Leopold II of Belgium

Leopold II, born Leopold Louis Philippe Maria Victor of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (Léopold Louis-Philippe Marie Victor de Saxe-Cobourg et Gotha; Brussels, Belgium, April 9, 1835 - December 17, 1909) was the second King of the Belgians. He succeeded his father, Leopold I, to the Belgian throne in 1865 and remained until his death. He reigned for 44 years, making it the longest reign of any Belgian monarch to date. He died with no surviving male children, so his niece Alberto his would be his successor.

Leopold was the sovereign, founder and sole owner of the Congo Free State from 1885 to 1908, a private project headed by himself. He used explorer Henry Morton Stanley to help him reclaim the Congo, an area currently occupied by the Democratic Republic of the Congo. At the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885, European nations with colonial interests—which agreed to the partition of Africa—committed to improving the lives of the native inhabitants of the Congo, while confirming their possession by Leopold II. However, from the beginning the monarch ignored these conditions and amassed a great fortune thanks to the exploitation of the natural resources of the Congo - rubber, diamonds, ivory and other precious stones - and the use of the native population as forced labor and slave. After several years of international denunciations by British personalities such as Arthur Conan Doyle, Joseph Conrad or Roger Casement; and the Belgian socialist leader Émile Vandervelde, among others, thanks to the photographs taken by the British photographer Alice Seeley Harris, the Belgian state took over the administration of the Congo in 1908.

Today, Leopold II's role in Africa remains controversial among historians. According to the writer Adam Hochschild, his African regime was responsible for the death of 10 million Congolese, while Bertrand Russell estimated the number of victims at 8 million people, likewise, the census conducted by Belgium in 1924 showed that the The population of the Congo Free State owned by Leopold had fallen by 50%, to 10 million people. However, various historians argue against this figure due to the absence of reliable censuses, the enormous mortality from diseases such as smallpox or sleeping sickness and the fact that in 1900, there were only 3,000 Europeans in the Congo, of whom only half were Belgians. In any case, there is consensus that Leopold's reign was characterized by the atrocities committed by systematically by his administration, George Washington William would refer to the actions taken by Leopoldo as crimes against humanity. These and other facts were established by eyewitness testimony, by the on-site inspection of an international commission of inquiry, by the investigative journalism and activism of Edmund Dene Morel, and by the Casement Report of 1904.

However, despite this evidence, it is still a matter of debate whether or not there was genocide in the Congo, because while for Adam Hochschild it is undoubted, David Van Reybrouck considers that one cannot speak of a genocide, since there was no a conscious and planned annihilation, but "a policy of unbridled exploitation and a pathological search for profit". On the other hand, according to biographer Barbara Emerson "Leopold did not start any genocide. He was greedy for money and became disinterested when things got out of control in the Congo & # 34;; the sovereign would not have been a monster, but a calculating man blinded by the vast riches of his colony who succumbed to "a terrifying example of moral decadence".

Early Years

Young Leopoldo with the Granaderos uniform (Nicaise Portrait of Keyser)

Leopold was the second child born of the marriage of Leopold I, first King of the Belgians, and Queen Louise of Orleans, daughter of French King Louis Philippe I. He was born on April 9, 1835 in the Royal Palace of Brussels, and was baptized with the name (in French) of Léopold Louis-Philippe Marie Victor of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. The name "Louis-Philippe" It was put in memory of his maternal grandfather, King Louis Philippe I of France, and his older brother Louis Philippe, born in 1833 and died in his cradle in 1834. Leopold had two other brothers: Philip, Count of Flanders (1837 -1905) and Carlota, Empress of Mexico (1840-1927).

Its birth was a great hope of continuity for the young Belgian nation, independent since 1830. The lack of recognition of Belgian sovereignty by the main European powers, such as Austria and Russia, threatened its sustainability. If Belgium was to consolidate its existence, its king needed to have a direct-line male heir. However, the boy was of weak complexion but highly intelligent. In 1840, Leopold received the title of "Duke of Brabant", recreated to designate the heir to the throne, in the same way his brother Philip was named "Count of Flanders".

Queen Louise was deeply affected by the death of her father, Louis-Philippe I of France, in 1850, who had been forced into exile in Claremont after the Revolution of 1848. She caught a cold during a funeral in Brussels, contracting tuberculosis and dying prematurely on October 11, 1850, in Ostend, at the age of 38. Leopold was only 15 years old.

Sharply affected by the death of his mother, who personally cared for the royal children, Leopoldo and his brother and sister were left somewhat alone. One month after Queen Louise's death, Queen Victoria of England advised the King: 'You must keep your children as close to yourself as possible. I'm sure it would be good and useful for you and them".

Leopold, Duke of Brabant, will become a member of the Belgian Senate and will actively participate in important debates, especially those related to the establishment of a navigation service between Antwerp and the Mediterranean Levant in 1855. The same year he stayed with Emperor Napoleon III for three weeks in Paris on the occasion of the Universal Exposition.

Also, as a young man, he joined the Belgian army and made numerous trips around the world, which would mark his expansionist policy.^{[citation needed]}

Marriage and family

Leopoldo and Maria Enriqueta around 1857

Regime change in France undermined the position of the King of the Belgians, who was the son-in-law of King Louis-Philippe of France, deposed by the Revolution of 1848. To cope with the decline in prestige of the Belgian monarchy, the adolescent Leopold, Duke of Brabant, turned out to be of great use. His father took him through Germany, Austria, Gotha, Dresden, Berlin, and finally Vienna, where Leopold's engagement to the Archduchess of the secular and Catholic House of Austria, Maria Henrietta of Austria, would be announced a few days later. Just three months later, on August 22, 1853, and at the age of 18, Leopold was civilly married, in front of Mayor Charles de Brouckère, at the Royal Palace of Brussels. He then would do it religiously in the cathedral of Saints-Michel-et-Gudule. It was a marriage of convenience, since María Enriqueta was a cousin of Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria and granddaughter of Emperor Leopold II. She was also vivacious and energetic, as well as an accomplished artist and musician and the beauty of her earned her the nickname "The Rose of Brabant". She was passionate about horsemanship to the point that she took personal care of her horses. The marriage was criticized and ridiculed by those who claimed that it was a "marriage of a groom and a nun", Leopoldo being the nun.

A political cartoon that ridicules Leopoldo's love story with Caroline Lacroix. The Abbot: Sir, at your age? The King: You should try it for yourself!

The marriage, for diplomatic reasons, was poorly received in France by Napoleon III, who frowned upon the success of the Belgian royal family, related to the rival Orléans dynasty. After the nuptials, the young couple undertook the tour of the Belgian cities before embarking in October for a long stay in England with Queen Victoria, who after observing them wrote in November 1853 to King Leopold I: "I think you have no idea that, For her age, she [María Enriqueta] has an exceptional personality. In all of her subjects I found her particularly intelligent and sensible, highly educated and highly cultured. All these gifts give him a clear superiority over Léo [poldo] and, unfortunately, they do not share tastes and ideas between them [...] In politics, Léo [poldo] is inexhaustible. He talks about her quite well, as well as about military matters'. The difference in personalities between the young couple became apparent when they were at the Tuileries in 1855. Lady Priscilla of Westmorland wrote: 'It would seem that [ Leopoldo] is sixteen years old. He is a large asparagus and without the shadow of a beard: he talks a lot, he does not lack intelligence, but if his body is too young, his intelligence is not at all: he does not speak like a man, but like an old man. Imagine the grace that he must do to his wife when he gives himself the air of a teacher & # 34;.

Four children were born from this marriage, three girls and one boy, also named Leopoldo. Young Leopold died in 1869 at the age of nine of pneumonia after falling into a pond. His death was a source of great pain for Leopoldo. The happiness of the marriage was cut short and the couple separated completely after one last attempt to have another child, which resulted in the birth of their last daughter Clementina. Maria Henrietta retired permanently to Spa in 1895 and she died there in 1902.

Leopoldo had many lovers. In 1899, at the age of 65, he fell madly in love with one of his lovers, Caroline Lacroix, a 16-year-old French prostitute. He named her Baroness de Vaughan, and had two sons with her (the true paternity of those children was never proven). Due to the gifts and the unofficial nature of their relationship, Caroline was deeply unpopular with the Belgian people and internationally. A year before her death, Leopoldo contracted a morganatic marriage with Lacroix, bequeathing him a fortune and real estate in Belgium and France. The following year, shortly after the king's death, Lacroix married her lover, Antoine Durieux, who adopted her children.

Reign

Portrait of Leopoldo II by Louis Gallait (c.1860Sint-Niklaas City Council

Under Leopold II, thanks to the great industrial growth in Wallonia between 1850 and 1870, the policy of neutrality during the Franco-Prussian War and the active role played by the different governments, Belgium became one of the industrial powers of Europe. Brussels became a "little Paris" hosting exiles from both the French Second Empire and the Paris Commune.

Domestic policy

During his reign, Parliament approved numerous social measures, such as the right to form unions, the prohibition of children under 12 years of age from working in factories, the prohibition of night work for those under 16 years of age and of jobs subways for women under 21 years of age.^{[citation required]} Sunday rest and compensation in case of work accident were established.

The king tried to get the Belgian Constitution of 1885 to establish the "Royal Referendum," which would have allowed him to personally call popular consultations on questions of a general order or on laws already approved by the Belgian Parliament. In the latter case, the Royal Referendum could have given him popular support to refuse to sign laws that he disapproved of, which was equivalent to having the right of veto. Faced with the refusal of Parliament to contemplate this possibility, Leopoldo was on the verge of abdicating.

In the military aspect, in order to maintain the neutrality of the kingdom and preserve it from German or French invasions, he ordered the fortification of the Moselle river and the cities of Antwerp, Namur and Liège, likewise he instituted compulsory military service for one son per family (1909).

The Builder King

The Royal Palace of Brussels.

Brussels Palace of Justice.

Brussels, an important cultural center where international artists, politicians and thinkers converged, experienced in the last quarter of the XIX century an important urban development. Leopold II, who frequently visited the works, showed his interest and wanted to promote not only the construction of buildings but, above all, large urban spaces and parks as a result of his interest in improving the living conditions in modern metropolises. The king always preferred French classicism and the Second Empire style, despite the fact that at the end of the century Brussels became one of the main centers of Art Nouveau.

Among the large number of public works financed in part by the sovereign in Brussels, it is worth highlighting:

• the Royal Church of Saint Mary (1845-1888)
• the church of Saint Catherine (1854-1874)
• the coating of the river Senne (1866-1871)
• the Royal Palace of Brussels (1865-1872 and 1903-1909)
• the Brussels Palace of Justice of Joseph Poelaert (1866-1883)
• the Royal Castle and the Invernaderos of Laeken (1873, 1890 and 1902-1906)
• the Parque y los Arcos del Cincuentenario (1880, 1888 and 1889-1897) for the 50th anniversary of the independence of Belgium
• Tervueren Avenue (1895-1897)
• Royal Museums of Art and History (1879-1904)
• Royal Museum of Central Africa (1905-1910)
• the Basilica of the Sacred Heart (started in 1905)
• the Mont des Arts (started in 1908)

In addition, he also beautified the city of Ostend, where he created the hippodrome and the María Enriqueta park, and the city of Antwerp with the Royal Museum of Fine Arts or the Antwerpen-Centraal Station.

The Royal Invernaderos of Laeken.

The Royal Museum of Central Africa.

Leopold II also built an immense personal estate in the Ardennes, with 6,700 hectares of forests and agricultural estates, a golf course, and the castles of Ciergnon, Fenffe, Villers-sur-Lesse, and Ferage; as well as luxurious properties on the French Riviera, highlighting the monumental Villa Leópolda (1902) in Villefranche-sur-Mer and Villa Les Cèdres with its attached botanical garden (1904) in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat.

Although it is true that many of these projects were financed with the enormous profits that Leopold II obtained from the Congo, it should be noted that many of them saw the light of day before the colony was acquired in 1885, such as the pharaonic Palace of Justice which was finished 1883.

The Royal Donation

In 1900, on the occasion of his sixty-fifth birthday, Leopold II decided to cede a large part of his private property to the Belgian state, it was the so-called Donation Royale (Royal Donation). The sovereign affirmed that in this way he ensured that they would not be fragmented among his heirs and that they would continue to be linked to the family. Not in vain his eldest daughters, Luisa and Estefanía, had married foreign princes. He imposed three conditions for the transfer: that the properties could not be sold, that they must maintain their appearance and function, and that they must be at the disposal of the Belgian Royal Family. In 1903, the Belgian state accepted the donation in exchange for the assets being financially self-sufficient.

The assets of the Donation were divided into four large blocks:

• the properties of the Ardennes: essentially agricultural land and forests, but also the castles of Ciergnon, Fenffe and Ferage.
• the property of Tervuren: for golf course and educational buildings.
• the property of Ostende: the old royal villa with its stables and the city racetrack.
• the properties in Brussels: the Laeken Palace and its park with the castles of Belvedere and Stuyvenberg, the Hôtel Bellevue, the Duden Park in Forest, the facilities of the Royal Yacht Club and a lot of rented properties.

The Royal Grant was originally administered by a department of the Ministry of Finance, but since 1930 it has been an autonomous public body under the supervision of the same ministry.

Colonial Politics: Congo Free State and Genocide

The institutional framework

The Monument to General Storms in Brussels sprayed with red paint.

In 1876, Leopold convened and chaired the Brussels Geographical Conference that brought together experts, explorers, and scientists from six European countries. It sought to establish common philanthropic standards to protect the African continent and its inhabitants from indiscriminate commercial exploitation, since the latest explorations had just opened Africa to European penetration. To this end, the Conference decided to create a permanent body, the African International Association (AIA), chaired by Leopoldo himself, to promote peace, civilization, education and scientific progress, and to eradicate the slave trade, which was a practice common to much of the continent. The same year, in the inaugural speech of the Belgian committee of the AIA, Leopold declared:

(...) The horrors of this state of affairs, the thousands of victims massacred by the slave trade every year, the even greater number of absolutely innocent beings who are brutally dragged into captivity and sentenced for life to forced labor, have deeply moved the feelings of all who, at all levels, have carefully studied this deplorable reality; and have conceived the idea of associating themselves, of cooperating, in a word, of international trafficking.

Three years later, the AIA funded the Congo River Expedition (1879–1884) led by American explorer and adventurer Henry Morton Stanley. Stanley was commissioned to obtain contracts with the indigenous chiefs, so that the AIA would exploit the discovered regions, turning them into "Free States". At the same time, Belgium created the International Association of the Congo (AIC), whose purposes were allegedly related to the maintenance of peace in the African regions of the Congo Basin, but later with clearly commercial goals to exploit products from the colonized regions.

As a result of these initiatives, Leopold was recognized on the international scene as an admirable philanthropic benefactor, as a businessman concerned with humanitarian issues and as the promoter of Belgium's colonial policy, placing him at the height that of the United Kingdom, France or Germany. It is therefore not surprising that the Berlin Conference (1884-1885) recognized the creation of the Congo Free State as a territory belonging to Leopold in a personal capacity (and not as a Belgian colony). No indigenous representative was invited.

The Kingdom of Belgium abandoned all responsibility for the Congolese territory, as confirmed by article 62 of the Belgian Constitution voted in 1885, for which the territory of the Congo was practically converted into "private property" of Leopold II. The exploitation of the region's resources was constituted as a "state" (in favor of the Congo Free State), and Leopold sent an army of 16,000 Europeans of different nationalities, paid by the monarch himself, to control the region and turn it into a forced labor camp, through slavery and mutilation.

The genocidal practice of Leopold II in the Congo

Thanks to the colonization of the Congo, Leopold turned Belgium into an imperialist power and himself into a billionaire. Thanks to the loans that were granted to Leopold by the Belgian State, the AIC created a railway network along the Congo River and its tributaries, and opened roads. After John Dunlop invented rubber tyres, the worldwide demand for rubber, due to its use as a raw material in the automobile and bicycle industries, had skyrocketed and an international commercial race began to dominate the market.

To stay ahead of the competition (who were exploiting forests in Latin America and Southeast Asia), Leopoldo imposed high rubber production quotas in the Congo, and forced the indigenous population to comply with them with coercive methods and the highest level of violence. To increase the rate of production, the agents of the Independent State of the Congo charged bonuses based on the additional amounts of rubber collected, which incited them to increasingly tighten the methods of pressure on the workers to increase production to the highest possible level, punishing with death or mutilation the workers who did not meet their quotas, without exempting children or the elderly from such forced labor.

In the territories that belonged to Leopoldo II, the punishment for disobedience - or not "to meet the job quota"- it was the violent amputation of one hand.

It is estimated that during Leopold's years of rule over the Congo some ten million natives died. Historian Adam Hochschild advances the same figure based on research carried out by anthropologist Jan Vansina from local sources of the time, and estimates that from 1885 to 1908 the Congolese population was reduced by half because of the murders, the hunger, exhaustion, disease and the collapse of the birth rate. The Congolese historian Ndaywel e Nziem puts the figure at 13 million dead, while the historians Roger Louis and Jean Stengers consider that these figures are unfounded in the absence of population data for those years.

In 1895, missionary Henry Grattan Guinness learned of the abuses suffered by the people of the Congo Free State and established a mission there. He got promises of improvement from Leopoldo, but nothing changed.^{[citation needed]} British journalist Edmund Dene Morel, former agent of a shipping company in charge of transporting rubber to Europe, and knowledgeable of the commercial structures established in West Africa, he was also one of the first to warn international opinion about the crimes committed, and he was the first to collect testimonial and documentary evidence. However, it was not until 1903, two years after the death of Queen Victoria, Leopold's cousin, that the House of Commons passed a critical resolution on the management of the Congo, and commissioned the diplomat Roger Casement, appointed British consul in the Congo to investigate the facts. His report, known as the Casement Report, was made public the following year and had a considerable impact on public opinion. The British Parliament passed a resolution on the Status of the Congo—which the government sent to the 14 signatory countries of the Treaty of Congo. Berlin of 1885—in which it was reported that the crimes allegedly committed there were contrary to the spirit of the Conference, and the British Foreign Secretary called in separate speeches for the private concession of the Congo to the King of Belgium to be reviewed for transfer to the Belgian parliament.

Belgian socialist deputy Émile Vandervelde and part of the parliamentary opposition managed, against the king's opinion,^{[citation needed]} to create an independent commission of investigation, the report of which confirmed the observations of Casement and Morel. On his part, the king sent his own commission of inquiry, made up of Belgian public officials, who denied all kinds of abuses and who supported his "civilizing" work.& # 34; ^{[ citation required ]}

Assignment to the State within the framework of the Royal Donation

The immediate consequences of these reports were limited to the arrest of some Free State soldiers accused of the murder of hundreds of Congolese in 1903.^{[citation needed]} In December 1906, King Leopold, under international pressure, agreed to transfer the state of the Congo to the Belgian Parliament, but negotiations lasted until November 15, 1908, when the Belgian Parliament took over its administration. In the interim the king negotiated compensation of 50 million francs for his Congo holdings and disposed of all his liabilities in the region, which he reinvested in property on the French Riviera.

This transfer was included in the act known as the "Royal Donation" (1903), by which Belgium "inherited" the Congo, as well as the management of the king's immense personal properties in Belgium, preserving the enjoyment of it by his successors on the throne and prohibiting its sale or alteration. Leopold justified the treaty by stating that since he only had daughters, all married to foreign princes, he did not want his inheritance to be dismembered after his death. The Royal Donation is since 1930 an autonomous public body of the Belgian State, which manages the heritage inherited from Leopold II. Part of these assets was placed at the exclusive disposal of the Belgian Royal House, and the State assumed its management and conservation.

Mining exploitation

A large part of the territories that Leopold II ordered to be colonized in Africa constitute the current state of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Belgium continued to exploit the riches of the 'Belgian Congo'. In the years following the Royal Donation, the administration of the Congo continued in the hands of the same concessionary companies, so the mistreatment of Congolese labor continued, without however reaching the previous excesses.

After the decline of rubber, the mining exploitation initiated by the concessionary companies of Leopold II, such as the Katanga Company, created in 1891, became especially important. From 1900, to ensure the dominance of the company against the competition of the British and German mining companies, the Congo Independent State and the Katanga Company joined in the Katanga Special Committee (CSK). Soon after, an agreement signed personally by Leopold II and British businessman Robert Williams, owner of the Tangenyika Concession Limited (TCL) mining company, created the Upper Katanga Mining Union (UMHK), which effectively governed the Katanga region. until its nationalization by the government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in 1966.

Death and legacy

In his later years, he earned a bad reputation among his subjects for his less than exemplary conduct. He publicly despised his country because of its small size, spent winters in luxurious residences on the French Riviera, and two of his three daughters became estranged from him. His relationships with very young girls were known, including the one he began at the age of 65 with the adolescent ex-prostitute from whom his two illegitimate children would be born.

Leopold II died in 1909 of a cerebral haemorrhage. His nephew Albert, son of his brother Philippe of Belgium, succeeded to the throne as Albert I.

Offspring

Queen Mary Enriched with Prince Leopoldo, Duke of Brabant, in 1864

Leopoldo and María Enriqueta had four children, of which the two youngest have descendants living as of 2018:

• Princess Luisa of Belgium, born in Brussels on February 18, 1858, and died in Wiesbaden on March 1, 1924. He married Prince Philip of Saxony-Coburg and Gotha on February 4, 1875. They had two children and divorced on January 15, 1906.
• Prince Leopoldo, Duke of Brabant, Count of Henao, born in Laeken on 12 June 1859 and died in the same place on 22 January 1869. The cause of death was pneumonia after falling into a pond.
• Princess Estefanía of Belgium, born in Laeken on 21 May 1864, and died at the Abbey of Pannonhalma in Győr-Moson-Sopron, Hungary, on 23 August 1945. He married, in the first nuptists, with the Crown Prince Rodolfo of Habsburg, the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, who died in 1889, in a suicide pact with his lover, the Baroness Maria Vetsera, in the hunting pavilion of Mayerling. The second husband of Estefanía was Elemér Edmund Graf Lónyay de Nagy-Lónya et Vásáros-Namény.
• Princess Clementina of Belgium, born in Laeken on 30 July 1872, and died in Nice on 8 March 1955. He married Prince Napoleon Victor Jérôme Frédéric Bonaparte (1862–1926), head of the Bonaparte family. The current head of the imperial family, Jean-Christophe, Prince Napoleon is a direct descendant of King Leopoldo II.

Leopold also fathered two children with Caroline Lacroix. They were adopted in 1910 by Lacroix's second husband, Antoine Durrieux. Leopold granted them courtesy titles that were honorary, since parliament would not have supported any official act or decree:

• Lucien Philippe Marie Antoine (9 February 1906 - 1984), Duke of Tervuren.
• Philippe Henri Marie François (16 October 1907 - 21 August 1914), Count of Ravenstein.

Degrees and honors

Titles

• Belgium:
  • 9 April 1835 - 16 December 1840: Your Royal Highness the Crown Prince of Belgium, Prince of Saxony-Coburg and Gotha, Duke of Saxony
  • 16 December 1840 - 17 December 1865: Your Royal Highness the Duke of Brabant, Prince of Saxony-Coburg and Gotha, Duke of Saxony
  • 17 December 1865 - 17 December 1909: Your Majesty the King of the Belgas
• Congo Free State:
  • 1 July 1885 - 15 November 1908: Your Majesty Serena The Sovereign of the Free State of the Congo

Honors

National Awards

• Great Cord of the Royal Order of Leopoldo, 9 April 1853Great Master, 17 December 1865
• Founder and Grand Master of the Order of the Crown, 15 October 1897
• Founder and Grand Master of the Order of Leopoldo II, 24 August 1900
• Founder and Grand Master of the Royal Order of the Lion, 9 April 1891
• Founder and Grand Master of the Order of the African Star, 10 October 1908

International awards

• Anhalt: Great Cross of Alberto el Oso, 1874

• Austria: Knight of the Golden Vellocino, 1853; Great Cross of St. Stephen, 1853
• Baden: Knight of the Order of the House of Fidelity, 1862; Grand Cross of the Lion Zähringer, 1862
• Bavaria: Knight of St. Huberto, 1853
• Brazil: Grand Cross of the South Cross; Grand Cross of the Order of Peter I
• Cambodia: Grand Cross of the Royal Order of Cambodia
• Sardinia: Knight of the Annunciation, 14 July 1855Great Cross of Saints Mauritius and Lazarus, 1855
• Denmark: Elephant Knight, 9 January 1866
• Quing Dynasty: Double Dragon Order, Class I, Grade I
• Two Sicilies: Gran Cruz de San Fernando y el Mérito
• Duchy Ernestinos: Grand Cross of the Order of the Saxony-Ernestine House, 1853
• Spain: Gran Cruz de la Orden de Carlos III, 6 April 1863
• Ethiopia: Great Cross of the Seal of Solomon
• France: Great Cross of the Legion of Honor
• Greece: Great Cross of the Redeemer
• Hanover: Saint George's Knight, 1858; Grand Cross of the Royal Guelphic Order, 1858
• Hawaii: Grand Cross of the Order of Kamehameha I, 1881
• Hesse-Dramstadt: Grand Cross of the Ludwig Order, 10 December 1865
• Hesse-Kassel: Golden Lion Knight, 29 January 1866
• Ottoman Empire: Order of Medjidie, First class; Order of Osmanieh, First class; Order of the Hanedan-i-Ali-Osman
• Japan: Crisantemo Order Necklace
• Liberia: Grand Commander of the African Redemption Human Order
• Malta: Military Order of Malta
• Mecklenburg: Great Wendish Crown Cross; Great Grey Cross
• Mexico: Gran Cruz del Águila Mexicana, 1865
• Monaco: Gran Cruz de San Carlos
• Oldenburg: Grand Cross of the Order of Duke Peter Friedrich Ludwig, 1 August 1856
• Netherlands: Grand Cross of the Lion of the Netherlands
• Persia: Great Lion and Sun Cord; August Portrait Order, 16 June 1873
• Portugal: Grand Cross of the Tower and the Sword, 6 September 1853; Great Cross of the Three Orders’ Strip, 8 January 1853
• Prussia: Knight of the Black Eagle; Great Cross of the Red Eagle; Grand Commander of the Order of the Royal House of Hohenzollern
• United Kingdom: Knight of the Garter, 23 February 1866
• Romania: Grand Cross of the Order of Carol I, 1906
• Russia: Knight of Saint Andrew, Knight of Saint Alexander Nevsky, Knight of the White Eagle, Knight of Saint Anne, First class
• San Marino: Grand Cross of San Marino
• Saxony: Knight of the Chrome of the Rue, 1844
• Saxony-Weimar-Eisenach: Great Cross of the White Hawk, 20 September 1854
• Serbia: Great Cross of the Takovo Cross
• Thailand: Knight of the Order of the Royal House of Chakri, 9 September 1897; Great Cross of the White Elephant
• Sweden-Norway: Knight of the Seraphim, 17 May 1852; Great Cross of San Olav, 13 July 1897
• Tuscany: Gran Cruz de San José; Order of Civil and Military Merit
• Venezuela: Collar of the Order of Freedom
• Wurttemberg: Wurttemberg Crown Cross, 1864

Ancestors

Cultural references

• The novel The Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad, narrates the protagonist's journey through the Congo River in times of Congo Free State created by Leopoldo II. The author thus has first-hand experiences on the atrocities committed against the native population in the Belgian colony. The movie Apocalypse NowFrancis Ford Coppola, partly based on this book, extrapolating the situation of Congo Belga to the Vietnam War.
• In 1907, the French writer Octave Mirbeau denounced the situation of the slaves working on the plantations of Leopoldo in the chapter 'The Red Rubber', his novel The 628-E8.
• The novel The dream of the Celtic, of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2010 Mario Vargas Llosa, is based on Roger Casement's life and mentions Casement's experience in the Congo's Free State as well as the proceeding of Leopoldo II.
• The satire written by American Mark Twain in 1899 entitled "The Soliloquie of King Leopoldo"where Leopoldo II is shown in a furious monologue defending his proceeding as "exemplary"but the monarch ends up cynically justifying the slavery and exploitation of the peoples of the Congo."on behalf of civilisation and progress".

Movies

• Le roi blanc, le caoutchouc rouge, la mort noire (The white king, the red rubber, the black death), documentary by Peter Bate, United Kingdom, 2003. View in Google videos [4] (in French). The documentary, broadcast by the television channel ARTE in 2006, was denounced by the Belgian government for being "a diatriba sentenciosa".
• Debate broadcast on 8 April 2004 by Belgian television RTBF, on the occasion of the release of the documentary [5]