military scientist Belgium king
Ethnicity:
His father was Prince Philip of Saxe - Coburg, brother of King Leopold II of Belgium; his mother came from the Catholic branch of the German Hohenzollern dynasty.
ALBERT I (Belgium, King), was born in Brussels, April 8, 1875. His father was Prince Philip of Saxe - Coburg, brother of King Leopold II of Belgium; his mother came from the Catholic branch of the German Hohenzollern dynasty.
Albert I received the military education considered appropriate for a future European monarch, entering the army as a lieutenant in 1892, rising to colonel in 1901 and lieutenant general in 1907.
In December 1909, the old king died and Albert at the age of thirty-four took the crown.
The darkening international scene soon intruded. In a visit to Emperor Wilhelm II (q.v.) in late 1913, Albert heard his royal cousin speak about a coming war with France. That same year, the Belgian government of Baron de Broqueville (q.v.) met news of German military expansion by instituting general military training. This was a sharp turn from Belgian tradition, which relied on the protection offered her neutrality by international treaties dating from 1839.
The Brussels government rejected the British and French approaches to aid Belgium in the event of war as infringements on its neutral status. But the army, still small and poorly trained, tried to develop plans to guard the country against invasion. Ambitiously it hoped to meet an invasion either from Germany or from Belgium's western neighbors.
On the evening of August 2, 1914, the Belgian government received Germany's ultimatum demanding free passage for the German army through the small neutral nation. Albert made a personal and unsuccessful appeal to Kaiser Wilhelm II on August 3. On August 4, the enemy struck, an event followed by Belgian pleas for aid from France and Great Britain.
Albert's dramatic speech of August 4 to both houses of the Belgian Parliament set the framework for the nation's role in World War I. The small country would fight to the limit to defend its territory. Talk that had circulated within the Belgian cabinet of offering only token resistance - or of defending only those parts of the country actually invaded - faded away. Moreover, the king stepped forward to lead the military effort. The constitution named him military commander in chief upon the outbreak of war. Albert indeed directed Belgian strategy. He barred his generals from following the repulse of the Germans at Liège (August 5) with an ill-conceived counterattack. More important, in the face of Anglo- French objections, he withdrew the Belgian army to the relative security of the port of Antwerp on August 20, although he mounted several sorties from that base to help the other nations facing the German onslaught. In early October, with the Germans
Mounting full-scale assaults against the port, whose prewar fortification program had never been completed, Albert ordered his army westward. Again he brushed aside offered requests from the Entente: General Joffre (q.v.), the French commander, wanted the Belgians to retreat southward to link up with the Allied armies racing toward the North Sea. Albert instead led his own heroic effort: a defensive stand on the Yser (October 13-30).
Much of Albert's wartime policy was foreshadowed in these early months of the conflict. He intended to command himself, would not bend to the strategic designs of France and Britain, and intended to protect his army's identity as an independent military force and to maintain it on Belgian soil. Such an approach did not make him an easy comrade in arms. Neither did his political policies endear him to the Entente.
The king opposed British and French attempts to treat him as an ally. Rather, he wished to preserve Belgium's status as an innocent country, forced into the war and fighting merely to retain its territorial integrity. In April 1915, he cautioned members of the Belgian government against wavering from this stance. The king specifically opposed the growing trend among Belgium's political leaders to look to postwar territorial acquisitions and to jettison Belgium's traditional neutrality.
In practice, Albert's view of the war meant welcoming German peace feelers in the winter of 1915 - 1916. By late 1916, the monarch and his cabinet were in open disagreement; Albert doubted prospects for a clear-cut Allied victory and urged Belgian politicians to work for a compromise peace.
According to Jonathan Helmreich, ministers used the word treason in commenting on the royal position. Albert opposed Belgian participation in Allied offensive operations for most of the war. He rejected Allied overtures to put his army under Field Marshal Haig {q.v.) in order to support the British offensive at Ypres in 1917. In Albert's view, the proposed Allied attacks would wreak havoc in Belgium; moreover, the total defeat of Germany was a British and French goal, and Belgium should not pay the price for such an outcome to the war.
Opposing viewpoints in his own government gained strength. In January 1918, Charles de Broqueville was forced to abandon his brief tenure as foreign minister; this was his penalty for supporting the king's hopes for a compromise peace with Germany. By May he had to give up the premiership as well. The new tone was set by such leaders as Paul Hymans {q.v.), who became foreign minister in January 1918. As the war reached its final crescendo, even Albert relented and permitted the use of Belgian forces in large-scale attacks. Generalissimo Foch {q.v.) adroity made Albert the commander of the Flanders Army Group in the fall of 1918. This force consisted of the Belgian army, along with French and British contingents. Under Albert's command, it thrust toward Nieuport in late September as part of Foch's series of hammer blows against the crumbling German battle front.
Albert led his army through the final weeks of the war. His immediate reward was a triumphal entry into Brussels on November 22, 1918. There his first peacetime speech to the Belgian Parliament called for sweeping reform: equal voting rights for all citizens, equal rights for all language groups, and, as a sign of how far Albert had shifted his view of Belgium's future in European affairs, an end to Belgian neutrality.
The king traveled widely in the postwar years. The crowds in the United States that hailed him in 1919 could hardly have been aware of the complex and often obstructive role he had played in the war effort. Seeing Belgium's interests imperiled, not only by invasion but also by liberation, not only by a German victory but by an unlimited Allied victory as well, Albert had walked the twisted and difficult road of a neutral at war.
The king ruled for sixteen years following World War I. His life ended in a mountain climbing accident near Namur, on February 17, 1934.
Although Albert received the military education. The cultural and scientific interests of the shy young man, however, extended well beyond military affairs.
