How many people did leopold kill

It is said that when he showed his nephew the greenhouses, the youth gasped that they were like a little Versailles. Leopold always did think big. But the row over the king's notorious stewardship of his African territories still has the ability to evoke raw emotions in a country trying to come to terms with a brutal colonial past. The question is: was the spade-bearded old reprobate a mass-murderer, the first genocidalist of modern times, responsible for the death of more Africans than the Nazis killed Jews?

Was his equatorial empire, the setting for Conrad's Heart of Darkness and the terrible Kurtz with the human heads dangling round his garden, the scene of a largely forgotten holocaust? The old wounds have been re-opened by the publication of a book called King Leopold's Ghost, by the American author Adam Hochschild, which has brought howls of rage from Belgium's ageing colonials and some professional historians even as it has climbed the country's best-seller lists.

The debate over Belgium's colonial legacy could not be more timely. In the realm beyond the palace walls where Leopold's great grandson Albert II is now king, the openly racist extreme rightwing Vlaams Blok, which blames much of the country's ills on coloured immigrants from Africa, is bidding to become one of the biggest parties in next month's elections.

And the planes which soar over the greenhouses as they depart Brussels sometimes carry human cargo - black asylum seekers being unceremoniously deported, occasionally naked and still bleeding, back to Africa.

Last September, the Belgian immigration service succeeded in suffocating one of them, a Nigerian woman called Semira Adamu, 20, on board the plane that was to take her home, by shoving her head under a pillow. The police videoed themselves chatting and laughing while they pushed her head down. It took them 20 minutes to kill her. The history of Leopold's rule over the Congo has long been known.

It was first exposed by American and British writers and campaigners at the turn of the century - publicity which eventually forced the king to hand the country which had been his private fiefdom over to Belgium.

But Hochschild's book has hit a raw nerve for a new generation with its vividly drawn picture of a voracious king anxious to maximise his earnings from the proceeds of rubber and ivory. It is clear that many of Leopold's officials in the depots up the Congo river terrorised the local inhabitants, forcing them to work under the threat of having their hands and feet - or those of their children - cut off.

Women were raped, men were executed and villages were burned in pursuit of profit for the king. But what has stuck in the gut of Belgian historians is Hochschild's claim that 10 million people may have died in a forgotten holocaust.

In outrage, the now ageing Belgian officials who worked in the Congo in later years have taken to the internet with a page message claiming that maybe only half a dozen people had their hands chopped off, and that even that was done by native troops. They argue that American and British writers have highlighted the Congo to distract attention from the contemporary massacre of the North American indians and the Boer War. Theoretically, hands should serve as a way of proving that those who did not comply with their work had been killed.

The king, however, guaranteed he was not aware of the facts — and claimed to be as shocked as his European critics. But the dispute of versions became increasingly harder to be won by the Belgian aristocrat — and entered an unsustainable spiral after the execution of a European in the Congo region. Irishman Charles Stokes, a British citizen, was arrested for illegal trade and hung by Belgian authorities without the due legal process in The episode placed public opinion and the political and economic power of the United Kingdom against Leopold II.

Different reports and accusations were made, describing in detail what was happening in the Congo, and works of fiction began to include these atrocities in their plots. The international pressure forced the Belgian government to take actions to take the Congo Free State from the hands of their monarch, a transfer that would be concluded in , one year before the death of Leopold II. The Belgian Congo was then born, now formally a state colony, which would only become independent in the s — now, most of its territory forms the Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly Zaire its neighbor, the Republic of Congo, was formed from the territory of the previous French Congo, around Brazzaville.

It would be "really significant for Congolese people, especially those whose families perished," she explains. She does not believe it will not be quick or easy. There are at least 13 statues to Leopold II in Belgium, according to one crowd-sourced map , and numerous parks, squares and street names.

Warning: This piece contains graphic pictures. One visitor to the Africa Museum, where an outdoor statue was defaced last week, disagreed with the idea of removing them - "they're part of history," he explained.

On Friday the younger brother of Belgium's King Philippe, Prince Laurent, defended his ancestor saying Leopold II was not responsible for atrocities in the colony "because he never went to Congo". The royal palace is yet to give its own response. For many years Leopold II was widely known as a leader who defended Belgium's neutrality in the Franco-Prussian war and commissioned public works fit for a modern nation.

In , former Belgian foreign minister Louis Michel and the father of future prime minister Charles Michel, called Leopold "a hero with ambitions for a small country like Belgium". He promised a humanitarian and philanthropic mission that would improve the lives of Africans. In return European leaders, gathered at the Berlin Conference, granted him 2m sq km , sq miles to forge a personal colony where he was free to do as he liked.

He called it Congo Free State. It quickly became a brutal, exploitative regime that relied on forced labour to cultivate and trade rubber, ivory and minerals.

Archive pictures from Congo Free State document its violence and brutality. In one, a man sits on a low platform looking at a dismembered small foot and small hand. They belonged to his five-year-old daughter, who was later killed when her village did not produce sufficient rubber.

She was not unique - chopping off the limbs of enslaved Congolese was a routine form of retribution when Leopold II's quotas were not met. Colonial administrators also kidnapped orphaned children from communities and transported them to "child colonies" to work or train as soldiers. Killings, famine and disease combined to cause the deaths of perhaps 10 million people, though historians dispute the true number.

Leopold II may never have set foot there, but he poured the profits into Belgium and into his pockets. He built the Africa Museum in the grounds of his palace at Tervuren, with a "human zoo" in the grounds featuring Congolese people as exhibits. But rumours of abuse began to circulate and missionaries and British journalist Edmund Dene Morel exposed the regime.

By , Leopold II's rule was deemed so cruel that European leaders, themselves violently exploiting Africa, condemned it and the Belgian parliament forced him to relinquish control of his fiefdom. Belgium took over the colony in and it was not until that the Republic of the Congo was established, after a fight for independence.