The Coburgs of Belgium
By Theo Aronson
The Coburgs, remarked Bismarck, were ‘the stud farm of Europe’; if unkindly phrased, there was nevertheless some truth in the jibe: within three generations of the foundation of the Belgian Royal House in 1831, Coburgs had tarried into almost every royal family in Europe.
Perhaps the most extraordinary thing about the throne of Belgium is that it ever came into being: created after the successful rebellion against the Dutch, it was hoped, without much enthusiasm, that it would weld together a new nation of disparate and quarrelsome elements. It has survived to the present, in an era which has seen older and seemingly more secure dynasties vanish.
Cheated by the death of his first wife, Charlotte, Princess of Wales, daughter of George IV and Queen Caroline, from becoming Prince Consort to the Queen of England, the resilient Leopold I of Saxe-Coburg not only became the constitutional monarch of Belgium but married the daughter of the King of France. With this the Coburgs were well launched on a climb from their petty German principality to a position of enormous world power.
