Start 1861: I Just Inherited the Dutch Throne

In his speech to the Belgian Parliament on April 5 last year, former Belgian Prime Minister Orbon gave a high score of 85 for the overall performance of his cabinet team.

However, this self-evaluation aroused doubts from the opposition Catholic party Merant, and the two sides started a war of words.

Even in this Belgian local election and prime ministerial election, there was no shortage of people from the opposition parties taking this opportunity to express their dissatisfaction.

Especially the recent scandal concerning the Alban family has made the Catholic Party pursue the victory with all its firepower, leaving Alban without a chance to deny the truth.

With Orbán's resignation, Leopold I directly became prime minister, ignoring the Catholic and Liberal parties' demands for early national elections.

Leopold I believed that the date of the general election could not be decided by the two parties alone, and that the royal king had the final say.

As a result, the original dispute between the two parties turned into a disagreement between the two parties and the royal family on this issue, and they refused to give in to each other.

In the past half month or so, when the two parties have been at war with each other, professional departments of the government and civil society organizations have actually given early warning. However, from the cabinet government and local government of the Kingdom of Belgium, from the ruling and opposition parties to the general public, Pay special attention to this warning.

It wasn't until heavy rainfall caused flooding in low-lying areas in the northern part of the southern part of the Kingdom of Belgium, and due to poor water conservancy in the south, flooding in all directions from north to south, east and west across the country, that everyone became alert to the seriousness of the situation.

But it was too late, because the floods surged on December 18, 1861, and nearly half of Belgium's provinces became victims of floods. Only through the quality and newspaper information transmission did everyone realize that the Kingdom of Belgium had become the country with the worst flood disasters in Europe.

The first wave of floods in the Flanders region in the north had not yet been eliminated, and heavy rains began to fall in most parts of the Walloon region in the south, triggering a second wave of floods in early December 1861.

The disaster area ranged from Hainaut Province in the Walloon Region eastward to Liège Province. The disaster-stricken areas did not gradually improve until February 5, 1862, as rainfall decreased.

In the past, there were heavy rains at this time every year, but this year the situation is obviously different from the past, and the rainfall is more than 20% higher than before.

According to news reports, as of the end of January this year, the floods had killed 2,300 people, left 600 people missing, and affected more than 200,000 victims, 15,000 of whom have returned to their homes to rebuild.

"Is it a natural disaster or a man-made disaster?"

On April 19, an article in the "Standard" directly criticized the Belgian cabinet authorities' ineffective disaster relief and negligence on the front page.

As other newspapers followed suit, almost all influential newspapers in Belgium, including those in Flanders and Wallonia, stood on a united front and aimed their guns at the organization formed by former Prime Minister Orbon. Cabinet members, with Alban's resignation, vaguely pointed the finger at Leopold I, who now accepted the leadership of the cabinet.

April 20, 1862, this day is destined to become a chapter that may be recorded in European history textbooks.

Paris, the capital of the French Empire, is holding a four-nation meeting of two established European powers, a medium country, and an emerging power. The content they discuss is enough to change the development process of Europe and will have an incalculable impact on other countries not participating in the meeting.

If the negotiation is completed, then other European countries can continue to develop the current situation. If the negotiation fails, then Europe will be shaken. The Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Italy prepared by the UK will be the three countries of France and the Netherlands that have no choice but to Opponents faced. From now on, life in the Three Kingdoms will not be so easy.

However, this meeting is destined to be unstable, and incidents that steal their focus occur frequently.

The alliance between the Netherlands and Switzerland on the 17th caused a shock in Europe. This has already made people wonder. Before the four-party meeting, the King of the Netherlands could only sit on the edge of the table. With the alliance between the Netherlands and Sweden, he increased his weight and actually sat firmly on the four-party table. occupies one side, making Tolbeck, the Prime Minister of the Netherlands, on an equal footing with the Prime Ministers of other countries.

This can be known from the fact that the French reception has already given Tolbeck a welcome ceremony according to Bismarck's specifications.

This meeting started on the morning of the 20th and did not stop until noon. The main negotiation matter this morning was the confrontation between the Transvaal Republic and the Orange Free State in South Africa and the British army. After a morning of negotiations , but there is no compromise.

Just as they were preparing to continue negotiations in the afternoon after taking a break, news came from Belgium in the north that shocked all parties.

The emergence of this news broke the atmosphere of the talks and made several leaders of the talks furious.

"Leopold I was shot to death?"

On April 20, 1862, Leopold I, the founding king of Belgium and uncle of Queen Victoria, during a public visit to people who had suffered from floods in Brussels, was actually taken out by a man who had suffered heavy losses due to the floods. The revolver hidden in his body shot him in the head, and the founding king of Belgium fell.

He did many things that had a great impact on later generations during his lifetime, including the establishment of the Kingdom of Belgium and helping to build the first railway in Europe from Brussels to Mechelen, which was opened to traffic in 1835.

In 1840 he arranged the marriage of his niece, Queen Victoria, and his nephew, Prince Albert. In 1842 he gave a speech on labor laws for the control of women and children.

He died unexpectedly at the age of 72.

As the news spread, it spread from Belgium to the entire continent and both sides of the Atlantic. Queen Victoria was furious, and other countries condemned the perpetrator's atrocities and criticized his crimes everywhere.

Unfortunately, after the man shot Leopold I, he directly committed suicide by swallowing the gun.

In the end, the Belgian royal family had no choice but to be angry and took the body back to prepare for future generations.

However, before that, the Belgian Parliament officially approved the appointment draft, with Crown Prince Leopold as the new king, called Leopold II, and took over the cabinet.

As a result, conspiracy theories began to spread in Belgium again, and the news that Leopold II was the murderer of his father could not be suppressed.

At this time, a large number of people in the Flemish region of Belgium began to be dissatisfied with the implementation of the disaster relief work. So on 21, 1862, almost all the northern provinces asked the cabinet to punish those who failed to provide disaster relief, and also asked the cabinet to spend 10 million pounds. financial resources to support the people affected by the disaster.

Is this okay?

The singing bird catches the worm.

The southern provinces of Wallonia were naturally not to be outdone, so they also asked the cabinet in Brussels to provide more than 20 million pounds because the disaster was wider than seen in the north.

In recent years, Belgium's fiscal surplus has just happened, but it is just right. How can there be so much financial support, so the Ministry of Finance is naturally poor.

Although Leopold II had learned how to govern the country from Leopold I before, how could he understand the principle of not being in his position.

So after becoming the king, he discovered the difficulties of the king and the difficulty of finance, so he acquiesced to the Ministry of Finance's move to cry for poverty.

On April 25, 1862, without seeing even a penny, people in the two places began to cause trouble. Finally, on April 28, the talks in Paris were extended again and again because they could not reach an agreement.

At a time when Leopold II had not yet fully grasped the military and political power of Belgium.

In the Wallonia and Flanders regions, demonstrations broke out at the same time by a small group of people demanding to break away from the unscrupulous rule of Brussels, to establish their own country, or to join the Netherlands or France. The slogan was just four simple words: self-reliance, self-help!

third chapter