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The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg is a landlocked country, bordered by Germany, France, and Belgium. The capital is Luxembourg. One of the world's smallest nations, The area of Luxembourg is 998 square miles (2,586 square km). The estimated population of Luxembourg in July, 2004 was 462,690. The official languages are French and German. Founded in 963, Luxembourg became a grand duchy in 1815 and an independent state under the Netherlands. It lost more than half of its territory to Belgium in 1839, but gained a larger measure of autonomy. Full independence was attained in 1867. Overrun by Germany in both World Wars, it ended its neutrality in 1948 when it entered into the Benelux Customs Union and when it joined NATO the following year. In 1957, Luxembourg became one of the six founding countries of the European Economic Community (later the European Union), and in 1999 it joined the euro currency area. -- The CIA World Factbook: Luxembourg
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The New York Times, December 15, 1870:The Luxembourg Question.Prussia had just then finished her little difficulty with Austria rather more promptly than the French Emperor expected, and had placed herself at the head of the North German Confederation. The King of Holland thought fit to apprise his august neighbor at Berlin of the transaction which the Cabinet at Paris was extremely anxious to smuggle through with all convenient speed. There is every reason to believe that Count Bismarck was well aware of the scheme of his friend at the Tuileries with regard to the Duchy. It is even probable that its peaceful acquisition was one of the conditions made between the two arch conspirators, during their frequent walks on the sands at Biarritz, as the price of the neutrality of France during the Austrian campaign of 1866. The effusive frankness of the King of Holland was the means of bringing the matter before the North German Parliament, and that body, then in the early glow of its Pan-German patriotism, vowed that Fatherland would go to war rather than an ancient Diet should be absorbed by their traditional enemy. Nothing loth to find a decent pretext for getting out of an awkward verbal engagement, Count Bismarck protested that he found events too strong for him, and a Conference was assembled in London in May, 1867 to endeavor to avert the struggle that appeared imminent between France and Prussia. In point of fact, neither Power was quite ready to fight, or the Conference certainly would never have been assembled. Prussia had a rather higher opinion then, of the French military strength than she has today, and France was not altogether prepared to cope with the needle-gun. It was made, nevertheless, a standing reproach against the Emperor by such Frenchmen as Girardin, that he allowed the opportunity to slip of entering on what was then felt to be an inevitable struggle, and of allowing himself to be so completely outwitted by the more astute Brandenburger. Taking everything into account, it is not too much to say that Luxembourg was the proximate cause of the present war. The Conference of London framed a treaty which was a very explicit, but very useless, document. It was signed on behalf of their respective Governments by the representatives of Austria, Russia, Prussia, France, Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands. Under its provisions the Prussian garrison who had up till that time occupied the town of Luxembourg as a Federal fortress, evacuated the place, its defenses were razed, and the Grand Duchy, under the collective guarantee of all the signatories except Belgium, herself a neutral state, was declared to "form a State perpetually neutral." An after question was raised about the precise meaning of the neutrality clause of the treaty, which elicited the official declaration from Russia and England that they understood it merely as a "joint guarantee, and not involving the obligation for any of the States to enforce such a guarantee individually." This lucid explanation, of course, rendered the treaty, for all practical purposes, so much waste paper, and will render its present abrogation by Prussia a matter which need not necessarily form a casus belli. That there is a manifest destiny in the annexation of Luxembourg to Prussia a glance at the map will readily show. Her evident determination to hold Alsace and Lorraine renders Luxembourg indispensable for the proper rectification of the frontier. |
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