Leopold I of Belgium

Biography

Leopold was born on 16 December 1790, the youngest son of Francis, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld. After French troops overran Saxe-Coburg he took a commission in the Imperial Russian Army and fought against Napoleon. Following Napoleon's defeat he settled in Britain, where in 1816 he married Princess Charlotte of Wales, heir to the British throne; she died in childbirth the next year.

He remained an influential figure in Britain and acted as a mentor to his niece, the future Queen Victoria, helping to arrange her marriage to his nephew Prince Albert. In 1830 he was offered the throne of the new Greek state under the London Protocol but declined it as too insecure.

After Belgium broke away from the Netherlands, its leaders chose Leopold as a British-backed candidate without ties to France, and he took the oath as the first King of the Belgians on 21 July 1831. In 1832 he married Louise of Orléans. His reign saw Dutch attempts to regain Belgium, which ended with the 1839 Treaty of London, and rivalry between Liberals and Catholics at home.

Leopold supported economic modernisation, including Belgium's first railway in 1835, and used gaps in the constitution to widen the monarch's role. He helped keep the revolutions of 1848 from spreading to Belgium. He died on 10 December 1865 and was succeeded by his son Leopold II.