The annotation on this farewell momument to King Leopold II (1836 - 1909) of Belgium and the Congo is from "quelques amis....".
This was one gentleman you would not want to call a friend. The wealth that enabled him to buy up parcels of the Cap came from his ruthless exploitation of the "Free State of the Congo" which he created as his own personal possession after tricking tribal chiefs into exchanging their land title for trinkets. Slavery, mutilation, and murder were the order of the day, as Leopold's agents secured for his personal wealth the vast natural resources of the Congo - much from ivory and the booming demand for rubber (thanks to Mr Dunlop).
Leopold avariciously purchased every parcel of land he could on the Cap, creating three villas, linked by secret passages. In one he installed his mistress, a worldly wise Parisian sixteen year-old named Blanche Delacroix. In another, his personal confessor-priest, on hand should his bad behaviour be finally called to account.
Leopold's successor in the Congo (renamed Zaire), General Mobutu, continued Leopold's tradition of kleptocracy for thirty years, bleeding his country dry before following Leopold's footsteps to the Riviera , setting up home at the
Villa del Mare at Roquebrunne, some ten miles further up the coast.
Alas great wealth rarely comes with clean hands, but that's not reason to diminish the beauty and majesty of the Cap Ferrat.
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on Mar 29, 2004
