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William III (William Henry; Dutch: Willem Hendrik; 4 November 1650 – 8 March 1702), [c] also known as William of Orange, was the sovereign Prince of Orange from birth, Stadtholder of Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Guelders, and Overijssel in the Dutch Republic from 1672, and King of England, Ireland, and Scotland from 1689 until his death in 1702.
In 1806 Napoleon abolished the new republic and made his brother King of Holland. However, in 1810 Napoleon invaded the Netherlands and annexed them to France. In 1813, Allied forces drove out the French. The Dutch called back William Frederick, the son of the last stadtholder, to head the new government. He was proclaimed "sovereign prince".
William was born on 19 February 1817 in the Palace of the Nation in Brussels, [1] which was part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands at the time. He was the eldest son of the future king William II of the Netherlands and Anna Pavlovna of Russia. He had three brothers, one of whom died in infancy, and one sister. [2]
The following is a family tree for the Princes of Orange, a line which culminated in the Dutch monarchy with the accession of Prince William VI to the newly created throne of the Netherlands in 1815. Dates given are those of birth and death; for Princes of Orange (shown in bold), the intermediate date is the date of accession to the Princedom.
On 15 March 1815; with the encouragement of the powers gathered at the Congress of Vienna, William Frederick raised the Netherlands to the status of a kingdom and proclaimed himself King William I. This was made official later in 1815, when the Low Countries were formally recognized as the United Kingdom of the Netherlands.
Coats of arms corresponding to the titles borne by various Dutch monarchs, displayed at Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam. The Kingdom of the Netherlands was proclaimed on 16 March 1815, as a state in personal union with the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg under William I, a member of the House of Orange-Nassau who had already inherited a vast number of titles and lands from his ancestors.
The treaty contained a secret annex, the Act of Seclusion, forbidding the infant Prince William III of Orange (future King William III of England) from becoming also the Dutch stadtholder of the province of Holland, which would prove to be a future cause of discontent. In 1653 the Dutch had started a major naval expansion programme of their own ...
James fled to France, and William ascended to the English throne as co-monarch with his wife Mary, James' eldest daughter. This manoeuvre secured England as a critical ally of the United Provinces in its ongoing war with Louis XIV of France. William was the commander of the Dutch and English armies and fleets until his death in 1702.