Loppem Coup

Convened in the aftermath of the Armistice of 11 November 1918 in the days before the King's triumphant return to Brussels which had been occupied since 1914, the Loppem meetings consisted of a series of private audiences with prominent socialist and liberal politicians and notables such as Edward Anseele, Paul-Émile Janson, and Émile Francqui who had become prominent in German-occupied Belgium.

A number of sensitive political topics were discussed, including universal male suffrage, labour rights, and the status of Dutch language, notably in higher education.

[2] On 22 November, King Albert I re-entered Brussels at the head of the Belgian Army in a Joyous Entry.

He announced a new legislative programme to include the abolition of the pre-war electoral system of plural voting and the creation of a new university taught exclusively in Dutch.

On learning of the Loppem discussions, some radical conservatives denounced them as a "coup" in which the monarch, either at his own initiative or under socialist pressure amid the November Revolution in Germany, had overstepped his constitutional prerogatives to favour the political left.