A short history of Belgium

When, in 57 B.C., the Roman Republic, then in control of most of the Mediterranean countries, the south of Gaul included, determined to conquer also the rest of that country, Be...

Charles the Great died in 814. His son, Emperor Louis, was a weakling, and after his death the mighty empire of Charles was destroyed by internal troubles and civil war (840). L...

A new epoch opens with the twelfth century in the history of Belgium. The era is frequently called the “Time of the Communes,” because the internal political life of the country...

A consideration of the politics of the Belgian dukes and counts during the course of the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries leads to a division of this epoch into two periods....

At the very moment when all the Belgian principalities had won their complete political autonomy and rejected the French, the English, and the German influence, they were brough...

Philip the Fair was made duke and count of the different Belgian principalities in 1494. Meanwhile the international situation in Europe had become dangerous for Spain and the E...

The revolt of the Netherlands against Spain is not merely an event of local Belgian history; it belongs to the political history of Europe. It is an episode of those long and cr...

Finally, convinced after a long and painful experience that peace was to be restored to Belgium only by new means and other methods than those heretofore employed, and that by w...

The last eighty years of the seventeenth century were an unhappy period for Belgium. France, under Richelieu and Louis XIV, continually attacked the declining Spanish monarchy,...

When the house of Austria came into possession of Belgium only ten provinces out of the seventeen of the old Spanish Netherlands were left: Brabant, Limburg, Luxemburg, Namur, H...

The French revolutionary clubs had exerted a powerful influence on Vonck. The effect of their teachings had also been felt in the independent principality of Liège and had provo...

After the fall of Napoleon, the powers were called upon to decide the political status of Belgium. The Belgians were not consulted in the matter, vitally important as it was, an...

In 1832 King Leopold I married Louise-Marie, daughter of the French King Louis-Philippe, who, through her womanly virtues, had made herself greatly beloved. The first Queen of t...

When the nephew of King Leopold, Prince Albert, became king of the Belgians under the name of Albert I, he certainly never imagined that a day would come when the very existence...