The engraving and its hypothesis
Henri Borremans’ 1848 lithograph If the happiness of Belgium demands it, I am ready to sacrifice my crown and my dynasty to her can be found in the print department of the Royal Library of Belgium, the Albertine. It shows the King of the Belgians, surrounded by his children, the Queen and the Prime Minister Rogier, offering representatives of the army and the government the sacrifice of his crown.
Did this engraving depict an actual historical fact? Was Leopold I really ready to abdicate during the Revolution of 1848, which threatened all the European dynasties?
Not only was the wily, cautious Leopold I very aware of the dangers threatening his young and still fragile kingdom, but he also was savvy at turning difficult situations to his advantage. So, during the council of ministers on February 27th 1848, he ordered his government to spread the rumour that he was ready to abdicate.
According to the historian George H. Dumont1, a French republican journalist named Philippe Bourson fell into the trap and described in the Journal des débats the meeting of the council of ministers where Leopold I is supposed to have offered to abdicate, as shown in the lithograph. Past slaughters had taught the population of Belgium that the flag of the republic was also the flag of military conquest, and made them fear a new French occupation. Far from turning the Belgians against the royal family, the publication of the engraving brought them together. Had the revolutionaries themselves unwittingly strengthened the little kingdom of Belgium, a narrow rock amidst the storm breaking over Europe in February-March 1848?
Madness and fear
Should we, within the framework of our commentary on the Sketch for a psychological study of Leopold II, examine the double hypothesis of madness and fear? Émile Meurice barely touches on a case which might throw some light on the hereditary hypothesis: that of a nephew considered ganz verrückt. Ernest II – the son of Leopold I’s brother Ernest I – duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, suffered from an erotomania so extreme that he even installed a brothel in his own palace. He was also characterised by his frenzied insistence on etiquette – recalling Charlotte’s pomp as Empress Carlota of Mexico – and his delusions of grandeur, which may be compared to those of Leopold II. On the other hand, if we follow those psychiatrists who place as much emphasis on environmental as on hereditary factors, we have to ask ourselves the question: did the events of the 1848 Revolution influence the psychological development of the children of Leopold I and Louise-Marie?
The first letter2 which Louise-Marie of Orléans3, Queen of the Belgians, the mother of Charlotte and Leopold, wrote to her mother Amalia after the abdication of her father Louis-Philippe, “the King of the French”, tells us a great deal about both the political situation and Louise-Marie’s own mental state. In those dramatic days, that state was one of anxiety, distress, and fear of losing the privileges enjoyed by the European dynasties.
“Brussels, February 27th 1848
We finally learned yesterday evening, dear good Mama, that you arrived successfully in England on the evening of the 25th. You are all safe and well. And I cannot thank God enough after the terrible anxiety of these days and all I have been through. And not a week ago, you were calmly settled at the Tuileries, and barely suspecting the consequences of the banquet which led to such a sudden, such an incredible revolution; and three days later, the Republic in Paris. What a disaster, what a misfortune, and how unfathomable are the decrees of God! Everyone is upset, dismayed, thunderstruck, and public sentiment is [illegible] but naturally, if a republic is really established in France, the movement would be general in Europe and we cannot predict what would happen even here. Because of the gravity of the situation, we are going to settle in Brussels in order to be closer to the news and the orders that need to be given. […] Farewell, my poor dear Mama, full of tears, tenderness, veneration and sorrow, my dear Mama, and farewell to poor dear Father.
Louise”
The conflagration
Before examining the influence of the 1848 Revolution on the psychological development of the children, let us return to the historical events that gave rise to this letter from Louise, and attempt to sketch a chronology.
The carnival was at its height in Brussels on the night of February 25th 1848. While festivities were in full swing and princes, princesses and socialites waltzed, word spread that there has been an insurrection in Paris. Leopold I had watched anxiously as the number of reformist banquets held in France in the autumn of 1847 increased. As he had coolly confided in Duke Ernest II of Saxe-Coburg, “It is the Jacobin spirit of the early years of the French Revolution which inspires the theories of the innovators and communists in France, Italy, Germany and the other States. It is becoming established in every country, and if it penetrates the masses and takes away their sense of nationhood, it will threaten the thrones and all the governments. My father-in-law will be driven out very soon, just like Charles X. The disaster is inevitable and Germany will follow…”4Through his ambassador, Prince Eugène de Ligne, King Leopold I had conveyed his fears for the future of France to Louis-Philippe. The King of the French had replied: “Assure my son-in-law King Leopold that he is worrying needlessly; that neither banquets of cold veal nor the Bonapartes will throw me off. I am well seated on my horse.”5
Nevertheless, at the beginning of the year 1848, with the economic crisis worsening throughout Europe and hunger spreading, King Louis-Philippe ordered his Prime Minister Guizot to ban a large banquet planned by the Republicans for February 22nd. Students and workers loudly manifested their discontent, and unrest broke out in the streets of Paris. Barricades were erected and cries of “Long live the Republic!” were heard. Aware of the incipient threat, Louis-Philippe made an appearance on horseback. But when the army made an agreement with the revolutionaries and the Palais-Royal and the Tuileries were attacked by the mob, the King of the French, fearing that he might suffer the same fate as Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, abdicated. Louis-Philippe escaped with his family in an unmarked carriage to Le Havre, where they embarked on a small steamship. Poor weather conditions made the Channel crossing extremely dangerous. Once they had arrived in England, they found refuge on Leopold’s property at Claremont.
In a letter to Victoria, Leopold I speaks of his fear, faced with the storm of Revolution endangering his family and his little kingdom:
“Laken, February 28th 1848
My dearest Victoria!
I am very unwell in consequence of the awful events at Paris! How will this end? Poor Louise is in a state of despair which is pitiful to behold. What will soon become of us, God alone knows! Great efforts will be made to revolutionise this country; as there are poor and wicked people in all countries it may succeed. Against France we of course have a right to claim protection from England and the other powers. I can write no more. God bless you ever.
Your devoted Uncle Leopold”
Revolution was looming in Belgium, too, and it was not the the illusion of a few royalists and conservatives clinging to power at all costs. A revolutionary wrote to the then Belgian Prime Minister, Charles Rogier:
“My dear Rogier, weigh things up, a general upheaval is sweeping across Europe. The royalist cause is lost. The French Republic, inaugurated like a bolt of lightning, will be accepted by the whole of France; (...) it will immediately become the means of establishing order as well as the signal for the emancipation of peoples. The Empire of Austria is falling and the peoples it enslaved even yesterday will tomorrow be free. Poland, Hungary, Bohemia, all the Slav peoples, the two Peninsulas, Holland and probably Germany and even England will become republics. (…) Here, too, Belgium can help spread a great progress through the continent by teaching the monarchies how to retire with dignity.
Yours truly,
V. Considérant
Brussels, February 26th, one o’clock in the morning
P.S. There will be tomorrow, before two o’clock in the afternoon, a hundred thousand men intoxicated with an electric enthusiasm, crying ‘Long live the Republic!’ in the streets of Brussels. This vast cortege will spontaneously march to the Chamber and the palace. You have only one chance to calm everything as if by magic.”6
Karl Marx
It was on that same day, February 27th, that the Democratic Association, whose aim was the unity and brotherhood of all peoples, held an emergency meeting in its premises in the Rue des Soeurs Noires in the Vieille Cour in Brussels. The news of the revolution in Paris aroused intense fervour. Was a new era about to dawn in Brussels and elsewhere? Among those present were Louis Spilthoorn, a lawyer from Ghent, who already saw himself as President of the Republic; his colleague from Liège Victor Tedesco, nervously adjusting his gold-rimmed spectacles; Lucien Jottrand, who tried to calm down those who were overexcited, and… a certain Karl Marx.
Marx had found refuge in Brussels in February 1845, after having been accused of insulting Frederick William IV of Prussia in the newspaper Vorwärts and expelled from France by the Guizot governement. It was in Brussels that he developed his key theories: “Just as the economists are the scientific representatives of the bourgeois class,” wrote Marx, “so the socialists and communists are the theoreticians of the proletarian class.” Between December 1847 and January 1848, in a house in the Rue d’Orléans in Ixelles, he wrote the Communist Manifesto7: “A spectre is haunting Europe: the spectre of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French radicals and German police spies.” Published in February 1848, this text quickly found an echo not only among the French population, but elsewhere on the continent. Marx participated in all the deliberations of Democratic Association, which took place in an old district with narrow alleyways and foul-smelling dead-end streets. State Security did have its eyes open when, after one meeting, a crowd of demonstrators cried: “Down with Leopold! Long live the Republic!”
At that famous council of ministers of February 27th 1848, the King, with a mixture of cunning and diplomacy, not only succeeded in flushing out the revolutionaries by spreading the rumour that he was ready to abdicate, but also in deflecting the Belgian politicians’ liberal and republican demands by lowering the poll tax to the minimum laid down in the Constitution. Then he insisted that all political refugees with progressive tendencies be placed under constant surveillance.
On his arrival in Belgium in 1845, Karl Marx had been obliged by Chevalier Hody, administrator of State Security, to sign the following declaration: “To obtain authorisation to reside in Belgium, I consent on my honour not to publish in Belgium any work on the politics of the day.”8 As Marx had constantly and deliberately violated this commitment, the King signed an order for his extradition on March 2nd 1848. Two days later, Marx was escorted to the border with his wife, Jenny von Westphalen, and their children.
On March 8th, Karl Marx published a letter recounting his misadventures of his expulsion in the Parisian newspaper La Réforme:
“At the present moment the Belgian government is aligning itself entirely with the policy of the Holy Alliance. Its reactionary fury falls on the German democrats with unprecedented brutality.”9
An article by Marx, which appeared in the same newspaper on March 12th 1848, provides confirmation of Leopold I’s strategy:
“On Sunday February 27th, the Brussels Democratic Association held its first public meeting since the news of the proclamation of the French Republic. […]
The government, for its part, had spread the rumour that King Leopold was ready to abdicate the moment the people wished it. This was a trap set for the Belgian democrats to make them undertake nothing decisive against such a good king […].
At the same time the king’s government had prepared a list of people whom it considered proper to arrest that very night as disturbers of public order. It had agreed with M. Hody, the chief of public security, to put on this list foreigners as chief instigators of an artificial riot […].”
But at that moment, given the international situation, Marx’s searing articles about his expulsion were the least of King Leopold I’s worries. By March 2nd 1848, the day he signed the extradition order for Karl Marx, he had already recognised the new French State, anticipating all the other powers. Whatever solidarity he may have felt for the deposed Orléans family, the King found it politically expedient to curry favour with the new régime in Paris.
Movements
Two elements are worth pointing out in Louise’s letters. Firstly, in mid-March, no sooner had Karl Marx left the Belgian capital than Metternich10– mentioned on the first page of the Communist Manifesto – relinquished power and fled Austria incognito. For days he wandered across Europe to finally find refuge in Brussels. Secondly, we find a remark about the permanent threat of an invasion of Belgian territory. On March 29th 1848, two thousand revolutionaries coming from Paris were lured into an ambush on the Franco-Belgian border, near the hamlet of Risquons-Tout. The Belgian troops, equipped with cannons, massacred a large number of revolutionaries without mercy and captured many others. An article by Friedrich Engels, in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, informs us that at the “trial of Risquons-Tout”, which took place in Antwerp from August 9 to 30, 1848, no fewer than seventeen of these prisoners were sentenced to death and executed as an example to others:
“Cologne, September 2. Belgium, the model constitutional state, has produced further brilliant proof of the excellence of her institutions. Seventeen death sentences resulting from the ridiculous Risquons-Tout affair! Seventeen death sentences to avenge the humiliation inflicted upon the prudish Belgian nation by a few imprudent men, a few hopeful fools, who attempted to raise a small corner of the constitutional cloak! Seventeen death sentences - what savagery!”
The statements of Jenny von Westphalen prove that Leopold I was right to fear Marx and Engels, who were putting their revolutionary theories into practice: “[...] it was the workers who were feared above all, the social element of the masses. The police, the army, the civil guard, were all summoned to the rescue, and they were all equipped for the fight. It seemed then to the German workers that it was time to arm themselves too. They bought knives, revolvers, and so on. Karl, who had just come into some property, was happy to make funds available to them. The government sees it as a plot, a conspiracy. Marx receives money, he buys arms, he must be eliminated.”11
The death of Louise
The veracity of this statement – that Marx bought arms for the revolution – is disputed by several historians. That does not detract from the gravity of the situation, nor stop us wondering if the events of 1848 had an important influence on the psychological development of Leopold and Charlotte, who were still children at the time. On April 8th 1848, in a letter to Victoria, Leopold I speaks about his son:
“We had for a few days the most beautiful weather but since the 6th it has sadly changed and is more in conformity with the political state of Europe. Tomorrow Leo is 13 years old; poor fellow, his fate is quite uncertain, as public and private fortunes are equally in danger. Let us hope that no flood coming from France will destroy this state of affairs.”
This suggests that the Revolution mortgaged the children’s future, especially Leo’s as heir to the throne. But, beyond the threat looming over their royal destinies, what the children experienced above all was the abrupt disappearance of those things that had satisfied their emotional needs. Not only did they lose their beloved grandparents, but they also saw their fragile, over-sensitive mother broken by the storm of the Revolution, who died on October 11th 1850, only 39 years old.
For many, the death of Louise meant the end of the monarchy. Leopold had lost not only his second wife, but also the people turned on the King’s mistress, Arcadie Claret, who had to go into exile. For a short time, a furious Leopold considered leaving the country.12
Children of the Revolution
What was the influence of these events on Leo and Charlotte? Predestined to become great rulers, they saw the very meaning of their existence called into question. As Émile Meurice writes, they both had “a tendency to pursue their aims with uncommon intensity, paying very little heed to opposing opinions or proffered advice.” Later in his essay, Meurice suggests that “the chance combinations of genetics” were probably less favorable to Charlotte than to Leo. Having conceived Charlotte at a later age, the transmission of genetic matter was more subject to the kind of degeneration that might cause mental problems. Is it possible to advance a similar hypothesis on the psychological level? Can we assume that the disaster of 1848 and the loss of their mother were more traumatic for Charlotte than for Leo? Charlotte took no advantage of the Aztec mines, and lost her mind following her failures both as a wife and as Empress of Mexico, whereas her brother, Leopold II, appropriated the gold of the Congo and fulfilled his destiny as a monarch. Had Charlotte’s elder brother developed a resistance to disasters and traumas during the events of 1848, or had he inherited his father’s cunning? Did these experiences help him to overcome the huge obstacles he had to face to realise his dream of giving his country a colony?
A crystal palace
The State Security archives demonstrate that King Leopold II, like his father Leopold I, had acted prudently faced with the revolution looming in his country. They contain a file on the wanderings of Karl Marx, who returned to Belgium several times after his expulsion in 1848 – notably for an international congress in Liège in 1865, the very same year Leopold II ascended to the throne. This congress would lead to the creation of several Socialist newpapers and pressure groups. The King, whatever he might have wished, could not intervene since he was limited by a Constitution which “[allowed] the country to practise free discussion, and [guaranteed] the right of association”13, as Marx himself wrote.
A year after Louise’s death, Victoria and Albert invited Leopold – who was then sixteen – to come to London as a distraction from his grief and visit the Great Exhibition of 1851, held in the famous Crystal Palace. It was in this vast hall, four times larger than the basilica of Saint Peter’s in Rome, that he discovered the world. That visit saw the beginning of his obsession with giving his country a colony. He shared this “palace” with Karl Marx who, after Brussels and Paris, had found refuge in London, and had this to say of his visit: “Thanks to this exhibition, the international bourgeoisie had built in the modern Rome a Pantheon to display, with pride and self-satisfaction, the gods it has created for itself.”14
Imagine if they had met at that time! Given that the Great Exhibition had six million visitors, it is highly unlikely. But that doesn’t stop us from wondering about the possible significance of such a fortuitous encounter. Marx appears in the life of Leopold II at three key moments: during the 1848 Revolution, in 1851 at the Crystal Palace and in 1865, the year he came to the throne. Did he haunt the Builder King? And did this spectre of Marx and the Socialist revolution fuel Leopold’s inner fires to such an extent that it helped him to realise his dream and masterpiece, a colony for his country?
A colony for Belgium
From the very beginning of his reign, Leopold II felt limited by his role as a constitutional monarch. The socialists, who had grown in number despite Leopold’s efforts, used the parliamentary system on several occasions to block the King’s attempts to give the county a colony. Leopold had therefore to find other ways to satisfy his desire to enlarge his territory.
Meurice leans heavily on the book Congo, mythes and réalités by Jean Stengers in his treatment of the intelligence and cunning deployed by Leopold II to convince the great powers of the soundness of his position in Central Africa. “Everything came from one man alone and from his absolute, unshakable belief in colonialism. We can find a symbol and an illustration of the personal nature of the undertaking in the International Association for the Congo, the AIC. It was this association which was recognised as a sovereign power in 1884-1885, first by the United States, then by Germany and the other countries which took part in the General Act of the Berlin Conference. But with whom was Leopold II associated? Nobody. The AIC was a purely fictional body: it was nothing but a name, and behind it there was only Leopold II.”15
As early as 1876, Leopold II had organised the Brussels Geographic Conference, which brought together delegates from six of the most powerful nations of the day. This conference led to the creation of the International Association for the exploration and civilisation of central Africa, which was put under the King’s authority. Under cover of a respectable internationalism and his image as a philanthropist bringing civilisation and fighting against the enslavement of the blacks by the Arabs, Leopold sent Stanley to the Congo for a standard expedition in appearance only. Its real aim was to build stations and advance posts, as well as to conclude, by force or through cunning, as many treaties as possible with native chiefs. By the time his expedition was over, Leopold had at least forty permanently-occupied stations, and more than four hundred treaties. Well before it was created and recognised, the Congo Free State was already a fait accompli, and one which had been carried out under the noses of the rival European powers.
Meurice explains Leopold II’s feat by “his extraordinary long-term vision and his ability to seize present opportunities and integrate them into his future designs”. Is it a coincidence of History that after persevering for nearly twenty years, it was in 1884, a year after the death of Marx, that Leopold II finally appropriated the Congo, a colony eighty times the size of Belgium, which provided the home country with raw materials, a work force and a market?
A mask of virility
While the King looked on, a genocide took place in the Congo, as Adam Hochschild has detailed in his book King Leopold’s Ghost.16 Hochschild’s arguments – especially his estimate of the number of victims – are disputed by many historians. But it is certainly clear that, once Leopold II had decided that he wanted “a colony for the good of the Belgian people”, “no other feeling [could] thwart his plan.” (Meurice).
This frenzy and this authoritarianism seem to be echoed in the details of his sexual life, which, although “very independent of his emotional life”, was equally focused on “ample, or at least Rubenesque buttocks and breasts”. Did Leopold, “deprived of affection in his childhood’”, remain “fixated in his fantasies on an infantile desire for the mother’s breast”, to quote Meurice once again? It could certainly be argued that it was the loss of his beloved mother – and perhaps also the shame of his father’s liaison at the time of his mother’s death – which disturbed his propensity for empathy and love.
The life of Leopold II may have been a long progress towards acquiring that mask of virility, that straight, determined beard which made his face so impassive and forbidding. Was this mask an attempt to conceal the traumas of his youth – the loss of his mother, the endangered throne – which were to haunt him throughout his life? Did this beard symbolise for him his threefold success, at the end of his life – the victory of will over madness, which had claimed his double, the Empress Charlotte; the triumph of virility, with the roles of father and lover at last assumed; and finally, through the offering of a colony to Belgium, fulfillment as King, the father of the nation despite the absence of an heir? Or did it mask the anomaly of his desires for flesh and stone?
Let us recall our point of departure: an analysis of the engraving of Leopold I offering his crown to the revolutionaries. Was Leopold joining battle with Marx, whom he considered the very embodiment of an ever-threatening revolution: a battle of titans, straight beard against round beard? With that beard, was he hiding, behind the image of the missionnary bringing civilisation to the Congo, while at the same time embodying, in the rubber trade, in the most absolute and brutal manner, the mechanisms of capital as described by Marx, especially as regards the growth in the demand for production at the expense of the lives of his Congolese workers? And have we also considered the influence of his father’s propaganda on the young crown prince? Did he use a disguise to mislead his enemies? Was it mere chance that these events took place during the period of carnival? According to a renowned sociologist, the people were too interested in dances to bother about revolution. In a letter to Victoria, Leopold I implied that he had taken advantage of this: “Next Wednesday we are to respect our delightful amusement and two more balls are to be given, this being an awfully long carnival.”
Coïncidence of History is an extract from one of the texts in the book Les Demoiselles de Bruxelles, edited by Sven Augustijnen and published in the occasion of Augustijnen's exhibition Les Demoiselles de Bruxelles, at Jan Mot gallery, from 04/12/08 - 17/01/09. More information at: http://www.janmot.com/
1 Dumont, Georges H. Le Miracle belge de 1848. Brussels: Charles Dessart, 1948, p. 52.
2 All Louise-Marie of Orléans’ letters to her mother Amalia and Leopold I’s correspondance with his niece Victoria, Queen of England, concerning the 1848 Revolution can be found in the Archives of the Royal Palace in Brussels.
3 Leopold I married Louise-Marie of Orléans, daughter of the King of the French, Louis-Philippe I, on August 9th 1832. She was his second wife, and bore him four children: Louis-Philippe, Leopold I’s favorite, who died at the age of 1 (1833-1834); Leopold, the future King Leopold II (1835-1909); Philippe, Count of Flanders (1837-1905); and Charlotte (1840-1927).
4 Defrance, Olivier. Leopold I et le clan Cobourg. Brussels: Racine, 2004, p. 218.
5 Ligne, Prince Albert de. Le Prince Eugène de Ligne 1804-1880. Brussels: Univ, 1940, pp. 144-145.
6 Discailles, Ernest. Charles Rogier (1800-1885) d’après des documents inédits. Brussels: Lebègue, 1893-95, t. III, p. 234.
7 Marx lived in a house in Ixelles from 19 October 1846 to 26 February 1848. It still exists in the Rue d’Orléans, a street named after the French royal family. This street is now at right angles to the Avenue Louise, which was built by Leopold II in memory of his mother, Louise of Orléans.
8 General Archives of the Kingdom.
9 For a thorough examination of the expulsion of Karl Marx, see: Andréas, Bert. Marx’ Verhaftung und Ausweisung Brüssel, Februar/März 1848. Trèves : Karl-Marx-Haus, 1978.
10 The development of Belgium was strongly influenced by the Austrian Clemens von Metternich. After the battle of Waterloo, Metternich’s one aim was to restore the Holy Alliance and the European monarchies as a bastion against democratisation and liberalism. With this purpose he installed the despot William I on the throne of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands. A republic in the centre of Europe in 1830 was unthinkable to him. At the urging of the reactionary forces in Europe, a compromise was reached in the case of Belgium: a parliamentary democracy.
11 Marx, Jenny. Kurze Umrisse eines bewegtes Lebens. Berlin: Mohr und General, 1964, pp. 204-236.
12 According to Charles Rogier, the Prime Minister, the situation in Belgium could be compared to that in Bavaria, where Ludwig I had abdicated two years earlier, after public opinion had reacted against his sensational love affair with the beautiful Spanish dancer and adventuress Lola Montez. She had been imprisoned on March 17th 1848 and, four days later, the King abdicated in favour of his son Maximilian II.
13 Report in Deutsche Brüsseler Zeitung on January 6th 1848, quoted in: Stengers, Jean. ‘Ixelles dans la vie et l’oeuvre de Karl Marx’. Belgique, Europe, Afrique, deux siècles d’histoire contemporaine – Méthode et réflexions. Brussels: Le Livre Timperman, 2004, p. 354.
14 Catherine, Lucas. Leopold II: la folie des grandeurs. Brussels: Luc Pire, 2004, p.16.
15 Stengers, Jean. Congo: mythes and réalités. Brussels: Racine, 2005, pp. 47-48.
16 The subtitle of the French edition of this book, Un holocauste oublié (A forgotten holocaust), sums it up well: in the course of colonisation, King Leopold II perpetrated a holocaust on the Congolese people, with an estimated 10 million victims.
