Leopold II, King of the Belgians (1835-1909), succeeded his father, Leopold I, to the Belgian throne in 1865. He was born in Brussels and originally named Louis Philippe Marie Victor.
At an early age he entered the Belgian army, and in 1853 he married Maria Henrietta (1836-1902), daughter of Joseph, Archduke of Austria (1776-1847). In 1876 Leopold organized an international association to develop central Africa, and he later financed the expedition (1879-1884) to the Congo River led by the British-American explorer Sir Henry Morton Stanley.
At the Berlin Conference of 1884-85, Leopold was recognized as sovereign of the Congo Free State, annexed to Belgium as the Belgian Congo in 1908, and now Zaire. Reports of outrageous exploitation and mistreatment of the native population, especially in the rubber industry, led to an international protest movement in the early 1900s. Finally, in 1908, the Belgian parliament compelled the King to cede the Congo Free State to Belgium.
A constitutional, if strong-willed, monarch in Belgium, he ruled the Congo Free State (now Zaire) as a personal domain. In domestic politics Leopold emphasized military defense as the basis of Belgian neutrality, but he was unable to obtain a universal conscription law until on his death bed. He was succeeded by his nephew Albert I.