On April 9, 1835, King Leopold II of Belgium was born in Brussels, the capital of Belgium. He was the second but eldest surviving son of Leopold I and Louise of Orléans, succeeding his father to the Belgian throne in 1865 and reigned for 44 years until his death in 1909, making him the longest-reigning king of the Belgians.
King Leopold I , whose first wife was Princess Charlotte, who died while giving birth in 1817, was the younger brother of Victoria, Duchess of Kent, Queen Victoria's mother. As such, Leopold II was the first cousin both of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.
Domestically, Leopold was hailed as Belgium's "King Builder" for the extensive building and urban projects and public works implemented during his reign. These activities were largely funded by the money from the exploitation of natural resources and the people of the Congo.
However, Leopold earned notoriety and was much loathed at the later part of his life for his brutality and abuses in what is now the African state of Congo, which he ruled as his own fiefdom from 1885 to 1908.
In 1885, as European nations scrambled to partition Africa Leopold "promised a humanitarian and philanthropic mission that would improve the lives of Africans." As such, he managed to obtain the Congo as his personal property, which he renamed as the Congo Free State. The opposite occurred and his regime considerably enriched him at the expense of the Congolese population.
His abuses were later exposed and after strong foreign pressures, the Belgian government took over the African colony in 1908. He was an unmourned king when he died a year later, on December 17, 1909.
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