Joseph Lebeau

Jean Louis Joseph Lebeau (French pronunciation: [ʒɑ̃ lwi ʒozɛf ləbo]; 3 January 1794 – 19 March 1865) was a Belgian liberal statesman, the prime minister of Belgium on two occasions.

While in Liège, he formed a fast friendship with Charles Rogier and Paul Devaux, together with whom he founded at Liege in 1824 the Mathieu Laensbergh, afterwards Le politique, a journal which helped to unite the Catholic Party with the Liberals in their opposition to the cabinet, without manifesting any open disaffection to the United Kingdom of the Netherlands.

He was sent by his native district to the National Congress, and became minister of foreign affairs in March 1831 during the interim regency of Érasme-Louis Surlet de Chokier.

By proposing the election of Leopold of Saxe-Coburg as King of the Belgians he secured a benevolent attitude on the part of the United Kingdom, but the restoration to the Netherlands of part of the duchies of Limburg and Luxembourg provoked a heated opposition to the 1839 Treaty of London, and Lebeau was accused of treachery to Belgian interests.

He was subsequently governor of the Province of Namur (1838), ambassador to the Frankfurt Diet (1839), and in 1840 he formed a short-lived Liberal ministry.

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