POTTER United Families

“Dear Louis, I kiss you with all my heart. Your
cherished mother, Dame de Potter”.
Louis wrote that he had to move on to Rome in 1811 (3 years after
the birth of his alleged natural son) where he discovered a vast
amount of fascinating things for a young philosopher. He wrote: "I
continued to gather what had been written about the Church during
eight Centuries, neglecting no detail by historians, christian heretic
facts, nor Arragonist and Paganist theories."
While he was anticipating with the study of religious troubles, in
Rome, the government of Napoleon fell and Belgium acquired yet
another ruler. Although The Netherlands did restore a monarchy,
King William was not someone the Belgians themselves would have
chosen. His father was William V of the House of Orange, Calvinist,
his mother and wife were Prussian princesses.
Older Belgians hoped for a reunion with Austria. But Prussia and
England did not want this "Brussels keystone of Europe" to fall in
the clutches of the French and thought William was the solution.
William remarked that he did not understand the Belgians and would
have been quite happy to rule just Holland.
As economist, he thought that when the Belgians and the Dutch
shared the same standards of living and education, they would also
think alike. William saw the problem as two-fold, to raise the lower
economic level of Belgium, and eradicate what he considered the
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