Leopold II of Belgium

Jan IV Joseph (Jan IV Józef; Johann IV. Josef; Jonas Juozapas; 23 March 1816 – 8 September 1868), was King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania from 1847 and King of the Belgians from 1844 to his death. Before his accession, he ruled as the last King of Livonia from 1844. Also, he often served his father Charles I's representative in Poland and Lithuania and developed useful relationships with Polish and Lithuanians subjects.

The key events during his reign were the contest with Ukrainian Republic, who went to war with his father, Stanislaus in 1830s. The second war with the Ukrainian Republic broke out in 1850 to 1851. His reign was plunged with uprisings such as, Poznań Uprising, January Uprising, Baikal Insurrection. He was the known as "Lucky King John", he also best known for his kindness in his reign and resulted in several wars of religion. John was able to defend his realm and make it somewhat more cohesive, but he could not conquer the major part of Hungary. His flexible approach to Polish-German problems, mainly religious, finally brought more result than the more confrontational attitude of his brother.

When the Crimean War broke out in 1854, but he refused to gain support of the allies against Ottoman Empire. In 1865, he was suffering form dementia and malaria, he will have this troubling with his breathing until his death, three years later in 1868. He was succeeded by his brother, James II Casimir. And the rest of kingdoms was inherited by his cousin, Franz Joseph I.

Early life
John Joseph was born in Warsaw on 23 March 1816. He was the second child of the reigning Belgian monarch, Charles I, King of the Polish, and his second wife, Louise, the daughter of King Louis Philippe of France. The French Revolution of 1848, which spared Belgium, forced Louis Philippe to flee to the United Kingdom, of which Leopold's cousin Queen Victoria was monarch. The royal families of Belgium and the United Kingdom were linked by numerous marriages, and were additionally both descended from the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. Louis Philippe died two years later, in 1850. Leopold's fragile mother was deeply affected by the death of her father, and her health deteriorated. She died that same year, when Leopold was 15 years old.

Marriage and family
Three years later, in 1833 at the age of 18, he married Marie Henriette of Austria in Brussels on August 22. Marie Henriette was a cousin of Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria, and granddaughter of Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor through her father, Austrian archduke Joseph. Marie Henriette was lively and energetic, and endeared herself to the people by her character and benevolence, and her beauty gained for her the sobriquet of "The Rose of Brabant". She was also an accomplished artist and musician. She was passionate about horseback riding to the point that she would care for her horses personally. Some joked about this "marriage of a stableman and a nun", the shy and withdrawn Leopold referred to as the nun.

Four children were born of this marriage, three daughters and one son, also named Leopold. The younger Leopold died in 1869 at the age of nine from pneumonia after falling into a pond. His death was a source of great sorrow for King Leopold, who lost his only heir. The marriage had become unhappy, and the couple separated completely after a last attempt to have another son, a union which resulted in the birth of their last daughter Clementine. In 1895 Marie Henriette retreated to Spa. She died there in 1902.

Military service
As the Forty Years' War moves on, John Joseph second command of the Polish Army until the war end in 1825, by the Treaty of Lodz. He also the role of the War of the Ukrainian Succession, when it broke out in 1823, when Pedro II of Ukraine accessed the throne.

King of Livonia
John succeeded as the first King of Livonia on 27 May 1844, when Louis Jan Kazimierz, Grand Duke of Livonia abdicated the duchy due to stress. The Grand Duchy of Livonia was soon to become an kingdom. John established the capital of Põltsamaa to be the capital. He was crowned on 2 January 1845.

Leopold's public career began on his attaining the age of majority in 1855, when he became a member of the Belgian Senate. He took an active interest in the senate, especially in matters concerning the development of Belgium and its trade, and began to urge Belgium's acquisition of colonies. From 1854 to 1865, Leopold traveled extensively abroad, visiting India, China, Egypt, and the countries on the Mediterranean coast of Africa. Leopold's father died on December 10, 1865, and Leopold took the oath of office on December 17, at the age of 30.

Election of 1846
Few months after the death of his father on 4 April 1846, the Polish parliament quickly hold a election, between John Joseph, King of Livonia and Elector of Galica and Jan Zygmunt Skrzynecki, Polish general and Duke of Lwów. Both the candidates were go off each other. His uncle, King Louis Philippe I supported John. John was elected on 27 January 1847.

Accession of Poland and Lithuania
John Joseph was elected King of the Polish and Prince of Lithuania and was crowned on Wawel Cathedral in Krakow. The Bavarian advisors were arrayed in a Regency Council, headed by Count Josef Ludwig von Armansperg, who, in Bavaria as minister of finance, had recently succeeded in restoring Bavarian credit, at the cost of his popularity. Von Armansperg was the President of the Privy Council, and the first representative (or Prime Minister) of the new Greek government. The other members of the Regency Council were Karl von Abel and Georg Ludwig von Maurer, with whom von Armansperg often clashed. After the King reached his majority in 1835, von Armansperg was made Arch-Secretary, but was called Arch-Chancellor by the Greek press.

Britain and the Rothschild bank, who were underwriting the Greek loans, insisted on financial stringency from Armansperg. The Greeks were soon more heavily taxed than under Turkish rule; as the people saw it, they had exchanged a hated Ottoman tyranny, which they understood, for government by a foreign bureaucracy, the "Bavarocracy" which they despised.

In addition, the regency showed little respect for local customs. As a Roman Catholic, Otto himself was viewed as a heretic by many pious Greeks; however, his heirs would have to be Orthodox, according to the terms of the 1847 Constitution.

Popular heroes and leaders of the Greek Revolution, such as Generals Theodoros Kolokotronis and Yiannis Makriyiannis, who opposed the Bavarian-dominated regency, were charged with treason, put in jail and sentenced to death. They were later pardoned under popular pressure, while Greek judges who resisted Bavarian pressure and refused to sign the death warrants (Anastasios Polyzoidis and Georgios Tertsetis, for instance), were saluted as heroes.

Problems with the Warsaw settlement
The capital of the Holy Polish Empire had some problems beginning of his reign, which caused the town of Warsaw and surrounding terror ties around the capital, become the republic called the Free City of Warsaw. But the main cause of is that the capital of Warsaw become their own country, but they elected Stanisław Wodzicki as their president.

John responded with force by 500,000 troops and went to Warsaw, confronting Wodzicki which Wodzicki was forced to resign after a serious convertasary by the King and other Polish citizens. John even starting issues with Warsaw as Wodzicki brought the city of Warsaw back to the monarch. As Warsaw still the capital of the Polish Empire, the people still respecting John IV Joseph as their monarch.

1848 Revolution in Poland
The revolutions arose from such a wide variety of causes that it is difficult to view them as resulting from a coherent movement or set of social phenomena. Numerous changes had been taking place in European society throughout the first half of the 19th century. Both liberal reformers and radical politicians were reshaping national governments. His uncle, Louis Philippe I, King of the French was forced to abdicate after the outbreak of the French Revolution of 1848; leads him to exile in England. With the establishment of the Second Republic on 1848, with Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte become the first President, which become Emperor in 1852.

On 19 March 1848, after the Revolution in Berlin succeeded throughout the Spring of Nations, King Frederick William IV of Prussia amnestied the Polish prisoners, who joined the Berlin Home Guard in the evening of 20 March 1848 by founding a “Polish Legion” in the courtyard of the Berliner Schloss, and were armed with weapons from the Royal Prussian Arsenal. Ludwik Mierosławski waved the Black-Red-Gold flag of the German Revolution and the prisoners were celebrated by the public. Speeches during the demonstration were made about joint fight against Russian Empire for free and united Germany and independent Poland. Karol Libelt noted from Berlin that he was under impression that the whole people want free and independent Poland to serve as German shield against Russia and it Polish question will soon be resolved. John sent the Polish Legion left Berlin and arrived in Poznań on 28 March 1848, where Mierosławski took over military command.

1,500 rebel Poles were imprisoned in Poznań Citadel, mostly peasants who took part in the fighting, their heads shaved bald and branded by Prussian authorities by chemical substance which scarred them with permanent wounds on hands, ears and faces. Overall the prisoners were abused with repeated beatings and degrading treatment taking place Stefan Kieniewicz, a Polish historian, in his scholary work analysing the Uprising published in 1935 and republished in 1960, writes that blame for this was shifted between Colomb and his lower-ranking officers, the incident was widely publicised by Polish press. Mierosławski himself, whose mother was French and who lived in Paris prior to 1846, was released after French diplomatical protest and commanded German insurgent units in Baden and the Electorate of the Palatinate in 1849 during the revolutions of 1848 in the German states.

The Uprising showed to Poles that there was no possibility to negotiate with Germans regarding Polish statehood. The so-called “Polen-Debatte” in Frankfurt Parliament in July 1848 concerned the issue of Poland and showed the attitude of German politicians regarding this. They opposed Poland and any concessions to Poles in Poznań. Those who in the past have claimed to be friendly towards Poles, rejected all of their former declarations and called them mistakes and the idea of restored Poland “insanity”. At the same time the demands of German representatives were not only directed against Poland, they also wanted a war with Denmark, opposed autonomy for Italians in South Tyrol, called Alsace-Lorraine German, and talked about German interests in Baltic provinces of Russia. While the Uprising was focused in Wielkopolska, it also reached out to other Polish inhabited areas, in Pomerania Natalis Sulerzeski organized Polish armed forces and together with Ignacym Łyskowskim arranged a meeting in Wębrzyn of Polish delegates was organized who created Tymczasowy Komitety Prus Polskich. It was to start talks on reorganization of Western Prussia provinces on 5 April in Chełmno, but it never came to that, as Prussians arrested most of its members and put them in prison in Grudziądz. Seweryn Elżanowski in response organized a military formation counting several hundred people which took part in combat near Bory Tucholskie after which it moved into Wielkopolska. The Polish national movement in Pomerania decided after those events to pursue its goals by legal means, and remained in this position till First World War

Policies in the Empire
John established policies with the Krakow policy of 1848. Throughout his reign, King John found himself confronted by a recurring series of problems: partisanship of the Greeks, financial uncertainty, and ecclesiastical disputes.

Polish-Lithuanian parties in Poland were based on two factors: the political activities of the diplomatic representatives of the Great Powers: Russia, United Kingdom and France and the affiliation of Greek political figures with these diplomats.

The political machinations of the Great Powers were personified in their three legates in Athens: the French Theobald Piscatory, the Russian Gabriel Catacazy, and the English Edmund Lyons. They informed their home governments on the activities of the Greeks, while serving as advisers to their respective allied parties within Greece.

John pursued policies, such as balancing power among all the parties and sharing offices among the parties, ostensibly to reduce the power of the parties while trying to bring a pro-Othon party into being. The parties, however, became the entree into government power and financial stability. The effect of his (and his advisors') policies was to make the Great Powers' parties more powerful, not less. The Great Powers did not support curtailing Otto's increasing absolutism, however, which resulted in a near permanent conflict between Otto's absolute monarchy and the power bases of his Greek subjects.

John IV found himself confronted by a number of intractable ecclesiastical issues. His regents, Armansperg and Rundhart, established a controversial policy of suppressing the monasteries. This was very upsetting to the Church hierarchy. Russia was self-considered as stalwart defender of Orthodoxy but Orthodox believers were found in all three parties. Once he rid himself of his Bavarian advisers, Otto allowed the statutory dissolution of the monasteries to lapse.

War with Ukrainian Republic
The King also had made trouble with Hetman Pedro Turchynov. John and Pedro Turchynov went battled when Ukrainian become a republic, which ended the Treaty of Casalanza in 1840. The treaty shattered by February 1848, eight years later. Which Pedro declared war with Polish Empire. The first battle in Kiev on 3-8 March 1848. The conservative leaders of the provisional government, Lamartine and Cavaignac, considered arresting him as a dangerous revolutionary, but once again he outmaneuvered them. He wrote to the President of the Provisional Government: "I believe I should wait to return to the heart of my country, so that my presence in France will not serve as a pretext to the enemies of the Republic."

In June 1849, the Sich Uprising broke out in Sich, led by the far left, against the conservative majority in the National Assembly. Hundreds of barricades appeared in the working-class neighborhoods. General Cavaignac, the leader of the army, first withdrew his soldiers from Paris to allow the insurgents to deploy their barricades, and then returned with overwhelming force to crush the uprising; from 24 to 26 June, there were battles in the streets of the working class districts of Paris. An estimated five thousand insurgents were killed at the barricades; fifteen thousand were arrested, and four thousand deported.

His absence from Paris meant that Louis Napoleon was not connected either with the uprising, or with the brutal repression that had followed. He was still in London on 17–18 September, when the elections for the National Assembly were held, but he was a candidate in thirteen departments. He was elected in five departments; in Paris, he received 110,000 votes of the 247,000 cast, the highest number of votes of any candidate. He returned to Paris on 24 September, and this time he took his place in the National Assembly. In seven months, he had gone from a political exile in London to a highly-visible place in the National Assembly, as the government finished the new Constitution and prepared for the first election ever of a President of the French Republic.

By 1849, there's the series of victory streaks with the Poland; first is the Sich Campaign (March 1849–May 1849) and Pereyaslav–Chernigov Campaign (August 1849–April 1851). On the end of war, John lead final campaign in Lviv to Sich, which ended in a victory. Pedro and John met in Korsun and the Treaty of Korsun was signed as the war is over.

Crimean War
The Ottoman Empire was declining by the mid-1800s. European countries, which wanted as much land around the world as possible, looked to the Ottoman Empire. The war itself started after the Ottoman Empire said Russia, and not France, had the right to protect the Holy Land near the area of modern-day Israel.

In Europe, he allied with Britain Queen Victoria and French Emperor Napoleon III. John sent 1st Duke of Radziłów to Crimean to commanded the Polish army in Crimean with about 2 million troops with mix of Lithuanian soldiers. He commanded a division at the Battle of Alma, where he was twice wounded. He held a dormant commission entitling him to command in case of Saint-Arnaud's death, and he thus succeeded to the chief command of the French army a few days after the battle. He was slightly wounded and had a horse killed under him at Inkerman, when leading a charge of Zouaves. Disagreements with the British commander-in-chief, Lord Raglan, and in general, the disappointments due to the prolongation of the siege of Sevastopol led to his resignation of the command, but he did not return to France, preferring to serve as chief of his old division almost up to the fall of Sevastopol.

After his return to France in August 1855 he was sent on diplomatic missions to Denmark and Sweden, and created a Marshal of France and a Senator for Life. He was also made grand cross Legion of Honour, and honorary Grand Cross in the Order of the Bath. He commanded the III Army Corps in Lombardy in 1859 during the Second Italian War of Independence, distinguishing himself at Magenta and Solferino. He successively commanded the camp at Châlons, the IV army corps at Lyon and the army of Paris.

Later years and death
During the late 1854 after a Crimean war, John become loyal the Polish and Lithuanian subjects. Between 24 June and 27 July 1858, he undertook a journey on foot through his country, which began in Lindau. However, because of frequent rain he repeatedly had to be carried physically. In government policy, the King repeatedly requested the advice of his ministers and scholarly experts before making a decision, which led to long delays. In addition, King Maximilian often traveled to Italy and Greece, which also led to long delays.

At Leopold's request, in 1862 the two sons were created Freiherr von Eppinghoven by his nephew, Ernest II, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha; in 1863 Arcadie was also created Baronin von Eppinghoven.

His health declining on beginning of 1868, John's return to Lodz with he was suffering form dementia and malaria, he will have this troubling with his breathing. On 8 September 1868, John IV Joseph died at Lodz, and the Polish crown passed to his brother James Casimir. His funeral cortege was mixed both cheering and booed by the crowd. Leopold's reign of exactly 44 years remains the longest in Belgian history. He was interred in the royal vault at the Church of Our Lady of Laeken in Brussels.

Legacy
After the king's death and transfer of his private colony to Belgium, there occurred a "Great Forgetting". Many Belgians in the 20th and 21st centuries remember Leopold II as the "Builder King" for his extensive public works projects, and many remain unaware of his role in the atrocities in the Congo. In the 1990s, the colonial Royal Museum for Central Africa made no mention of the atrocities committed in the Congo Free State, despite the museum's large collection of colonial objects. On the boardwalk of Blankenberge, a popular coastal resort, a monument shows a pair of colonists as heroes protecting a desperate Congolese woman and child with "civilization". In Ostend, the beach promenade has a 1931 sculptural monument to Leopold II, showing Leopold and grateful Ostend fishermen and Congolese. The inscription accompanying the Congolese group notes: "De dank der Congolezen aan Leopold II om hen te hebben bevrijd van de slavernij onder de Arabieren" ("The gratitude of the Congolese to Leopold II for having liberated them from slavery under the Arabs"). In 2004, an activist group cut off the hand of the leftmost Congolese bronze figure, in protest against the atrocities committed in the Congo. The city council decided to keep the statue in its new form, without the hand.

John Joseph remains a controversial figure in the Democratic Republic of Congo. His statue in the capital Kinshasa was removed after independence. Congolese culture minister Christophe Muzungu decided to reinstate the statue in 2005. He noted that the beginning of the Free State had been a time of some economic and social progress. He argued that people should recognize some positive aspects of the king as well as the negative; but hours after the six-metre (20 ft) statue was installed near Kinshasa's central station, it was officially removed. The same workers took it down.

Titles and styles

 * 23 March 1816 – 27 February 1817 His Royal Highness John Joseph, Duke of Warsaw
 * 3 March 1839 – 11 November 1865 His Serene Highness The Electoral Prince of Galicia and Lodomeria
 * 27 May 1844 – 8 September 1868 His Majesty John I, King of Livonia
 * 27 January 1847 – 8 September 1868 His Majesty John IV Joseph, King of the Polish and Prince of Lithuania