Sick men of Europe

King Leopold & Sultan Abdülhamid
— a tale of two monarchs

I

In 1905, the satirical magazine Punch caricatured a king and a sultan. The drawing depicted King Leopold II of Belgium, who is belted by the international outcry over the revelations of mass killings and exploitation in his private Congo colony. He is consoled by the sultan of the Ottoman Empire, Abdülhamid II, butcher of the Armenians:

Leopold. « Silly fuss they’re making about these so-called atrocities in my Congo property. »
Abdul. « Only talk, my dear boy. They won’t do anything. They never touched me! »

Relax, the uproar will fade, and people will forget. In 1909, only four years later, the reigns of both potentates would abruptly end. Abdülhamid was deposed in April of that year by officers of the secret Committee of Union and Progress — known in Europe as the « Young Turks. » At the other edge of the European landmass, in December, the sickly 74-year-old Leopold II succumbed to the effects of an embolism in a verdant château on the outskirts of Brussels. Estranged from family and familiars, the king had ended up an embarrassment to the Belgian government. His last decade was flamboyant: he traveled between Paris and the Côte d’Azur, often in the presence of his longtime mistress Blanche Delacroix — a 26-year-old French sex worker he had met when she was sixteen, and whom he married days before his death. Reports of his state funeral noted booing crowds.