1870 in Belgium

Events

• 4 March – Law on Temporalities establishes state oversight of parish finances.

• 23 May – Provincial elections

• 3 June – new conscription law, expanding numbers but retaining selection by lottery.
• 11 June – Partial legislative elections of 1870 return a hung parliament
• 16 June – Walthère Frère-Orban resigns as Prime Minister
• 18 June – Affligem Abbey, closed in 1796, refounded.

• 2 July – Jules d'Anethan replaces Walthère Frère-Orban as Prime Minister
• 13 July – Liberal Party conference in Brussels draws up new party programme.
• 15 July – General mobilisation in response to the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War

• 2 August – General election, to break impasse of hung parliament, returns Catholic Party majority.
• 11 August – France and Prussia give assurances to Britain that Belgian neutrality will be respected during the Franco-Prussian War.

• 2 September – Belgian Red Cross despatches medical units to Lorraine in the wake of the Battle of Sedan.
• 23 September – Sumptuous public celebration of the 40th anniversary of Belgian independence.

Publications

• Émile de Borchgrave, Histoire des rapports de droit public qui existèrent entre les provinces belges et l'Empire d'Allemagne depuis le démembrement de la monarchie carolingienne jusqu'à l'incorporation de la Belgique à la République française.
• Prosper de Haulleville, De l'enseignement primaire en Belgique.
• Prosper de Haulleville, La Nationalité belge; ou Flamands et Wallons
• Joseph Kervyn de Lettenhove, Chroniques relatives à l'histoire de la Belgique sous la domination des ducs de Bourgogne, vol. 1.
• Émile de Laveleye, La Russie et l'Autriche depuis Sadowa
• Émile de Laveleye, "Land System of Belgium and Holland", in Systems of Land Tenure in Various Countries
• François Merten, Géographie industrielle et commerciale de la Belgique
• Adolphe Quetelet, ''Anthropométrie, ou Mesure des différentes facultés de l'homme''

Science

• Botanical Garden of Brussels bought by the Belgian state.

Art and architecture

• Prix de Rome: Xavier Mellery
• 22 March – La Monnaie in Brussels stages first performance in French of Richard Wagner's Lohengrin.

Births

• 4 February – Raoul Warocqué, politician
• 28 March – Adolphe De Meulemeester, colonial official
• 7 April – Joseph Ryelandt, composer and musicologist
• 13 June – Jules Bordet, Nobel prize-winning microbiologist
• 28 July – Henri Jaspar, politician
• 24 October – Charles Saroléa, philologist
• 30 November – Princess Henriette of Belgium and Princess Joséphine Marie of Belgium

Deaths

• 30 March – Charles de Groux, painter
• 8 April – Charles Auguste de Bériot, composer
• 6 June – Henri Adolphe Schaep, painter
• 18 July – Jean Théodore Lacordaire, entomologist