Word: belgians
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...name is Maria Gabriella Giuseppa Aldegonda Adelaide Margherita Ludovica Felicita Gennara di Savoia. The founder of her house was Humbert the White-handed, who ruled Savoy in the 11th century. Among her ancestors are saints, Holy Roman and Byzantine emperors, antipopes, French and Belgian princesses, Italian and Balkan nobility and kings of lands as widely separated as Spain and Cyprus and England. Italy, last week, was in a ferment over Princess Maria Gabriella. The report was that she might marry a king twice her age whose father had been an army private...
...initial calm and generally welcoming acceptance of the King's speech in the Congo, many Belgiums feared that their government may have waited too long to make its offer. In Léopoldville Belgian paratroopers still patrolled the streets, hundreds of whites are keeping revolvers handy, and as long as the city's three top burgomasters (all black) remained in jail, disorder might strike at any time. Warned the Gazet van Antwerpen: "With oppressed hearts we wonder whether the people who yesterday stood against each other as enemies will be able to collaborate...
Just across the Congo River from Leopoldville sits Brazzaville (pop. 86,000), capital of French Equatorial Africa, which has been astir with De Gaulle's promise of autonomy. Kasavubu began to dream of reviving the fabled 14th century kingdom of the Congo, combining territories now French, Belgian and Portuguese. After his election as one of Léopoldville's commune burgomasters in 1957, he had himself declared "Supreme Leader" by his followers, and began receiving homage seated on a leopard skin, symbol of tribal supreme power. Meanwhile, the rival Bangalas also began organizing, and the bush telegraph began...
...through the city, upset and burned cars, stoned and mauled Europeans, pillaged shops. Bands looted public buildings and invaded mission schools, concentrating their fury on Roman Catholic more than on Protestant schools (though Kasavubu, mission-educated, studied philosophy for three years as a Catholic seminarist). Under orders from their Belgian officers, African police opened fire, and Belgian paratroopers manned key points about the European part of the city. But for two whole days the rioting continued, until an estimated 175 people had been killed...
...Brussels a hushed special session of Parliament quickly voted to send an investigatory mission. The new Minister of the Congo, Maurice van Hemelrijck, a longtime critic of Belgian complacency and the author of a long-awaited proposal for the Congo's gradual emancipation that is to be presented to Parliament this week, gave his countrymen a brief but pointed lecture. "We have been on the border of catastrophe," he said. "We are not without fault. We could not wait so long without punishment before letting the Congolese know of our intentions...