Belgian government in Brussels

On 21 November 1918 a new government of national unity took office in Belgium, headed by the Catholic Léon Delacroix. It replaced the cabinet of Gérard Cooreman, which during the last months of the war had sat in exile, first at Sainte-Adresse near Le Havre and from October in liberated Bruges. The British chronology of the war records under this day the return of the Belgian government to Brussels, which the Germans had occupied on 20 August 1914. It also notes that Delacroix was the first head of a Belgian government to bear the official title of prime minister. His predecessors, Charles de Broqueville and Cooreman, had presided over the council of ministers without such a title.

The talks at Loppem

The new government came into being in unusual circumstances. Since 24 October King Albert I had been living in the van Caloen family’s castle at Loppem (PL) near Bruges, while the ministers occupied a hotel in the town. On the afternoon of 11 November three men arrived there from Brussels, still under occupation: the Liberal deputy Paul-Émile Janson, the Socialist Edward Anseele, acting burgomaster of Ghent, and the Spanish envoy Pedro Saura. They came on the initiative of Émile Francqui, chairman of the National Relief and Food Committee, which had fed the country during the occupation. They brought disturbing news. In Brussels mutinous German soldiers had hoisted the red flag, formed a soldiers’ council and were calling on the population to make a revolution. According to a letter from the minister Aloys Van de Vyvere, written that same November, the Socialist deputy Joseph Wauters had had to spend two hours at the Maison du Peuple persuading the workers not to proclaim a republic, and in return promised them universal suffrage from the age of 21.

On the evening of 13 November, after a conversation with the king, Cooreman tendered the resignation of his cabinet at Loppem. That morning the council of ministers had still agreed that the government would return to Brussels with the king, give parliament an account of four years of war policy and only then step down. Cooreman’s Catholic colleagues resented his having accommodated the monarch without their knowledge. From 14 to 20 November the king received about twenty politicians at Loppem. The Socialists and Liberals spoke with one voice. They would enter the government only on condition that the next election be held on the principle of “one man, one vote”, without the existing plural voting, for all men aged 21 and over. This was to happen at once, without the lengthy procedure of amending the constitution. The Catholics, who wanted to give the vote to women as well, had to settle for the vote for war widows, mothers of fallen soldiers and women imprisoned for resisting the occupier. There was also discussion of recognising trade unions and of teaching in Dutch at the University of Ghent.

A three-party cabinet

Delacroix was an advocate at the Court of Cassation and a councillor of Ixelles. He was a newcomer to national politics, and during the occupation he had worked with Francqui on the National Committee. According to Belgian historians it was Francqui who suggested him to the king as a moderate “new man”, ready to carry out reforms. The new prime minister also took the finance ministry. The government included six Catholics, three Liberals and three Socialists. The Liberal Paul Hymans remained foreign minister, Broqueville took the interior, the Socialist Émile Vandervelde the justice ministry, Anseele public works, and Wauters industry, labour and supplies. The Catholic Henri Jaspar received economic affairs, and Jules Renkin railways, posts and telegraphs. It was a turning point: the Catholics, who before the war had governed alone since 1884 and still had an absolute majority in parliament, gave half the portfolios to the Liberals and Socialists, and the Socialists joined the ranks of the governing parties for good.

On the same day the war minister changed. Lieutenant-General Armand de Ceuninck, who had headed the ministry since August 1917 and worked not in Le Havre but with the army near Veurne, made way for a civilian, the Liberal advocate from Mons Fulgence Masson. During the occupation Masson had protested against the deportation of Belgians to Germany, and in 1918 he was himself taken to a German prison, from which he was released only in November. Belgian lists give 21 November as the start of his term, although according to some biographies he took over the ministry on 24 November.

What came next

The next day, 22 November, King Albert made a ceremonial entry into Brussels at the head of his troops, and in his speech from the throne in parliament announced equal suffrage for all men. Conservative Catholics later held that the king, under pressure from the Socialists, had exceeded his constitutional powers, and spoke of the “coup d’état of Loppem”. In 1930 Albert I had to give assurances, in a letter published in the press, that he had taken the decisions of November 1918 entirely freely.