On 4 February 1831 Leuchtenberg was one of three candidates for the throne of the newly independent Belgium, his Napoleonic connections allaying the concerns of some of the Great Powers worried that the breakaway Roman Catholic realm might otherwise ally itself too closely with the likewise Catholic and revolutionary "bourgeois monarchy" of Orléans France. But in the election by the Belgian National Congress, Auguste came in second after the younger son of the King of the French, Prince Louis, Duke of Nemours, though ahead of the Habsburg candidate, Archduke Charles, Duke of Teschen. In the event, none of these men attained the Belgian throne, which went to Britain's candidate, Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg.