1870 in Belgium

Events in the year 1870 in Belgium.

← 1869 1868 1867 1870 in Belgium → 1871 1872 1873
Decades:	1850s 1860s 1870s 1880s 1890s
See also:	Other events of 1870 List of years in Belgium

Incumbents

Monarch: Leopold II

Head of government: Walthère Frère-Orban (to 16 June); Jules d'Anethan (from 2 July)

Events

March

• 4 March – Law on Temporalities establishes state oversight of parish finances.

May

• 23 May – Provincial elections

June

• 3 June – new conscription law, expanding numbers but retaining selection by lottery.
• 11 June – Partial legislative elections of 1870 return a hung parliament
• 16 June – Walthère Frère-Orban resigns as Prime Minister
• 18 June – Affligem Abbey, closed in 1796, refounded.

July

• 2 July – Jules d'Anethan replaces Walthère Frère-Orban as Prime Minister
• 13 July – Liberal Party conference in Brussels draws up new party programme.
• 15 July – General mobilisation in response to the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War

August

• 2 August – General election, to break impasse of hung parliament, returns Catholic Party majority.
• 11 August – France and Prussia give assurances to Britain that Belgian neutrality will be respected during the Franco-Prussian War.

September

• 2 September – Belgian Red Cross despatches medical units to Lorraine in the wake of the Battle of Sedan.
• 23 September – Sumptuous public celebration of the 40th anniversary of Belgian independence.

Publications

Periodicals

• Almanach royal officiel (Brussels, E. Guyot)
• Annuaire statistique de la Belgique begins publication (Brussels, Imprimerie de Delevingne et Callewaert)
• L'Illustration Européenne begins publication (Brussels, Bureaux de l'Administration)

Official studies and reports

• Épidémie typhoïde de 1869 (Brussels), report of the commission of inquiry into the 1869 epidemic of typhoid fever

Books

• Émile de Borchgrave, Histoire des rapports de droit public qui existèrent entre les provinces belges et l'Empire d'Allemagne depuis le démembrement de la monarchie carolingienne jusqu'à l'incorporation de la Belgique à la République française (Brussels, 1870)
• Prosper de Haulleville, De l'enseignement primaire en Belgique
• Prosper de Haulleville, La Nationalité belge; ou Flamands et Wallons
• Émile de Laveleye, La Russie et l'Autriche depuis Sadowa
• Émile de Laveleye, "Land System of Belgium and Holland", in Systems of Land Tenure in Various Countries (London, Macmillan & Co.)
• François Merten, Géographie industrielle et commerciale de la Belgique (Ghent, H. Hoste)
• Adolphe Quetelet, Anthropométrie, ou Mesure des différentes facultés de l'homme (Brussels, Leipzig and Ghent)

Science

• Botanical Garden of Brussels (founded 1826) bought by the Belgian state.

Art and architecture

• Prix de Rome: Xavier Mellery
• 22 March – La Monnaie in Brussels stages first performance in French of Richard Wagner's Lohengrin

Births

• 4 February – Raoul Warocqué, politician (died 1917)
• 28 March – Adolphe De Meulemeester, colonial official (died 1944)
• 7 April – Joseph Ryelandt, composer and musicologist (died 1965)
• 13 June – Jules Bordet, Nobel prize-winning microbiologist (died 1961)
• 28 July – Henri Jaspar, politician (died 1939)
• 24 October – Charles Saroléa, philologist (died 1953)
• 30 November – Princess Henriette of Belgium (died 1948) and Princess Joséphine Marie of Belgium (died 1871)

Deaths

• 30 March – Charles de Groux (born 1825), painter
• 8 April – Charles Auguste de Bériot (born 1802), composer
• 6 June – Henri Adolphe Schaep (born 1826), painter
• 18 July – Jean Théodore Lacordaire (born 1801), entomologist