for the prince of Orange as regent.

Baron de Stassart favored the plan of electing the king of the French. Belgium, however, forming a separate kingdom, count Robiano de Boorsbeek wished for a native prince. The liberals were decidedly opposed to the theocratic views of count Robiano. Another party was in favour of the Duke of Leuchtenberg, the son of Eugene; but the diplomatic committee informed the congress that France would never acknowledge the duke king of the Belgians, and that king Louis Philip would no less positively decline the union of Belgium with France or the election of the duke de Nemours as king of the Belgians.

The election finally took place, Feb. 3, 1831. One hundred and ninety-one members were present, and ninety-seven votes were for the duke de Nemours, seventy-four for the duke of Leuchtenberg, and twenty-one for the archduke Claries. The president now declared Louis Charles Philip, duke de Nemours (born Oct. 25, 1814), duly chosen king of the Belgians; and, on the fourth, a committee of the congress was sent to the king. They were received in a friendly manner; but the king declined the crown for his son, and it was understood to be his wish, that the brother of the king of the Two Sicilies should be elected.

Upon the recommendation of England, prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg was now looked to as a suitable person to fill the Belgic throne. Congress again proceeded to elect a king, June 4, 1831. One hundred and ninety-six members were present; nineteen did not vote; ten were opposed to the election of any king; fourteen voted for Surlet de Chokier; one ballot was inadmissible; the rest of the votes were for prince Leopold, whom the regent declared to be king, on condition of his adopting the Belgian constitution.

The legislative power was exercised collectively by the king, the chamber of representatives, and the senate. The initiative pertains to each of the three branches of the legislative power; nevertheless, every law relating to the revenue and expenditure of the state, or to the contingent of the army, must be first voted by the chamber of representatives. The constitutional powers of the king were hereditary in direct, natural, legitimate descent, from male to male, by order of primogeniture, to the perpetual exclusion of females and their descendants [the Salic Law]. The king attained his majority at the age of eighteen years. The person of the king was inviolable, but his ministers were responsible. The king appointed and dismissed his ministers, confered ranks in the army, and had the right of granting titles of nobility, without the power of annexing therewith any privilege. He commanded the army and navy, declared war and made peace, and sanctioned and promulgated the laws.

Having turned down the Greek crown in 1830, in Prince Leopold the Belgians had a King whose reputation was deserved as that of the wisest prince in Christendom. The results of King Leopold I's prudent and far-seeing counsels made themselves felt in many lands; England, through Queen Victoria, the King's niece and his disciple in statecraft, owed almost as much to King Leopold I as did Belgium.

When Leopold I was called to the throne of Belgium, and throughout his reign, the power of the middle classes was at its height. Parliamentary oratory was then, too, at its most popular period; and in his reign cheap newspapers came, bringing with them cheap wisdom and cheap philosophy. In those days every newspaper reader imagined himself, quite seriously, to be a statesman, and the ideal of statesmen in monarchical countries lay then in constitutional government under a king who, as their axiom phrased it, reigned but did not rule. Politicians' axioms are seldom otherwise than delusive, and this political axiom of the nineteenth century impregnated with nonsense the minds of men in all classes—from those professedly wise to those admittedly simple.

In a constitutional monarchy the king's place is well defined, but the king's place is ever that of a ruler, and his first duty is to rule. If he be a weak man his rule will be feeble, if he be a vicious man his rule will be bad; but, strong or feeble, a king cannot but fix his imprint on his country, and he it is who himself produces for his reign its result, good, bad, or indifferent, according to his abilities and his will. Whatever the limits of the constitution, it is inevitable that on many, and these the most vital, points of government the king's voice must be most powerful in the councils of his country.

In a free country, during a single reign, thousands of politicians, hundreds of ministers, come and go, each with an individual policy and a separate aim of his own, each with other interests than those of politics, and each with little training in the deep game of statesmanship. The king alone remains unchanging, and of all who share or seek to share in the government, he alone is the one whose sole business preoccupation is government, and he is the only one whose education has been that of statesmanship. He is, in fact, a highly-trained specialist at the head of half educated amateurs.

The crown prince Duke of Brabant, who was born on April 9th, 1835, came of age in 1853, and at once entered the Belgian Senate. His character was then already formed, and his future policy was already fixed in his mind. That policy was, doubtless, elaborated more fully as time advanced; but so great was it from the moment of its inception that neither his far travels as a young prince, nor his wide knowledge of men as king, can have deepened or enlarged it. The young prince was ambitious for his country's good, as men should wish every future ruler to be. His ambition was of the highest, but it was all centred in Belgium. He alone, of all the Belgians of that time, saw that Belgium could only remain free by becoming great; and his resolve was to lead Belgium to greatness.

King Leopold II found Belgium, when he came to the throne on December 17th, 1865, a small state; under his rule he provided it with the means of expansion, and placed empire within its grasp. In the 1880s, as the European powers were carving up Africa, King Leopold II of Belgium seized for himself the vast and mostly unexplored territory surrounding the Congo River. Carrying out a genocidal plundering of the Congo, he looted its rubber, brutalized its people, and ultimately slashed its population by ten million--all the while shrewdly cultivating his reputation as a great humanitarian. Heroic efforts to expose these crimes eventually led to the first great human rights movement of the twentieth century, in which everyone from Mark Twain to the Archbishop of Canterbury participated.

In 1878 Leopold II set up, with the cooperation of the British explorer Stanley, the Study Committee on the Upper Congo, converted in 1879 into the International Association of the Congo. In 1885 The Berlin Conference recognised the independent state of the Congo, of which Leopold II became the Sovereign. That same year, the Belgian Parliament authorized the King to be the Head of State of Congo.

Between 1885 and 1924, Congo, then known as Congo Free State or the private estate of Belgium’s King Leopold II, was the theater of yet another holocaust driven not by mineral exploitation, but by the world’s hunger for a commodity. The industrial revolution demanded rubber and more of it. Business’ insatiable need for rubber and King Leopold’s immeasurable greed pushed the Belgians to design one of the world’s most repressive forced-labor structures.

The King’s agents established a quota system, which required that each village produce a specific amount of rubber over a time period. Force Publique troops were then used to enforce the quota and demand taxes of the population. Failure to meet the quota or tax requirements led soldiers to chop off limbs of the unlucky Congolese who fell below the mark. Villages were torched, women raped and the people left to starve to death or die of diseases. By 1924, according to some estimates nearly 10 million Congolese had perished under the yoke of the Leopoldian regime.

Leopold II died before his father, so the crown passed to a nephew, Albert I [r. 1909-1934]. At the death of King Leopold II, on December 17, 1909, Albert became king, because Leopold left no sons and his three daughters were excluded from succession by the Salic law. As a boy Albert was carefully educated, and later made a special study of economics and social science. He traveled extensively, made a study of railways in the United States under the guidance of James J. Hill, and studied conditions in the Belgian Congo at first hand. Long before he became king his liberal and democratic inclinations were well known.

At the end of July, 1914, King Albert was ruling in peace over a prosperous, peaceful nation; two months later he was still king of the Belgians, but almost the whole of his country was in the hands of invaders, and he, with the remnant of the Belgian army, was defending the last corner of Belgium over which the Belgian flag still waved. The War of the Nations made Albert the idol of his people. He personally commanded the Belgian army, resisted the German advance at every point, and, although repeatedly urged not to expose himself to the hardships and dangers faced by his soldiers, refused to yield the active leadership to others.

The position of the monarchy was greatly enhanced by Albert's wide popularity. The previous monarchs had experienced often caustic relations with the political parties because of their activism, and their personalities did not endear them greatly to the populace. Albert, on the other hand, had won enormous publie and elite approval for his leadership during the war. The value of the monarchy, previously questioned, especially by the Socialists, ceased to be a political issue. King Albert was killed in a mountaineering accident in eastern Belgium in 1934, at the age of 58, and he was succeeded by his son Leopold.

When Leopold III [r. 1934-1951] succeeded to the throne in 1934, the monarchy was secure, but the country was not. In 1936, the international situation deteriorated when German troops occupied the left bank of the Rhine, and on 14 October 1936 King Leopold III proclaimed the Independence Policy. By declaring neutrality, Belgium was prohibited from consultations with other countries. Under the supreme command of King Leopold III, the Belgian army fought against Germany who invaded Belgium on 10th. May 1940 and without tanks and very few anti aircraft guns surrendered to Germany. Just eighteen days later, King Leopold III was arrested and interned in Belgium, later he was moved to Austria and then to Germany. After the war King Leopold III was accused of collaborating with Adolf Hitler. At the end of the war the family moved to Switzerland, while the crown was held in a regency by Leopold's brother Charles. In May 1950 a small majority of Belgian voters approved Leopold's return in a referendum; but when a general strike and a series of riots inspired by the Socialists threatened the country with civil war, Leopold reluctantly abdicated and his son, Baudouin, became King.

Baudouin I [r. 1951-1993] was said to be shy, and ever one to shun the dramatic. Baudouin (pronounced bode-WANN or bow-DWAN) was never a star player on the European political or social stage. King Baudouin and Queen Fabiola were something of an enigma, as they were rarely seen in public, gave few speeches, and avoided the glitter and pomp enjoyed by many of Europe's other royals. The King left no direct heir. Next in line to the throne was Prince Albert, Baudouin's brother.

Albert II, a renowned bon viveur, was popular with both people and politicians for his easy going style. In October 2009 the Belgian parliament endorsed a new interim government, formed at the request of King Albert, to deal with urgent economic issues. In 2010 and 2011, when parties on both sides of the linguistic divide were locked in a record-setting 541 days of coalition talks to form a federal government, it fell to the king to appoint the party leaders heading the negotiations. Belgian King Albert cut short his holidays in France and headed back to Brussels September 14th, 2011 as talks there on forming a government threatened to collapse, prolonging a 15-month-long political crisis. King Albert said the country's lengthy political stalemate could permanently damage its residents and hurt the cause of European integration.

On July 03, 2013 King Albert II said he would abdicate on July 21 and leave the throne to his son, saying that at age 79 he felt too old to carry out his duties properly. “I realize that my age and my health are no longer allowing me to carry out my duties as I would like to,” the king said in a televised address.

His 53-year-old heir, Philippe, studied at Trinity College, Oxford, and Stanford University, and has led trade delegations to countries such as the United States, China and Thailand. In 1999 Philippe married Princess Mathilde, a Belgian-born aristocrat, with whom he has four children. His 11-year-old daughter Elisabeth would be in line to become the country's first queen.