King george iii why is he important

By the end of the War of the First Coalition in , only Great Britain remained standing among the coalition partners, as King George and William Pitt proved equally dogged opponents. The following War of the Second Coalition, which saw the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte to power and a failed French invasion of England, produced a similar result, thanks mostly to the superiority of the British Navy.

Obviously it was the Prime Minister who directed most British military policy during the conflicts, but in the popular consciousness, the King remained a symbol of defiance against French militancy, as immortalized in many cartoons by James Gillray, where he often appears as a comical, but still quite affable figure putting villainous figures like Napoleon in their place.

But despite all appearances of a united front, an issue tangentially related to the French Wars and unification caused a fatal rift between the King and his longtime partner Pitt the Younger. As the conflict dragged on, Pitt became concerned about certain appeals to the people of Ireland, most of whom were politically disenfranchised due to their Catholic religion and also made up a third of the soldiers in the British Army. In order to stave off a potentially disastrous mutiny or insurrection, Pitt put forward a bill in Parliament aimed to end all official discrimination against Catholics in civil life, but the King, upon learning of the bill, would have none of it.

In his eyes, Catholic Emancipation, as the issue came to be called, was a direct violation of his coronation oath to uphold the Protestant religion as well as his position as head of the Church of England.

After the initial debilitation in , King George continued to periodically struggle with his illness until , when it returned with a vengeance. During this period, the United Kingdom went through several important advancements in the economy, politics, and the arts and sciences.

The Napoleonic threat also ended at the Battle of Waterloo, turning the victorious Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, into an international icon.

Regency England, as it came to be known, became a byword for both elegance and excess, fitting the personality of Prince George himself. The King, however, was barely lucid enough to take notice of any of it. While his realm prospered economically and basked in military glory, the King lived an entirely secluded life in Windsor Castle.

Blind, deaf and in constant pain, George was almost oblivious to anything around him, including the death of Queen Charlotte in A contemporary engraving by portrait painter Henry Meyer depicts him with unkempt hair and a long beard, a lasting testimony to his derangement. When the Treaty of Paris was signed in , he considered abdicating.

Demanded Loyalty In many ways, George ruled England as he did the colonies, with punishment meted out for perceived disloyalty. In he ascended to the throne at age 22, and the first 10 years of his reign were characterized by political instability. Prime ministers came and went quickly, often because they refused to capitulate to George on policy, but also because of increasing factionalism within Parliament.

As a result, colonial policies were inconsistent; for example, the Stamp Act was repealed after only one year, but was followed by other taxes.

A Faithful Tyrant George was a contradictory character. The Whigs in Parliament called him an autocrat, and Thomas Jefferson branded him a plundering tyrant. But the private George was gentle and decent, although exceedingly strict.

He strived to restore a high moral tone to the royal family. He was the first Hanover king not to take a mistress, and the English people admired his fidelity to his wife, Queen Charlotte. By March of , these canons were in the hands of George Washington, who took them to Dorchester Heights overlooking Boston, and aimed them at the British force occupying the town. General Howe planned to lead a force to retake the heights, but due to bad weather, he was forced to reconsider.

In August of , Howe and his force reappeared off the coast of New York. Howe planned to seize New York from the Continental Army, where he would be able to regroup, and then march his army north to meet General Burgoyne who was leading a sizeable force down from Quebec. As Burgoyne moved south through the thick brush of the countryside, he was intercepted at Saratoga, where he was decisively defeated on October 7, In the winter of , George Washington hunkered down at Valley Forge, his army on the brink of collapse.

Although the British Army was vastly superior in numbers as in martial talent, Howe did not follow up his victories. On October 19, , a Franco-American forced surrounded the British Army by land and sea at Yorktown, effectively ending any chances for a British victory in North America.

In , the Treaty of Paris secured a victory for the United States. King George never fully recovered from the loss of the American colonies. In an attempt to regain control of Parliament, he appointed William Pitt the Younger as Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer after the fall of the North-Fox coalition in But in , that faith was shaken when the King suffered a bout of insanity believed to be caused by porphyria.

In February , the Regency Bill was introduced in Parliament, but before it could be passed by the House of Lords, the king miraculously recovered from his mental illness. In the years following the American Revolution , concern shifted in Britain from the intractable colonists, to a movement for Parliamentary reform. Drawing inspiration from John Wilkes and the American Revolution, English subjects began to conceptualize a democratically elected Parliament.

Parliament was composed men who used their money and influence to gain seats. Parliament was pieced together with rotten boroughs and pocket boroughs which, more often than not, were beholden to a Member of Parliament who through patronage, could count on their votes. Moreover, England was undergoing an industrial transformation which forced many English subjects to move to crowded cities for work.

A bustling metropolis, such as Manchester, found no representation in Parliament. While King George was aware of this when he assumed the throne, his method of ending Parliamentary corruption came from the top down. Prior to his ascension, the Hanoverians allowed factions to control Parliament and run the government. He did this by involving himself in the politics of Parliament, and by exercising his right to appoint and dismiss ministers who he could control.

Unfortunately, this proved to be a difficult task. Then, on July 14, the prison fortress of Bastille was stormed and taken by the Parisian mob. The French Revolution had just begun. In Britain, reformers and government officials alike rejoiced upon hearing the news. Now it appeared as though France would join the British in establishing a constitutional monarchy. At first, the revolution in France seemed to establish a constitutional monarchy similar to the British government, but then events took a radical turn.

The First Coalition, led by Austria and Prussia invaded France on all fronts with the intention of restoring absolute monarchy. On September 5, , thousands of prisoners of the revolution were massacred in the streets in what became known as the September Massacres.

Drawing on ideas from the Enlightenment, Maximillian Robespierre assumed de facto leadership of France in as part of the Committee of Public Safety. In order to protect France from her adversaries, radicals like Robespierre asserted that the enemies of the revolution needed to be eliminated from within.

Thus the Reign of Terror commenced. Thousands of enemies of the revolution were executed by the guillotine, until Robespierre himself was decapitated by the device on July 27, This was a death sentence to radical reformers who sought to curtail the monarchy, and establish a republic in its wake. In , King George and William Pitt believed they had enough evidence to bring the leaders of the republican society to trial for High Treason.

By the end of the long ordeal, all were acquitted. The corruption and mismanagement of Parliament would not be reformed until But King George and William Pitt faced a new threat. In , Napoleon Bonaparte overthrew the Directory and established himself as dictator of revolutionary France. Napoleon was a brilliant general, and his success on the battlefield made him a threat to the balance of power in Europe. By , Napoleon was poised to invade Britain, and showed every intention of doing so.

Since Britain relied solely on her navy to defend against invasion, there was widespread fear in England that if Napoleon made the crossing, he would easily overrun British forces. To defend the homeland, volunteers came forth in record numbers. In October of , King George reviewed over 27, volunteers at Hyde Park, and even volunteered to lead them against Napoleon should he cross the Channel. During this time of national crisis, in the King again was overcome by insanity.

But by then, Napoleon had already turned the most feared army in all of Europe on the Austrians, defeating General Mack at the Battle of Ulm, and then defeating a combined force of Austrians and Russians, led by Tsar Alexander at the Battle of Austerlitz in These victories, and the subsequent defeats of Prussia and Russia, left Great Britain alone in her struggle against Napoleonic France.

Invading Spain in , his armies were whittled down by the guerrilla tactics employed by the Spanish peasantry. His invasion of Russia in also proved to be a disaster, leading to his subsequent defeat at the Battle of Leipzig Battle of the Nations , and later, the Battle of Waterloo in Britain played a decisive role in all of these contests.

But by , King George was a shell of the monarch he once was. He was no longer actively involved in politics, and when his daughter, Princess Amelia passed away in , he sunk into a depression he would never recover from. Suffering from rheumatoid arthritis, virtual blindness caused by cataracts, and recurrent fits of insanity caused by porphyria; King George III willingly handed the throne to his son. King George retreated to Windsor Castle where he spent his final days. In his later years, he suffered greatly from dementia, blindness and an increasing loss of hearing.

But as the nineteenth century dawned, the British Empire was poised for success due to the stability and leadership enjoyed under the reign of King George III.

He has dedicated his career to the study of the Boston Tea Party, and how this defiant act, orchestrated by the Sons of Liberty, pushed Massachusetts down the road to revolution. Ask about our Virtual Tour programming! George remained ill until his death at Windsor Castle on 29 January George was thus the first king of the new nation.

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