Karel-Aeneas de Croeser

Karel Aeneas Jacobus de Croeser (Charles-Enée-Jacques de Croeser) (14 July 1746 — 22 January 1828) was Mayor of Bruges (Brugge) between 1803 and 1813, and again between 1817 and 1827. He was the first person to be elected the post of Mayor after the contentious establishment of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1815. He was previously known as a poet and genealogist.

Biography de Croeser's father, Karel Jozef de Croeser (1701-1775), was an army officer. His father and his mother, Marie Charlotte Stochove (1724-1774), both came from prominent Flemish families. He had a large statue of the Virgin Mary placed in the empty niche above the entrance to the belfry, to replace one that had been destroyed in the French Revolution a few years earlier.

De Croeser and Napoleon On 11 July 1803, De Croeser welcomed First Consul Napoleon to Bruges. De Croeser was not impressed by Napoleon, and was later reprimanded by the prefect for having the flag on the belfry lowered before Bonaparte had left the city. The visit was commemorated with a painting of De Croeser and Napoleon together by portraitist Joseph Denis Odevaere, completed in 1807. The painting still hangs in the city hall as of 2020.

In 1804, Napoleon crowned himself Emperor. During his second visit to Bruges in 1810, he awarded De Croeser the Legion of Honour. The double portrait in the city hall was subsequently amended to display the relevant insignia on De Croeser's coat. He owned an extensive library and family archive, which included much written material from the sixteenth century historian Nicolaas Despars, some of which was later re-published during the nineteenth century. The archive also included the De Hooghe manuscript and the Gruuthuse manuscript. He had a large collection of ancestral portraits.

Family Karel-Aeneas de Croeser married Anna de Carnin de Staden (1747-1803) in 1777. They had four sons, two of whom married and became patriarchs in their own right The family line is believed to have died out with the death of Alexandre de Croeser (1839 - 1903), who married Euphémie de Ruysscher (1835-1911). Their only child was stillborn.

Publications (selection) As well as being a Latin-language poet, de Creuser produced a number of extensive works on genealogy, which he published independently: