The Centre de documentation sur la forteresse de Luxembourg at the Musée national d'archéologie, d'histoire et d'art Luxembourg is currently preparing its next temporary exhibition, Bundeskontingent & Compagnie. Militär und Gesellschaft im 19. Jahrhundert. It will run from 23 April 2025 to 22 March 2026 at the Musée Dräi Eechelen.
The final act of the Congress of Vienna on 9 June 1815 established the Kingdom of the United Netherlands, including present-day Belgium and Luxembourg as a new Grand Duchy. The latter’s state formation was driven by the military, whose presence visibly characterised the public sphere. From 1815, Luxembourgers who had reached the age of 18 were obliged to perform military service. They were drafted by lot to the Nationale Militie and trained and deployed outside the Grand Duchy, usually in the Belgian provinces.
In 1830, the Belgian Revolution divided Luxembourg’s population. Among the loyal Orangists is Martin Baudouin from the 10th Lancer Regiment, who was subsequently awarded the Metalen Kruis for his services. Baudouin’s portrait from the museum collections will be shown in the exhibition. It was painted by his friend Jean-Baptiste Fresez, the painter of Luxembourg’s bourgeoisie, who had served in the capital's schutterij.
Following the separation of the Kingdoms of the Netherlands and Belgium after the Treaty of London of 19 April 1839, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and the Duchy of Limburg, governed by the King of the Netherlands, were jointly required to provide a federal contingent for the army of the German Confederation. Willem II discussed the establishment of this contingent with his State Chancellor for Luxembourg affairs in The Hague and the Governor of Luxembourg, with whom he consulted during his visits to the Grand Duchy.
In Luxembourg, the contingent developed alongside the 6,000-strong Prussian garrison of the federal fortress and was stationed outside the fortified city, in the towns of Diekirch, Ettelbruck, and Echternach. It initially consisted of 1,319 soldiers, divided between a battalion of chasseurs à pied, a cavalry squadron and an artillery detachment armed with guns from The Hague. In 1846, the cavalry and artillery were abolished, leaving only chasseurs, and the guns were sent back to the Netherlands. After the succeeding separation of the joint contingent and the revolutionary troubles of 1848, many among the recruits and officers had to decide between naturalisation as Luxembourgish citizens or return to the Netherlands.
When Willem III ascended the throne in 1849, the formation and transition phases were completed. The most emblematic relics of Luxembourg’s federal contingent date back to his reign, e.g. a portrait as a commander in uniform in the Grand Ducal collections or a battalion flag with the Luxembourg coat of arms.
Following the dissolution of the German Confederation in 1866 and the neutrality of Luxembourg established by the Treaty of London on 11 May 1867, the federal contingent was abolished, and the law of 18 May 1868 created the Corps des chasseurs luxembourgeois, made up of 18 officers and 587 non-commissioned officers and troopers responsible for maintaining order and internal security stationed in Luxembourg City. Subsequently, the Compagnie des Volontaires, reduced to 170 soldiers by the law on the organisation of the armed force of 16 February 1881, was the last stage in this development and foreshadowed the Luxembourg army.
Over the course of the 19th century, many volunteers, too, joined the Koninklijke Landmacht from Luxembourg, such as Louis-Alphonse Munchen, the son of the capital district’s sub-intendant, in 1836. He served in the artillery and was transferred to the cavalry, before being admitted to the joint federal contingent of Limburg and Luxembourg in 1841, where Munchen rose through the ranks to become the commanding officer of the national forces in 1868. In his time of service, he went through all the different forms of armed forces that came into being in the Grand-Duchy over the course of the 19th century. Characteristically, Munchen’s life came to a close in the barracks of the Volunteer corps upon its establishment in 1881. A generous bequest of his estate consisting of paintings, drawings, letters, books, and photographs with a personal touch will be the matrix of this exhibition.
Furthermore, several Luxembourgers can be tracked down in the Nederlandsch-Oost-Indisch Leger, like Franz Carl Hartmann, and in the Koninklijk Nederlandsch-Indisch Leger, respectively, like Louis-Joseph Zelle, whose service overlapped in the federal contingent. Both officers left behind partly autobiographical life stories, one in German and one in Dutch, focussing on their years in the Dutch East Indies.
The political, economic, and social impact of the recruitment and stationing of soldiers and officers, many of them hailing from the abroad, within the Grand-Duchy, and of their supply of uniforms and weapons on Luxembourg’s society, are at the heart of this temporary exhibition. The objects run through all social strata with their cultural, religious, and linguistic differences and similarities, such as a portative organ donated by Willem II to the contingent’s Protestant community.
Therefore, the exhibition aims at showing a common past, as it were, not only through the reigns of Willem I, II and III, who ruled as sovereigns in personal union from 1815 to 1890, and throughout the soldiers’ lives, but also through the military. In fact, the model command structures, drill and drill language, uniforms and weaponry were adopted from the Dutch army and only slightly modified, if at all.