Leopold II of Belgium

Leopold II (9 April 1835 – 17 December 1909) was the second king of the Belgians from 1865 to 1909, and the founder and sole owner of the Congo Free State from 1885 to 1908.

Born in Brussels as the second but eldest-surviving son of King Leopold I and Queen Louise, Leopold succeeded his father to the Belgian throne in 1865 and reigned for 44 years until his death, the longest reign of a Belgian monarch to date. He died without surviving legitimate sons; the current king of the Belgians, Philippe, descends from his nephew and successor, Albert I. He is popularly referred to as the Builder King in Belgium in reference to the great number of buildings, urban projects and public works he commissioned.

Leopold was the founder and sole owner of the Congo Free State, a private colonial project undertaken on his own behalf as a personal union with Belgium. He used Henry Morton Stanley to help him lay claim to the Congo, the present-day Democratic Republic of the Congo. At the Berlin Conference of 1884–1885, the colonial nations of Europe authorised his claim and committed the Congo Free State to him. Leopold ran the Congo, which he never personally visited, by using the mercenary Force Publique for his personal gain. He extracted a fortune from the territory, initially by the collection of ivory and, after a rise in the price of rubber in the 1890s, by forced labour from the native population to harvest and process rubber.

Leopold's administration was characterised by systematic brutality and atrocities in the Congo Free State, including forced labour, torture, murder, kidnapping, and the amputation of the hands of men, women, and children when the quota of rubber was not met. In one of the first uses of the term, George Washington Williams described the practices of Leopold's administration of the Congo Free State as "crimes against humanity" in 1890.

While it has proven difficult to accurately estimate the pre-colonial population and the extent to which it changed under the Congo Free State, estimates for the Congolese population decline during Leopold's rule range from 1 million to 15 million. The causes of the decline included epidemic disease, a reduced birth rate, and violence and famine caused by the regime. He was widely condemned because of his brutal and oppressive regime in the Congo that resulted in widespread suffering and loss of life including exploitation, violence, and immense human rights abuses, particularly involving the rubber trade.

Leopold was born in Brussels on 9 April 1835, the second child of the reigning Belgian monarch, Leopold I, and of his second wife, Louise, the daughter of King Louis Philippe of France. His eldest brother, Louis Philippe, Crown Prince of Belgium, died in infancy in 1834. As heir apparent, Leopold was granted the title of Duke of Brabant in 1840. The French Revolution of 1848 forced his maternal grandfather, Louis Philippe, to flee to the United Kingdom. Louis Philippe died two years later, in 1850. Leopold's fragile mother was deeply affected by the death of her father and her health deteriorated. She died of tuberculosis the same year, when Leopold was 15 years old.

Leopold's sister Charlotte became Empress Carlota of Mexico in 1864. The British monarch at the time, Queen Victoria, was Leopold II's first cousin, as was Victoria's husband, Prince Albert, since Leopold's father, Albert's father, Duke Ernest I of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, and Victoria's mother, the then Duchess of Kent, were all siblings. As a young man, Leopold II served in the Belgian military and achieved the rank of lieutenant-general. He also served in the Belgian Senate during this time.

At the age of 18, Leopold married Marie Henriette of Austria, a cousin of Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria and granddaughter of the late Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II, on 22 August 1853 in Brussels. Lively and energetic, Marie Henriette endeared herself to the people by her character and benevolence. Her beauty earned her the sobriquet "The Rose of Brabant". She was also an accomplished artist and musician. She was passionate about horse riding, to the point that she would care for her horses personally. Some joked about this "marriage of a stableman and a nun", the latter referring to the shy and withdrawn Leopold. The marriage produced four children: three daughters and one son, Prince Leopold, Duke of Brabant. The younger Leopold died in 1869 at the age of nine from pneumonia after falling into a pond. His death was a source of great sorrow for King Leopold. The marriage became unhappy, and the couple separated after a last attempt to have another son, a union that resulted in the birth of their last daughter, Clementine. Marie Henriette retreated to Spa in 1895, and died there in 1902.