Status Updates From Leopold I: de eerste koning...

End of the epilogue - the last year's, death, and burial of Leopold. The last complex because he died protestant in a majority Catholic state & the clergy involved were not ecuemenically minded necessitating some rapid building work to allow a protestant service in the king's chapel and burial in the royal vault.

The surgeon Henry Thompson attends Leopold to operate to remove suspected bladder stones - he is so awed to be working on a king that he barely sleeps an hour and a half the night before the operation.

End of chapter 14. Mini portraits of Leopold's children. The future Leopold II was alas very strange. Prince Philip was extremely stupid and spent most of his time smoking, though after his father's death he took up reading as well as cigars. The daughter Charlotte married an Austrian archduke who was made emperor of mexico by the French for 2 years who then went home. The Austrian was shot. Charlotte went mad.

End of chapter 13. The end of the book draws near. Silver jubilee of Leopold's reign and several political crises. Leopold is aging, sickly, & increasingly irritable.

Leopold at a royal event in Ghent in 1856 declared in Frenchthat he loved the Flemish language just as he loved the Flemish people and that he read and wrote in Flemish.

I can't help thinking that the medium contradicted the message.

End of chapter 12. Crimean war and war in north italy.

Queen Victoria was inclined to think that Napoleon III did not read much, not even the dispatches from his ambassadors.

End chapter 11. Aftermath of 1848 revolutions. Rise of Napoleon III.

End of chapter 10. Revultions of 1848 . Perceptions of Albert in Britain. Napoleon III. The constitutional monarchy of the Coburgs as the golden mean between red republicanism and autocratic despotism.

Albert devises a model constitution for a united Germany - somewhat federal and incorporating the princes in a second chamber. Naturally it was not adopted.

British critisms of Prince Albert as too German and corrupting influence on British political life. Author Augusta this in part due to Albert's death and texts about him appearing during the process of German unification and so reflect new british anxieties.

Leopold sees Napoleon III & Napoleon I as lacking theory or ideology to legitimate their regimes. But plebiscite as an expression of popular will, the leader as incarnation of the people and removal of syructures between the leafr and the people. Bonapartism=Caesarism=illiberal democracy

Finally end of chapter 9. Broadly about constitutional monarchy. A lot about the role of Albert in GB and Queen Victoria's relationship with government. I was left confused by the section about Leopold and his governments he had several Liberal administrations even though he thoujt the liberals were under Dutch influence but on the other hand he found the conservative Catholics annoying...

Leopold as fan and promoter of railways. Introduction of the Belgian pound and stamps the latter marked as 'belgique'only after 1869 until then they just had the king's head and an ornamental letter L. The author wonders if the King was better known than his country internationally.

Leopold was the only European rule to have his own newspaper as from 1831 it was called, reasonably enough, 'l'independant'.

Discusses reinvention of monarchy. Follows David Canadine in seeing Queen Victoria as the last of he Hanoverians rather than devising a new kind of monarchy, but deverges from him in seeing the non-political 'family'monarch as coming from the German tradition in the smaller princely states- therefore Leopold (& Albert) more important than Victoria in creation of the Victorian monarchy.

End chapter 8. Mostly aboutV&A eventually about Leopold starting a tradition of having a royal mistress & illegitimate children. The foreign press make fun. All the whole his wife is depressed from the death of her brother. The deposition of her father in 1848 probably doesn't cheer her up either. She does. Eventually the mistress returns from exile .

1845. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert together with uncle Leopold travel to schloss Rosenau - the family seat of the saxe-coburgs as a family outing they travel part of the way by train pausing to meet the King of Prussia and join the celebrations for Betthoven's 75th birthday in Bonn.

It is a myth, the author explains, that Albert introduced the Christmas tree from Germany to Britain. In fact it was Queen Caroline the wife of George III, but Albert may have helped popularise it beyond the royal family.

GB parliament offers Albert £30,000 a year, 20 years earlier Leopold had been offered £50,000 a year for the same role as Prince Consort - deflation!

Author thinks that aleopold functioned as a surrogate father to both his niece Victoria and his nephew (& her future husband) Albert.

End of chapter 7 which focused on the relationship between Leopold and his niece Queen Victoria round the time that she became queen.
No discussion of his relationship with her mother (also named Victoria) who was his older sister.
At this time a nephew married the queen of Portugal - So these Saxe-Coburgs are really spreading themselves around.

Queen Victoria writing to her uncle Leopold estimated that at her first official reception that her hand was kissed almost three thousand times.

Leopold writing to his niece - queen Victoria (GB) advises her In her free time to study - particularly history as the most important source of knowledge about people - he recommends particular books & time periods. Leopold himself the author contends was shaped by the French revolution and it's aftermath.

End of chapter 6.
Leopold married the daughter of king Louis-Philippe of France. In his eagerness to produce offspring he forbids his wife to ride horses, this is a successful strategy and they soon having a growing family.

End of chapter 5. Leopold becomes king of Belgium on the 21st of July 1831.

Good Networking helped - he had known Talleyrand since 1808!

End of chapter 4 in which Leopold after twists and turns does not become the first king of Greece.