King William III: The Dutch Monarch of Great Britain

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Welcome back to Biographics! I’m your host, Eric Malachite, and today’s protagonist is none other than William III, the Dutch King of Great Britain, penned by Ben Adelman. If Ben has provided his socials, they will be right alongside links to my storytelling deep dive channel, Story Rant, my socials, and my books. With that said, let’s get into it.

The year was 1688, and the British Isles were in crisis. King James, a staunch Catholic, was determined to restore the old religion in a country that had been Protestant for over a century, enraging his subjects. Many feared that for the second time in 50 years, the country would be consumed by civil war. Meanwhile, across the English Channel, Prince William of Orange, the leading figure in the Dutch Republic, was facing an increasingly aggressive King Louis XIV of France. He looked on events in Britain with alarm, knowing that he needed the manpower and resources the English possessed if he stood any chance of turning back the French tide. Something had to be done.

One Glorious Revolution later, William and his wife Mary were crowned the only joint monarchs in British history. The ironic part is that William never wanted to be king; he disliked the pomp and ceremony that came with the crown and didn’t even like England that much, certainly much less than his native Holland. In return, his subjects found him cold and distant, many distrusting him simply because he was a foreigner. However, he was viewed as a Protestant champion, a bulwark against French aggression and one of the last warrior kings.

Prince William Henry, or Willem Hendrick in Dutch, was born on November 4, 1650, in The Hague. From the moment of his birth, he was the Prince of Orange, a small independent principality in the south of France, having inherited the title from his father, also named William, who died of smallpox eight days before his birth. It was a tough time for his mother, Mary, who not only had just lost her husband but almost two years earlier had seen her father, King Charles I, beheaded by his own subjects. William’s mother was a distant figure in his life, spending most of his early years out of the country promoting the interests of her brother Charles and James before dying of the same disease that claimed her husband in 1660.

Instead, the young man’s upbringing and education were a political football thrown between various Dutch factions, each with their own purposes in mind. The Dutch Republic at that time was a collection of seven provinces that nominally owed their allegiance to the States General but possessed a wide degree of autonomy over their own affairs. Each province selected a stadtholder or steward who served as a chief executive. The stadtholder was not a hereditary position, much like the title of Holy Roman Emperor, and elections were traditionally dominated by a single family, the House of Orange. Therefore, it was expected that one day Prince William would grow up to be a leading figure in Dutch politics, making his early years a matter of national importance.

The pro-Republican faction led by Johan de Witt wanted to keep the young prince from concentrating too much executive power in his hands, using political maneuvering to prevent William from being elected stadtholder. However, the situation changed dramatically in 1672, remembered in Dutch history as the Rampjaar or disaster year. English King Charles II concluded a secret treaty with his French counterpart, Louis XIV, to destroy the Dutch Republic, which, though small in size, was one of the richest countries in Europe thanks to its worldwide trading empire. France and her allies invaded the Netherlands, quickly overrunning three of the Republic’s seven provinces.

To halt their advance, the Dutch flooded their waterline, a defensive system of dikes and dams that could be deliberately flooded to turn Holland into an island. Meanwhile, the Dutch government was in chaos as people in cities like Amsterdam rioted, blaming the government for the military disaster. The Orange faction took advantage of the situation to ensure their champion, Prince William, was given his due. He was named stadtholder of the key provinces of Holland and Zeeland, as well as captain-general of the Dutch Army. His ascendency was completed when his chief rival, Johan de Witt, was dragged out of his home and lynched along with his brother by an angry mob.

For most of his military career, William was at a distinct disadvantage; his armies were almost always smaller and not as well provisioned as their French counterparts. Historians also agree that he was never better than average as a commander talent-wise, especially when compared to Louis XIV’s marshals, considered the best generals in Europe. He made up for these shortcomings with dogged determination and personal courage. He once pledged to die in the last ditch rather than surrender the Republic to her enemies.

After weathering the disasters of 1672, William assembled an anti-French alliance including the Holy Roman Empire, Spain, and Brandenburg-Prussia, which widened the war to a pan-European affair. William’s first objective was to eject the French from the Republic’s territory, which he accomplished in November 1673 with the capture of the city of Bonn, cutting the supply lines of the French troops and forcing them to withdraw. This is said to have shocked King Louis so badly that he went into seclusion for a time at a chateau in St. Germain, refusing to see anyone except for a few favorites.

After knocking France’s allies, Munster and Cologne, out of the war, William focused on recapturing the Spanish Netherlands (today the countries of Belgium and Luxembourg) for the Allies. He also came to terms with his uncle, King Charles, after the English suffered a number of defeats on the high seas to the Dutch Navy. The rapprochement between England and the Dutch was signified by the marriage in 1677 between William and his first cousin, 15-year-old Princess Mary. Mary was the daughter of King Charles’s brother, James, the Duke of York, making her second in line for the throne. The staunchly Catholic James opposed the marriage of his daughter to the Protestant William but was overruled by the king, who was himself under pressure from Parliament to approve the match.

When Mary was first told of the marriage arrangements, she is said to have cried for an entire day. William was 12 years older than her, and his reputation as a cold, brooding, and distant man had preceded him. However, any reservations she might have had about the marriage soon vanished, and the couple fell deeply in love with each other. Within a year of being married, the Franco-Dutch War continued until September 1678 when the Treaty of Nijmegen was signed. Though France made some territorial gains in Germany, Louis’s chief goal of suzerainty over the Dutch had not been achieved. Most put the responsibility for that at the feet of Prince William, who gained a reputation as one of the foremost statesmen in Europe, a bulwark of Protestantism, earning the respect even of his enemies.

William was happy enough to end the war with France, but he believed it was only a matter of time until Louis’s expansionist policies brought them into conflict again. If you’re like William III and want to get involved in Dutch politics, you’re going to need a professional website to spread the word, and the sponsor for today’s video, Squarespace, has you covered. Squarespace is the all-in-one website platform perfect for entrepreneurs with wares to sell, bloggers with a message to spread, and artists looking to reach the masses with their work. Whether you’re just starting out or looking for a better way to manage your brand, Squarespace makes it easy for you to create a beautiful, professional website, engage with your audience, and ensure the right people are getting your message.

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For 10 years, William and his wife lived in peace on their estates in Holland. Their marriage was a happy one, though it was childless after two miscarriages early in their relationship. Mary never conceived again; it is believed an illness rendered her incapable of bearing children. William cared little for the kind of debauchery typical of the English court. Unlike his uncles, whose passion for women and wine were legendary, he very rarely got drunk and is only believed to have taken a single mistress, though whether that relationship was physical or platonic is unknown.

While things were peaceful in Holland, tensions outside the country continued to ramp up throughout the 1680s, increasing William’s belief that another war with France was imminent. In 1685, Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes, officially ending the policy of toleration towards French Protestants or Huguenots. Tens of thousands fled across the border to the Dutch Republic as well as to England. Louis also occupied William’s principality of Orange and never returned it, despite protests; it has been a part of France ever since.

Meanwhile, across the channel, King Charles died without an heir in 1685, making William’s father-in-law and uncle, King James II, the second James to be King of England. Almost immediately, James began alienating his subjects, almost all of whom were Protestant, with his pro-Catholic policies. The dispute between James and his nobles wasn’t just about religion; James ruled as an autocrat rather than by consensus, routinely overriding Parliament with royal decrees to advance his own agenda, even if that agenda was opposed by the majority of his subjects. James was a king very much in the mode of his father and grandfather, believing that he had been ordained by God to rule his kingdoms and therefore had to answer to no mortal man for anything he did.

What he didn’t seem to realize, however, was that the people of the realm were no longer willing to put up with that style of leadership. It had been this very dispute that had led to the series of civil wars culminating in Charles I’s execution in 1649. By 1688, things had reached a crisis point. A prince of Wales had been born, raising the distinct possibility that a Catholic dynasty might rule over the country permanently. James was rapidly appointing Catholics to leading positions in both the government and the Church of England, which, combined with the French persecution of Protestants within their own borders, led many to believe that a Catholic counter-reformation was underway to force as many people as possible back to the old religion.

Many leading figures in England, including nobles and church officials, now looked across the channel at William and Mary to save them from the Catholic tyrant. In a sign of just how unpopular James had become, seven of the most eminent men in the country sent William a petition urging him to invade England, alleging that the infant Prince James was an impostor, a warming pan baby smuggled in by James’s supporters in place of the actual stillborn child.

It is believed by historians that William didn’t particularly want to be king of England. He had been to England a few times before and just didn’t like it. The unpleasant air of London aggravated his asthma, and he found court life to be pretentious and unpleasant. He also recognized that, regardless of his own differences with James, openly challenging him would be difficult for Mary; she still loved her father after all. But William knew that should war break out with France again, he would need England’s resources and manpower if he had any chance of successfully containing French aggression. Particularly important was the royal navy, which was formidable on its own, but combined with the Dutch fleet would be an unchallenged power on the seas. On the other hand, if James allied himself with the French, it would spell trouble for the Dutch, just as it had in 1672.

So, William began to plan to invade England after ensuring that French forces were occupied in Germany and therefore would be unable to attack Holland while he was gone. He assembled a force even larger than the famous Spanish Armada from a century earlier: over 200 ships and 40,000 men. He landed at Torbay on November 5, 1688, having spent the last month outmaneuvering both bad weather and the English fleet. William made sure that there would be no looting or destruction of property; his troops were well-provisioned and had been paid in advance.

Even as unpopular as James was, it was shocking how quickly his rule collapsed once the invasion force landed in England. Large numbers of nobles defected to William’s side within days, while the common people mostly stayed out of the dispute. Even James’s other daughter, Princess Anne, went over to the side of the invader. James apparently wasn’t willing to risk a battle to keep his crown, and rather than negotiate with William, he fled the country in December, his few remaining supporters cursing him as a coward. It had taken just six weeks for William to take over the entire country, all without firing a shot. No wonder contemporaries called it the Glorious Revolution.

A new Parliament was convened in January 1689 to decide what to do about the situation. It was eventually decided that since James had abandoned the country, he had vacated the position of king, a position that was now being offered jointly to William and Mary. In order to preserve the natural succession, Mary needed to be crowned, despite the fact that she had no interest in governing herself and wished to defer to her husband. This unusual settlement made the couple the only jointly ruling monarchs in British history and set a precedent. Up until now, it was simply assumed that kings ruled and their subjects obeyed. Now, for the first time, Parliament had chosen who they wanted to be their monarchy, a fairly radical notion in a time period when many countries were still ruled by absolute monarchs.

For the rest of their lives, William and Mary would be based in England, though both openly admitted they would have preferred to be living on their estates in Holland. William couldn’t stand living in Whitehall Palace, much preferring the seclusion of the recently purchased Kensington House, which would eventually grow into Kensington Palace, the official residence of the Prince and Princess of Wales. While Mary was generally popular with the British public, William’s popularity, particularly among nobility, quickly deteriorated. Both the Whig and Tory factions in Parliament believed that they deserved places of preferment in William’s new government, and when he instead gave positions of authority to men he’d brought with him from Holland, they began to resent him.

Part of the problem, of course, was that he was a foreigner. Englishmen of this period were not the most open-minded. William had become king of not only England but Scotland and Ireland as well, but he never made the trip north to visit Scotland. As for Ireland, William visited exactly once, at the head of an army. You see, the recently deposed James had fled across the English Channel to France, where he was an honored guest of King Louis XIV. Louis, always happy to make trouble for his enemies, provided James with money and men to launch an invasion to reclaim his kingdom, beginning with Ireland, where he had the most support. This was largely based on religion; unlike England and Scotland, most of Ireland’s residents had remained Catholic.

William crossed over to Ireland with a multinational army and met James in battle at the River Boyne, 32 miles north of Dublin. William’s elite Dutch Blue Guards distinguished themselves in the fight, which ended with the retreat of James’s forces. James fled back to France, never to return to his former realm, while his supporters, known as Jacobites, continued to agitate for the return of James and his descendants to power well into the next century.

By this point, war had broken out on the European continent again, pitting France against a Grand Alliance orchestrated by William that included his own forces as well as those of the Holy Roman Empire and Spain. William therefore spent most of the early years of his reign campaigning in the Low Countries. Queen Mary, meanwhile, grew increasingly depressed in her husband’s absence. She had long resigned herself to childlessness, something she felt like a failure for. Frequently ill, she seemed resigned to an early death, which eventually came just after Christmas 1694 when she caught the dreaded smallpox. She was only 32 years old.

William was devastated by the death of his wife. His grief was so great that those around him feared he would soon follow her into death. The rest of the country followed his example; Mary’s funeral at Westminster Abbey was the first to be attended by all the members of Parliament. William never remarried after Mary’s death and never took another mistress. He went into seclusion every year on the anniversary of her death and very rarely spoke or wrote about her; the pain was simply too great. He also began drinking much more heavily.

William’s popularity plummeted after his wife’s death. He became an increasingly distant figure to his subjects, spending as much time as possible out of the country. Even after peace with Louis XIV was concluded in 1697, an economic crisis caused by the war certainly didn’t help his polling numbers either. Meanwhile, William had a distant relationship with his heir, his sister-in-law Princess Anne, who constantly participated in intrigues against him at court.

The end of William’s life was dominated by the threat of war with France yet again, this time over the issue of who should inherit the Spanish throne. King Charles II had been in poor health for the entirety of his reign and, like William, was childless. When he died in 1700, both the Austrian Habsburgs and the French Bourbons believed they were the rightful heirs to the crown. When Philip of Anjou, the grandson of Louis XIV, was named king of Spain, the possibility of a superstate that would permanently disrupt the balance of power in Europe was too much for France’s enemies to bear, triggering the War of the Spanish Succession in 1701.

By this point, however, William, who had been one of the last European monarchs to personally command his armies in the field, was in no fit state to go to war again. He had been in declining health for years, and in 1702,