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Rh however, was too proud and too obstinate to lend himself to such a course. He appealed to the powers, who had, in 1815, created and guaranteed the independence of the kingdom of the Netherlands. By the treaty of the eighteen articles, however, concluded at London on the 29th of June 1831, the kingdom of Belgium was recognized, and Leopold of Saxe-Coburg was elected king. William refused his assent, and in August suddenly invaded Belgium. The Belgian forces were dispersed, and the Dutch would have entered Brussels in triumph but for the intervention of the French. Still, however, William declined to recognize the new throne, and he had behind him the unanimous support of Dutch public opinion. For nine years he maintained this attitude, and resolutely refused to append his signature to the treaty of 1831. His subjects at length grew weary of the heavy expense of maintaining a large military force on the Belgian frontier and in 1839 the king gave way. He did so, however, on favourable terms and was able to insist on the Belgians yielding up their possession of portions of Limburg and Luxemburg, which they had occupied since 1830.

A cry now arose in Holland for a revision of the fundamental law and for more liberal institutions; ministerial responsibility was introduced, and the royal control over finance diminished. William, however, disliked these changes, and finding further that his proposed marriage with the countess d'Oultremont, a Belgian and a Roman Catholic, was very unpopular, he suddenly abdicated on the 7th of October 1840. After his abdication he married the countess and spent the rest of his life in quiet retirement upon his private estate in Silesia. He died in 1844.

See L. Jottsand, Guillaume d'Orange avant son avénement au trône des Pays-Bas; E. C. de Gerlache, Histoire du royaume des Pays-Bas depuis 1814 jusqu'en 1830 (3 vols., Brussels, 1842); W. H. de Beaufort, De eerste regeeringsjaren van Koning Willem I. (Amsterdam, 1886); H. C. Colenbrander, De Belgische Omwenteling (The Hague, 1905); T. Juste, Le Soulèvement de la Hollande en 1813 et la foundation du royaume des Pays-Bas (Brussels, 1870); and P. Blok., Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche Volk, vols. vii. and viii. (Leiden, 1907–1908).  WILLIAM II. (1792–1849), king of the Netherlands, son of William I., was born at the Hague on the 6th of December 1792. When he was three years old his family was driven out of Holland by the French republican armies, and lived in exile until 1813. He was educated at the military school at Berlin and afterwards at the university of Oxford. He entered the English army, and in 1811, as aide-de-camp to the duke of Wellington, took part in several campaigns of the Peninsula War. In 1815 he commanded the Dutch and Belgian contingents, and won high commendations for his courage and conduct at the battles of Quatre Bras and Waterloo, at the latter of which he was wounded. The prince of Orange married in 1816 the grand duchess Anna Paulowna, sister of the tzar Alexander I. He enjoyed considerable popularity in Belgium, as well as in Holland for his affability and moderation, and in 1830, on the outbreak of the Belgian revolution, he betook himself to Brussels, and did his utmost by personal conferences with the most influential men in the Belgian capital to bring about a peaceable settlement on the basis of the administrative autonomy of the southern provinces under the house of Orange. His father had given him powers to treat, but afterwards threw him over and rejected the terms of accommodation that he had proposed. He withdrew on this to England and resided there for several months. In April 1831 William took the command of a Dutch army for the invasion of Belgium, and in a ten-days’ campaign defeated and dispersed the Belgian forces under Leopold I. after a sharp fight near Louvain. He would have entered Brussels in triumph, but his victorious advance was stayed by the intervention of the French. In 1840, on the abdication of his father, he ascended the throne as William II. The peace of 1839 had settled all differences between Holland and Belgium, and the new king found himself confronted with the task of the reorganization of the finances, and the necessity of meeting the popular demand for a revision of the fundamental law, and the establishment of the electoral franchise on a wider basis. He acted with good sense and moderation, and, although by no means a believer in democratic ideas, he saw the necessity of satisfying public opinion and

frankly gave his support to larger measures of reform. The fundamental law was altered in 1848 and the Dutch monarchy, from being autocratic, became henceforth constitutional. The king’s attitude secured for him the good will and affection of a people, loyal by tradition to the house of Orange, and the revolutionary disturbances of 1848 found no echo in Holland. William died suddenly on the 17th of March 1849.

See J. J. Abbink, Leven van Koning Willem II. (Amsterdam, 1849); J. Bosscha, Het Leven van Willem den Tweede, Koning der Nederlanden, 1793–1849 (Amsterdam, 1852); P. Blok, Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche Volk (Leiden, 1908).

 WILLIAM III. (1817–1890), king of the Netherlands, son of William II., was born at Brussels on the 19th of February 1817. He married in 1839 Sophia, daughter of William I., king of Württemberg. Sophia was an accomplished woman of high intelligence, but unfortunately the relations between the royal pair were far from cordial and finally ended in complete disagreement, and the breach between them continued until the death of the queen in 1877. The private life of the king in fact gave rise to much scandal; nevertheless he was an excellent constitutional monarch, and, though he never sought to win popular favour, succeeded in winning and retaining in a remarkable degree his people’s affectionate loyalty. He had no sympathy with political liberalism, but throughout his long reign of forty-two years, with a constant interchange of ministries and many ministerial crises, he never had a serious conflict with the states-general, and his ministers could always count upon his fair-mindedness and an earnest desire to help them to further the national welfare. He was economical, and gave up a third of his civil list in order to help forward the task of establishing an equilibrium in the annual budget, and he was always ready from his large private fortune to help forward all schemes for the social or industrial progress of the country. It was largely due to his prudent diplomacy that Holland passed pacifically through the difficult period of the Luxemburg settlement in 1866 and the Franco-German War of 1870.

William III. had two sons by bis marriage with Sophia of Württemberg, William (1841–1879), and Alexander (1843–1884). Both of them died unmarried. The decease of Prince Alexander left the house of Orange without a direct heir male, but the prospect of a disputed succession had fortunately been averted by the marriage of the king in 1879 with the princess Emma of Waldcck-Pyrmont. From this union a daughter, Wilhelmina, was born in 1880. On her father’s death at the Loo, on the 23rd of November 1890, she succeeded as queen of the Netherlands under the regency of her mother.

William was grand duke of Luxemburg by a personal title, and his death severed the dynastic relation between the kingdom of the Netherlands and the grand duchy. The sovereignty of the Luxemburg duchy passed to the next heir male of the house of Nassau, Adolphus, ex-duke of Nassau.

See J. A. Bruijne, Geschiedenis van Nederland in onzen tijd. (5 vols., Schiedam, 1889–1906); P. Blok, Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche Volk (Leiden, 1908), vol. viii.; and G. L. Keppers, De regeering van Koning Willem III. (Groningen, 1887).

 WILLIAM (1227–1256), king of the Romans and count of Holland, was the son of Count Floris IV. and his wife Matilda, daughter of Henry, duke of Brabant. He was about six years of age when his father was killed in a tournament, and the fact that his long minority was peaceful and uneventful speaks well for the good government of his two paternal uncles, who were his guardians. William was, however, suddenly in 1247 to become a prominent figure in the great Guelph-Ghibelline struggle, which at that time was disturbing the peace of Europe. The quarrel between the church and the emperor Frederick II. had now reached an acute stage. Pope Innocent IV., who had failed in repeated efforts to induce various princes to accept the dignity of king of the Romans in place of the excommunicated Frederick, found the youthful William of Holland ready to accept the proffered crown. After a long siege William succeeded in taking the imperial city of Aix-la-Chapelle, where he was crowned on All Saints’ Day 1248. As the recognized head of the Guelph party he spared no efforts to win for himself friends