Louis Napoléon Chaltin

Louis Napoléon Chaltin (born April 27, 1857 in Ixelles , † 1933 in Uccle ) was a Belgian colonial officer.

Life

He was made lieutenant in 1885 and served in the Congo Free State (EIC) in 1891 . In 1893 he was head of the Force publique camp in Basoko , whereupon he captured Riba Riba (near present-day Kindu ) by following the course of the Lomami . He then shocked Stanley Falls Station (now Kisangani ). He secured the region around Dungu in the northeast and in 1893 became the commander of the Haut-Uele province .

After the outbreak of the Mahdi uprising in the Turkish-Egyptian Sudan, Great Britain, which had occupied Egypt in 1882, leased its southern area, as the Lado enclave , to King Leopold II of Belgium on behalf of Egypt . Chaltin succeeded in occupying the Lado enclave between 1896 and 1897 with a small but powerful, homogeneous army of 800 soldiers from the Force Publique. He reached Redjaf on February 14, 1897 and was able to defeat 2,000 Mahdists in the Battle of Rejaf on February 17. However, due to limited funds, he was unable to implement Leopold's order to advance further in the direction of Central Sudan. In addition, an uprising in the Congo made it difficult to replenish Chatlin's troops and forced the Belgians to expend considerable resources to re-stabilize their own colony.

The district capital Aketi-Port-Chaltin in Nieder-Uelle bore his name until 1966.

literature

• Lotar L., Coosemans M .: Biography coloniale belge . Bruxelles: Institut Royal Colonial Belge, 1948. Volume 1, pages 229-232.

Web links

• Louis Chaltin Archives , Royal Museum for Central Africa