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William III of orange

The early life of William III of England (orange), he was the son of William II, and Mary Stuart. He was born in Den Haag, the Netherlands. On the 14th of November 1650. But eight days before William was born his father had died from battle wounds. And so William became the sovereign prince of orange immediately when he was born. When William was 10 years old his mother died of smallpox while visiting her brother in England: King Charles. She had made Charles the legal guardian of William and so when she died William moved over to England to live with Charles. But he delegated his responsibility to Williams's grandmother Princess Dowager Amalia. But if he wanted he could visit Charles and Charles could also visit William if he wanted to. His grandmother was preparing William for a life’s rule of a country when he was 16. He was king of England and king of Ireland from the 13th of February 1689 and king of Scotland from the 13th of February 1689.

In 1672 the year that later became known as the disaster year in the Netherlands. The Netherlands was invaded by France, under Louis XIV, he had the aid of England, Münster and cologne. The army had quickly captured most of the Netherlands. But Holland stayed safe behind the waterline. And William was helping the Dutch to continue fighting against France.
He was chosen as stadtholder of Holland, Zeeland, and Utrecht. And later in 1675 he was chosen stadtholder of Gelderland and Overijssel. William continued to fight with the Dutch against France and its allies. He made allies himself with Spain. And then Admiral Michiel de Ruyter had defeated the royal navy of England. He also made allies with England. To strengthen his position he married Mary, The daughter of James (the duke of York). And so France retreated because having war with England and the Netherlands wasn’t such a good idea. In 1685 William’s father in law: James II came to the throne in England. He was not very popular among the people, William wanted him to join the league of Augsburg (an anti-France league) but he didn’t and so many English politicians wanted to have William as a king and this happened on the 13th of February 1689 he also became the king of Ireland at the same day.

When he and Mary came to the throne of Ireland and England there were arrangements made because he had ceased the throne of England and Ireland he should be the king, but his wife Mary was officially the next to come to the throne after the son of James II, but James II fled the country and his son wasn’t seen as the next to inherit the throne, so Mary was the next. But as I said William had ceased the throne and did not want that Mary would rule England and Ireland and so arrangements were made that if he was in the country he would rule England and Ireland (and later also Scotland). If he was fighting in Holland against the French and was not in England then Mary would rule England and Ireland, but following his advice. And these arrangements lasted for the rest of Mary’s life.

Although he was accepted as the legal king in England, there was some opposition in Scotland and Ireland, the most bitter ones were the Scottish jacobites, they believed that James II was their legal king. They were always fighting for their freedom and they did win one battle on 27 July 1689 the battle of killiecrankie, but then after a month their freedom was over and they were conquered again. As a result he did not have much sympathy for the Scots and in the massacre of Glencoe over 100 Scots were murdered for not obeying their king.
In Ireland fight remained much longer and this was because the French were helping the Irish rebels. After the Anglo Dutch navy defeated the French fleet at La Hogue in 1692. It became clear that on sea nobody could defeat the English and the Dutch. And Ireland was conquered shortly after and the rebels fighting for freedom together with the French had lost their battle.
But at the main land things were not going as good as on the islands of Great Britain. William was losing territory at Namur and was disastrously beaten on land at the battle of Landen this battle was in 1693. Then in 1694 his wife Mary II died of smallpox, leaving William to rule the countries on his own. Although when his wife lived he did not care much about her, he had mistresses and mistreated her. He did mourn about her death. When he was ruling the islands alone he did not have as much respect from the population as he did when he was ruling with Mary II together.

The later years of William’s life, Drente had made William it’s stadtholder in 1696. But in that same year Jacobites tried to assassin William and to restore the throne of James II. This plot failed, and because of this Louis XIV tried to let James II be elected king of Poland. But James did not want to because this might affect the people in England and they would never again accept him as their king. And therefore he did not take the throne of Poland. This decision proved to be fatal for James II, France was retreating their funds and support to James and then this also meant that France wanted to end the war of grand alliance, Louis recognized William as the official ruler of England and the Jacobites were no longer supported by the French and did no longer pose a treat to William.

As the life of the Spanish king was going to its end and he had no prospect of having children. The other rulers of Europe were concerned what was going to happen with Spain and its colony’s. Among his closest relatives were Leopold I, from the Holy Roman Empire and Louis XIV, the king of France. William did not want the country and its colony’s to fall into the hands of one monarch and then giving him even more power in Europe. William and Louis signed the first partition treaty; this was about the division of Spanish empire. Duke Joseph Ferdinand of Bavaria would be the king of Spain, and then France and the Holy Roman Empire would divide the remaining territories between the two of them. But, their was one very big obstacle: the Spanish people they wanted Spain and it’s territories to stay together and would not allow them to be separated. William did not pay any attention to the wishes of the Spanish people until in 1700 Joseph Ferdinand died of smallpox. Then the issue was reopened. And William and Louis agreed on the second partition treaty; which was again about the division of Spain and its territory’s. The territories in Italy would be inherited by a son of the king of France. And the other territories would then be inherited by the Holy Roman Empire. But then the Spanish king Charles II interfered with the issue and he gave all the territories to Philip a grandson of Louis. Philip agreed and did not follow the second partition treaty and so Spain and its territory’s stayed together. So France did not recognize William as the king of England, and again a war started with France and William. This conflict was known as the war of the Spanish succession, it continued far after the death of William, until 1713.

But there were other things beside the Spanish inheritance that were upsetting him. He himself did not have any children out of his marriage with Mary, because his family could not become the next king or queen, it looked like Anne (sister of Mary ) would inherit the throne, this was no problem but what happened when she died, and she had just like William no children. And if she died then the throne would return to James’s family and this would mean that his family would have lost much territory and so become less powerful. This was the reason that he passed the act of settlement: this meant that the throne could be given to distance relatives. But this law did produce some side effects: these were that the king did have to share his power with the parliament. And the king would not have the absolute power. Another effect was that future kings or queens could not use English resources to defend their realms.

William’s death. He fell of his horse and broke his collarbone; he developed pneumonia because of this fall from his horse. This was the cause of his death. And his death was opening a much wanted gap for power. Although Anne inherited the throne the parliament and other influential persons did want to get more power, and this did not came out very good for Anne. William was buried besides his wife in Westminster Abbey.

The Great Famine of Ireland 1845-1849
The great famine of Ireland was seen as a great turning point in the Irish history. Famine was a common thing in Ireland in the 19th century and it was a big hazard for the rural life in Ireland. But the great famine of 1845 was the worst of all.
The population of Ireland had risen very sharply in the 19th century. This was because having a large family was an insurance for having food and shelter when you became old, your children would take care of you. But this meant that large families needed large amounts of food and it was a tradition to divide the land between your male sons and so the land you inherited was smaller than your fathers and it got smaller and smaller because the families were so large. Until the land could not support the families anymore.
Potatoes were the main diet for the people of rural England. But when people are dependant of one crop to make it to the next year, and this crop is very vulnerable to diseases this can mean disaster strikes and this is exactly what has happened in the Irish potato famine. In 1844 a new form of potato blight was identified at first in America. The effect of this blight was: it turned the potato into a mushy mess and it was totally inedible. This blight broke out for the first time in France and the Isle of Wight in 1845. It is an air carried fungus and it is still with us today and still there is no cure for the disease.
There were some advices given to the people in the affected areas. These were very weird and did not help at all. One of them was from one particular scientist he advised people to get hold of chloric acid and manganese dioxide. Then mix these two ingredients and then mix these with salt and spread it over the diseased area of the potatoes and then it would be solved. But most farmers couldn’t afford these chemicals and even if they did they would only have produced chlorine gas, this gas was used to poison troops in the First World War
In 1845 the people of Ireland were expecting a good potato harvest, the weather had been very good for the growing of the potatoes, but as it seemed also a good year for the blight to spread because almost 50% of all potatoes were affected with it. And so the harvest failed and the harvest of 1846, 1847 were also affected with the blight and this meant that Ireland had huge problems with feeding it’s population. Although Ireland produced enough to feed it’s population a lot of the food produced in Ireland was transported to Britain and so the Irish people were starving and this was simply because the rich farmers who produced a lot were exporting it to Britain because they got more money for there harvest than in Ireland.
The government (London) decided to do nothing to help the Irish. The thing was that there have been more famines in Ireland and that Ireland would have the knowledge to overcome the famine. But by 1846 it became clear that this wasn’t an ordinary famine like many in the 19th century. And then the government reacted by importing 100.000 pounds of corn, but his was not a very much because the loss of potatoes was 3.500.000 pounds in 1846 and so it does not support all the families that needed food. But despite it was useless anyway because the Irish had almost no mills to grind the corn and since it was inedible if it wasn’t grinded this meant that it did not help anybody. The government in London believed that if the corn was released on the market at once, the prices of the other foods would rise so they released it in stages. And because there were little mills in Ireland the people who bought the corn didn’t grind it but just eat it and they became even more ill then they already were. This became known as “Peel’s Brimstone”.
The government in London did try to help the Irish in some other ways by establishing public work schemes and road building projects, so that some of families would get some money. And they established emergency fever hospitals fore those who could not afford the medical treatment that was needed to cure them. But there were two major issues why there was not done much to help the Irish.
1. The general view of the London government and from Britain itself was that the Irish were simply not worth the effort and that anything that happened there was there own fault.
2. The government was also very keen on free trade and did not want to interrupt this system and so this meant that the strongest people would survive and if the Irish had problems they weren’t the strongest and so the strongest people would survive.
That the government wouldn’t help the Irish is one problem, but there was another great problem the landlords there were as symphatatik as the government, and they would evict you from his land if you didn’t pay the rent. Despite the effort of the government to create employment and so that some families had some money, despite a lot of families had no money and were evicted from their land. No food is one thing but having no house is even worse. This was the faith that most families awaited if nothing happened. But there were some good landlords who would not evict them because there was a food shortage and they had no money, but then again these landlords were suffering because those others didn’t do anything and therefore all the poor evicted people came to those landlords, but there was just no room for all those people
There were also landlords who evicted their people but they helped them to get to America by ship they were send in great numbers together with all the others who went by themselves. These ships were very packed and many died on the voyage because of sickness and starvation. Some were so poor that they had no clothes on. And they had to be clothed by American charities before they could enter America. This will be a disgrace for Ireland.
The effects of the famine: there were several bad effects and one of them was that the population had decreased rapidly during the famine by as much as 2 million this represented 25% of the total population of Ireland. This number can be split into two parts: the emigration to America, Canada, England and other countries. And the deaths that were by the famine either by starvation or diseases that the famine caused. The people who where emigrating did have a better chance but most of them immigrated to the big cities in England and America and because they had no knowledge of the industry most of them were without a job and not much better of than in Ireland. The people of Britain were not very keen on the Irish because they were seen as the people who were undercutting their wages and costing them their jobs.
The population did not grow when the famine ended, many young families thought that they would have a better future in America and so the people that could help Ireland to recover where all leaving to America for a better future and so the people who stayed and survived the famine had to suffer and rebuilt Ireland again. With far fewer people to work the land it would probably a fight for the landlords to get their land worked and to make money but instead the landlords rationalised their estates and there were even more evictions after the famine and again the people who stayed where suffering.
What the other effect of the famine was that some of the Irish culture was lost because lots of people with the Irish culture where leaving and adapting to the other cultures and so much of the Irish culture was lost. Another was the political impact on the people of Ireland, they thought that the government did as little as possible because they did not care about the Irish and it was better if they would die. And so they believed the only people who could help the Irish were the Irish themselves and so they wanted to start their own government. And they got money from America to do so.