Pierlot at Limoges — from where to carry on?

Hubert Pierlot, 56, a Catholic and a jurist, has been Prime Minister of Belgium since 1939. When the Wehrmacht invades his country on 10 May 1940, his government decides not to remain under occupation: it is the lesson of 1914, when Belgian ministers had reached Sainte-Adresse, near Le Havre, to carry on the war from Allied soil.

Pierlot and a dozen ministers leave Brussels on 16 May, Paul-Henri Spaak, socialist and foreign minister, at their side. On 17 May, they install themselves at Limoges, in France. But the Belgian state machine is scattered, civil servants and archives have been thrown onto the roads, and the army falls back ceaselessly in Flanders. King Leopold III, who commands that army in person, has remained in the country: a disagreement heavy with consequences is already brewing between the Crown and his ministers over who, the soldier-king or the government, embodies the nation's legitimacy.

At Limoges, the government is now only a handful of men on foreign soil, dependent on the French ally whose own military situation is deteriorating by the hour. Pierlot must decide from where, and how, the Belgian state will carry on the fight.