Albert I

Albert I (born April 8, 1875, Brussels, Belg.—died Feb. 17, 1934, Marche-les-Dames, near Namur) was the king of the Belgians (1909–34), who led the Belgian army during World War I and guided his country’s postwar recovery.

The younger son of Philip, count of Flanders (brother of King Leopold II), Albert succeeded to the throne in 1909—Leopold’s son and Albert’s father and older brother having died earlier. Before World War I Albert worked to strengthen the army, gaining passage in 1913 of a military conscription bill. He reaffirmed Belgian neutrality to France and Germany in the summer of 1914 and rejected the German emperor William II’s ultimatum of Aug. 2, 1914, demanding free passage of German troops across Belgian territory. A German invasion followed two days later.

Albert assumed leadership of the Belgian army at the outset of the war but was forced to retreat beyond the Yser River after the fall of Antwerp in October 1914. German troops then occupied the entire country except for the southwestern districts of Flanders. During the whole of the war Albert remained with his troops, making continual visits to the front-line trenches from his headquarters at De Panne on the Belgian coast. When the general Allied offensive of September 1918 was undertaken, he commanded the Franco-Belgian northern army group, which captured Ostend and Brugge and forced the passage of the Lys River.

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Following the Armistice, Albert appealed to the Allies to abolish Belgian neutrality, formalized by European treaties in 1839, and gained passage in Parliament of universal male suffrage. For the next 15 years he guided the nation’s rebuilding effort, which included public-works construction and redevelopment of industries destroyed by the German occupation. In 1926 he helped introduce a new monetary system. Albert was killed by a fall while rock climbing in 1934.