During King Leopold II’s rule from 1885-1908, an estimated 10 million Congolese people were killed. The Congo Free State, under Leopold II, was known for its brutal exploitation of the native Congolese population and mass death. With little oversight and organized government control, Europeans adopted brutal policies like kidnapping, mutilation, robbery, and murder to extract labor and resources. A common tactic was demanding quotas of rubber from each village, with failure to collect enough being punished violently. Mutilations most commonly the amputations of the right hands, this were not random acts of cruelty alone but they were a part of a bureaucratic and accounting system set in place and implemented and enforced by the ‘Force Publique’ (Leopold’s private mercenary army).