Belgian historian, born at Luxemburg on the 24th of January 1804, and educated at the athenæum of his native place and at the University of Louvain. He first held the position of professor of rhetoric in the college at Ypres. In 1834 he took charge of the department of history in the Free University at Brussels, and in 1837 was placed in charge of the department of political economy and commercial law in the commercial and industrial school, afterward annexed to the Royal Athenæum. The Belgian government employed him, in 1840, to make historical research in the north of Europe. After his return Dr. Altmeyer published The Diplomatic and Commercial Relations of the Netherlands with the North of Europe in the Sixteenth Century. The great work of his life, in which he spent forty years, was his labor among the archives of Belgium for the purpose of publishing an exhaustive work on The Netherlands in the Sixteenth Century. He had published five volumes when he was compelled by failing health to desist from the work. At his death the government took possession of his manuscripts, for preservation and future publication. Among his most important works are a Course of Philosophy of History (1840); Margaret of Austria: Her Life, Policy and Court (1840); Summary of Modern History (1842); The Sea-Beggars and the Capture of Brille (1863), and Campaigns of Louis XIV in Belgium (1864). He died at Brussels on the 15th of September 1877.
