Baron Beyens becomes Belgian foreign minister

On 18 January 1916 a decree of King Albert I entrusted Baron Eugène Beyens with the office of Belgian minister of foreign affairs. Beyens replaced Julien Davignon, who had directed Belgian diplomacy since 1907 and who in August 1914 had received the ultimatum to Belgium from the hands of the German envoy. Since the summer of 1915 Davignon had been seriously ill, and Beyens had in fact already been running his ministry. The appointment thus merely confirmed a situation that had existed for months. The Belgian government was then in exile, at Sainte-Adresse near Le Havre.

A diplomat from Berlin

Beyens was born in 1855 in Paris, the son of Belgium’s long-serving envoy to France. His godfather was reportedly Emperor Napoleon III himself. He served at Belgian missions in Paris, Tehran and Bucharest, and then headed King Albert’s household. In 1912 he took over the legation in Berlin, the most difficult post in Belgian diplomacy. According to his biographers, it was he who, with the king’s consent, passed on to the French ambassador Jules Cambon the warning that Albert had heard at Potsdam in November 1913: Wilhelm II and the chief of the German general staff considered war with France inevitable and imminent.

On 4 August 1914 Beyens protested in Berlin against the German entry into Belgium. The Secretary of State, Gottlieb von Jagow, then admitted that Belgium could not be reproached with anything, but said that a rapid passage through its territory was a matter of life and death for Germany. That same day Belgium broke off relations with Germany, and the envoy received his passports and the next day was escorted to the Dutch border.

Deputy for an ailing minister

When Davignon’s health deteriorated, the government asked Beyens to stand in for him. At the end of July 1915 Beyens became a minister of state and a member of the council of ministers as minister without portfolio. Belgian lists give the dates 26 and 30 July here. According to a footnote in the British chronology, he acted as foreign minister from 26 July 1915 to 18 January 1916, while Davignon was absent through illness. On 18 January Davignon formally resigned the ministry and remained in the government as a minister without portfolio. He died less than two months later, on 12 March 1916, in Nice.

That same day the character of Prime Minister Charles de Broqueville’s government also changed. According to Belgian lists, two Liberals, Paul Hymans and Eugène Goblet d’Alviella, and the Socialist leader Émile Vandervelde joined the cabinet, Catholic since 1884, as ministers without portfolio. From then on Belgium in exile had a government of national unity.

The new minister’s tasks

Beyens wanted Belgium to remain in the war a neutral state whose neutrality had been violated by one of its guarantors, rather than an ordinary ally of the Entente. That was why it did not accede to the London agreement on not concluding a separate peace. The government did, however, seek a solemn assurance from the guarantor powers that Belgium would take part in the peace negotiations, regain its independence and receive compensation. France, Great Britain and Russia handed such a declaration to Beyens at Sainte-Adresse as early as 14 February 1916. Beyens directed Belgian diplomacy until August 1917, when the prime minister, de Broqueville, took over the ministry himself.