KING LEOPOLD DEAD.

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 13609, 18 December 1909, Page 9

KING LEOPOLD DEAD.

A SUDDEN END

United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright (Received December 17th, 9.25 p.m-) BRUSSELS, December 17. King Leopold died at half-past two this morning.

His end was ncaceful. He suddenly

said to the doctor in attendance', "I a m choking." Morphia was injected, but the King died almost immediately.

The cause of death was embolism, or obstruction of an artery or other bloodvessel by a clot of blood. Prince Albert, his successor, arrived shortly afterwards, and reverently kissed the dead monarch.

Leopold 11., King of the Belgians, was born in iB3o, and. succeeded »f*» father, Leopold 1., in 1860. His father, Priuce Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, was chosen hereditary king in IS3I, of the newly-formed monarchy, which'had the year before proclaimed its independence of the Netherlands-* to which it had been joined in leilo. Leopold 11. was the grandson of Louis Philippe, through Ins mother, and ais father was tiret cousin to the late Queen Victoria, with whom he was always on terms of cordial intimacy, in the year 1853 Leopold 11. married Princess" Marie Henrietta, daughter of the late Austrian Archduke Joseph, and leaves no Mm to succeed him, but three daughters :—(1) Princess Louise, married to Prince Philip of Saxe-Coburg-Goth'a in 1875, the marriage being dissolved in 1906; (2) Princess Stephanie, who married, first, the unfortunate Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria, who shot himself in 1887, and secondly, Count Lonyay, when she gave up the Imperial and Royal rank; tf) Princess Clementine, born in 1872, who is unmarried. King Leopold was a man of considerable physical and mental activity. His character was strong and masterful. He was a good linguist, and fond of science and out-door life. That he was a first-class business man is proved by his Congo operations. It is in connection with these that/ he is best known to the English-speaking world. The Congo was handed over to him to administer by tho Berlin Congress of 1865. "The world applauded his magnanimity/ say 6 the Brussels correspondenfof the "Daily Express," "and forgot the Congo for the next twenty years." In 1891 he applied to the Belgian Parliament for a loan of a million pounds without interest to be spent on tho Congo, producing at the same time tho celebrated will by which ho bequeathed the State to the Belgian people. The Government readily granted tho loan, and this, with his private fortune, laid the foundation of the system that lias been so fiercely, attacked in England. It is impossible to doubt King Leopold's guilt in connection with the Conao atrocities. "The crime i 3 the crime of one brain only—tho astute perverse brain of King Leopold, who lias to bear the guilt of this terrible transaction," said Sir Arthur Conan Doyle recently. "His agents have become demoralised and brutalised. England has stood by without using her treaty rights, seeing slavery reinstated." The correspondent quoted above makes the same charge:—"Never before in the history of the world has one man devised a system of brigandage 60 vast and so ingenious in its conception; so daring, and so unscrupulous in its operation as that by which King Leopold has drawn hi&i fabulous wealth from tho tortured Congolese. Behind every act that was committed in tho unhappy 'Free' State lay the cold, scheming brain of the King. His was the mind that planned tho great crime. His the hands that carried it out. On him must be laid all the guilt, for tho officials of the Congo were his puppets, and it was ho who dovised the system which mode tho iniquities possible." How much the King got out of the Congo is not known, but it has been estimated that it cannot have been less than £10,000,000 before the Belgian Government annexed the State and paid him £2,000,000 for his private territory. Tliere is this to bo said for King Leopold. He did not use all his money for his own pleasure. Much of it went towards tho beautifioation of his capital and for various publio purposes. He presented all his real estate to the nation for perks and open spaces. In tho early part of his reign King Leopold was popular, but in later years the irregularities of his life, his treatment of his wife and his daughters, and his Congo system, alienated the affections of his people. The heir to the t3m>«e i.v the lain King's nephowj Prince Albert of Flanders, born April Bth, 1875; married, October 2nd, 1900, to Princess Elisabeth of Bavaria.