King Leopold's Soliloquy A Defense of His Congo Rule by Mark Twain. Its subject is King Leopold's rule over the Congo Free State. A work of political satire harshly condemnatory of his actions, it ostensibly recounts a fiction monologue of Leopold II speaking in his own defense. He says he had come to Congo with piety "oozing" from "every pore", that he had only wanted to convert the people to Christianity, that he had wanted to stop the slave trade. He did not take any of the government money, that he did not use the revenues as his personal "swag", and that such claims by the "meddlesome American missionaries", "frank British consuls", and "blabbing Belgian-born traitors" are wholly false. He asserts that for a king to be criticized as he has been is blasphemy—surely, under the rule of God, any king who was not doing God's will would not have been helped by God.