Alexis-Michel Eenens - Biography - Military and Political Career

Military and Political Career

He was admitted to the Artillerie- en Genieschool (Artillery and Engineering School) of the army of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands in Delft on 15 July 1825 as a cadet. On 20 November 1828 he was promoted to sergeant-major and allowed to study at the Royal Military Academy in Breda. He was promoted to second lieutenant in the artillery and assigned to the 5th battalion Militia Artillery at Namur on 5 January 1830, on the eve of the Belgian Revolution.

Eenens joined the revolutionaries by taking part in a mutiny of the Namur garrison in September 1830. As a reward he was breveted lieutenant by the Belgian Provisional Government and soon after promoted to captain. Stationed in Antwerp, he refused to defect to the Dutch with General Van der Smissen on 25 March 1831. He then joined the Belgian troops at Leuven and helped to defend that city in August.

In 1834 he killed another Belgian captain in a duel on the battlefield of Waterloo. He was acquitted by the court martial, because Belgium at that time did not have a law against duelling. That same year he tried to resign his commission, but was not allowed to, because he had promised to serve ten years after his admission to the Royal military academy.

In 1839, at the suggestion of King Leopold I of Belgium, he took a leave of absence to act as an observer in Egypt. He explored commercial possibilities for Belgium and visited Ethiopia (then known as "Abyssinia") together with the Belgian consul in Alexandria to try to establish a Belgian colonial outpost on the west coast of the Red Sea. However, illness forced him to return to Belgium in December 1840.

He was promoted to major in 1842 and to lieutenant-colonel in 1845. Then in 1846 he tried to go into politics as a Liberal Party representative. As this was an oppositional party, the king put him on non-active status. He was elected to the Belgian Chamber of Representatives on 8 June 1847, but a new law prohibiting military officers to sit in parliament forced him to give up his seat in May 1848. He then reentered active duty.

Eenens was promoted to colonel on 24 June 1853, and put in charge of an artillery regiment in Tournai. On 8 May 1859 he was promoted to major-general and given the command of the First Artillery Brigade. He also became a member of the Munitions Committee and other advisory commissions. On 24 June 1866 he was promoted to lieutenant-general and Inspector-general of the Belgian Artillery. On 15 July 1870 he was put in charge of the army at Antwerp where he became military governor (and at the same time aide de camp of King Leopold II of Belgium) on 6 October 1870.

In view of the dangerous international situation (the Franco-Prussian War had just started), Eenens now pleaded for strengthening the Belgian defenses, but the Cabinet of prime minister Jules Malou opposed this, supported by the Catholic party of Charles Woeste. Disgusted, Eenens retired from active service on 18 May 1873. He remained aide de camp of the king, who conferred the Grand Cordon of the Order of Leopold on him.