Early Life

King George III was born to Frederick, Prince of Wales, and Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha in 1738. In his lifetime, western society would be challenged by rebellious colonies, shook to the foundation by a revolution in France, and profoundly distorted by repeated bouts of insanity. Through all of his personal and political struggles, King George was a popular monarch, and the people of England were loyal to him during the nation’s most trying times. His armies defeated the invincible Napoleon Bonaparte at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, and proved to the world that constitutional monarchy was an enduring political system, outlasting the First Republic of France. In spite of his success, the reign of King George III has been a hotly debated issue among scholars, and his political decisions, particularly early in his rule, even more so.

Seven Years’ War

When George, Prince of Wales, assumed the British throne in 1760, he inherited a troubled empire in the throes of a world war. Great Britain had been fighting a war on many fronts against a French, Austrian and Russian entente. In 1754, a skirmish at Fort Duquesne involving the Virginian George Washington sparked the conflict along the frontier in North America. But the more serious challenge to Britain came in the form of the European alliance.

Strategically, Britain leaned on the tried and tested tactic of relying on the land armies of continental European allies to do the bulk of the fighting, while the vastly superior Royal Navy would bottle up the ports of the adversary with crippling blockades. From the outset of the Seven Years’ War, Britain relied on the support of Frederick the Great of Prussia to fight in the European theatre. In spite of Prussian military prowess, Frederick had his hands full, as the Austrians, Russians and French had the Prussians vastly outnumbered.

From the outset of the Seven Years’ War, British commanders were forced to adjust their military strategy to combat the French. Having superior land forces at their disposal on the continent, and with an exposed eastern frontier, French commanders maintained a massive army on the home front to protect against hostile European powers. In doing so, King Louis XV abandoned his colonies in North America, leaving French colonists to fight off invaders.

King George II could not rely on his European army to compete with the Russian, French and Austrian forces. So instead, British commanders concentrated their armies in the North American theatre. While the British Amy ultimately proved successful in the French and Indian War, by 1759, Prussia was on the brink of collapse. For all the money the Royal Treasury poured into the Prussian State, Frederick II’s army was dwindling with each successive battle, and the Russian and Austrian armies were closing in on Berlin. To make matters worse, in 1759, French military strategists shifted their gaze from the continent to the British Isles. They amassed nearly 100,000 troops—an overwhelming force– in preparation for an invasion of Britain. French commanders planned to wait for a strong wind so they could quickly maneuver around the superior Royal Navy stationed in the English Channel.

Governing in the Shadows of the Glorious Revolution

Unlike his grandfather and great grandfather, George III was born and raised in England. His lineage hailed from the House of Hanover in modern day Germany. The first Hanoverian to assume the throne was King George I, who inherited the throne in 1714 upon Queen Anne’s passing. While there were several Catholics who had a stronger blood connection to Queen Anne, the Act of Settlement in 1701 prohibited Catholics from assuming the throne.

From the early years of his inheritance, George I faced an underground movement that wished to restore the Stuart monarchical line which had been deposed during the English Civil War and Glorious Revolution. Supporters of the Stuart line referred to themselves as Jacobites, and the more radical elements of this movement wished to rekindle the flames of the English Civil War by reversing the tide of anti-Catholic sentiment.

In 1715, and again in 1745, the Jacobites rebelled against the authority of the House of Hanover. In 1745, Charles Edward Stuart, the “Young Pretender” was decisively defeated at the Battle of Culloden, effectively ending the Jacobite rebellions. But Catholic resentment simmered beneath the surface well into the eighteenth century. While there were English subjects who were dissatisfied with the Hanoverian monarchy, their grievances would advance from the religious to the secular realm.

These ideas from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century were truly revolutionary, and throughout his reign, King George III would have to grapple with the realization of Enlightenment ideals. American colonists drew from Locke in their justifications for rebelling against the mother country, and establishing a republic in the wake of royal authority. Less than a decade following American independence, French citizens would draw on the concepts advanced by philosophes such as Voltaire, Rousseau and Montesquieu to rebel against their royal government. The belief that all subjects possessed natural rights, and that a social contract defined their relationship to the king provided eighteenth century citizens with the intellectual fodder for revolution.

Riots, Rogues and Rebellion

When King George III assumed the throne he still leaned heavily on the support of his tutors. Lacking political experience, George selected his tutor and mentor, John Stuart, the 3rd Earl of Bute to serve as his Prime Minister. Bute, like King George III, was politically inexperienced, but had ideas on how the British Empire should be governed. He advanced the concept of a king’s divine right to rule his people irrespective of the social contract. For this, Bute was mistrusted by Parliament and the people of England.

The Sugar Act reduced the tax of the Molasses Act from six pence per gallon, to three pence per gallon. By reducing the tax by half, Grenville believed the new act would reduce smuggling, and generate more revenue from the colonies. Instead, it did the opposite. The tax hit colonists during a period of economic recession, and while the tax was indirect, it was still felt by distilleries throughout North America. In flagrant violation of the Sugar Act, colonial merchants continued to smuggle molasses into the North American colonies from other parts of the world.

After returning to England from exile, John Wilkes was again imprisoned for publishing an article in the North Briton which slandered the King. As a result of his imprisonment, riots ensued in Britain. On May 10, 1768, British troops intervened by first reading the Riot Act to the mob assembled, and then the soldiers proceeded to shoot and kill six people. The event became known as the Massacre of St. George’s Fields, and this hardline approach to Parliamentary reformers would characterize the reign of King George III.

In 1780, a new wave of riots erupted with the passage of the Papists Act. Enacted in 1778, the act addressed the persecution of British Catholics that was officially sanctioned by the Popery Act of 1698. Lord George Gordon and the Protestant Association of London opposed the passage of the Papists Act. In 1780, Lord Gordon was granted an audience, and attempted to convince the king that the act would be destructive to his government, but King George was not persuaded.

On May 29, 1780, Lord Gordon called a meeting of the Protestant Association and together, they marched on the House of Commons to demand the repeal of the Papists Act. On June 2, almost 50,000 of Gordon’s followers appeared outside Westminster in support of the Protestant Association. They carried banners proclaiming “No Popery”, and wore the blue cockade of the Protestant Association in their hats. As Gordon presented the petition to the House of Commons, outside the Houses of Parliament, the ranks of the mob swelled and the protests turned violent. Members from the House of Lords, who were just arriving to take their seats in Parliament, were harassed and even physically assaulted as they tried to wade through the belligerent crowd.

The next day on June 3, the mob gathered again at Moorfields where they prepared for their next riot. That night, they attacked Newgate Prison and the Clink; allowing several inmates to escape and join the riots. The mob also vandalized the homes of several prominent Catholics and Catholic churches. By June 7, the mob was still sporadically rampaging when the British Army was summoned to quell the disturbance. When the riots ceased, 285 people were left mortally wounded.

Trouble Brewing in Boston

On March 5, 1770, Parliament repealed all of the Townshend duties save for the tax on the British East India Company tea. In response to Parliament’s resolve to uphold the tax on tea, King George remarked “there must always be one tax to keep up the right [to tax the colonies].” Tragically, on the very same day the Townshend duties were withdrawn, a series of street brawls turned into a heated altercation between soldiers of the 29th Regiment stationed in Boston, Massachusetts, and a mob that was gathering on King Street. After being pelted with rocks, brickbats, snowballs and clubs, the soldiers were finally overwhelmed. They opened fire on the crowd, and when the smoke cleared five lay mortally wounded.

With public opinion on his side, King George and Parliament set out to punish Boston for the destruction of the Crown’s tea. On June 1, 1774, the first of the five Coercive Acts took effect with the enactment of the Boston Port Act. The harbor would be closed until the shipments of teas were paid for by the town. Other acts included the Massachusetts Government Act, which stripped the colony of its ability to appoint government officials. Instead, the Massachusetts Government Act granted this right to Parliament, royal governors and the King alone. The Administration of Justice Act allowed for trials to be removed from a colony if the jury was understood to be biased.

The passage of the Coercive Acts in 1774 drove a wedge between Parliament and their colonial subjects. Patriots in Boston were upset that Parliament and King George stripped them of their previously enjoyed rights. Perhaps more unnerving was the presence of four thousand British regulars in Boston. As part of the Coercive Acts, the Quartering Act guaranteed residence for the British Army. With this reality in mind, provincial militias started to gather munitions, and store them in the countryside out of reach of the British regulars. In the early morning hours of April 19, 1775, General Thomas Gage dispatched seven hundred soldiers from Boston to march on Concord, Massachusetts to stop the rebellion before it could start. In the ensuing Battles of Lexington and Concord, the British Army was forced into a chaotic retreat and by night fall, the King’s Army was back in Boston, surrounded by a force of nearly four thousand Massachusetts militiamen.

The American Revolution

King George was now facing the threat of widespread rebellion in the North American colonies. The Continental Congress, which had been meeting since September of 1774, was debating how to supply this new provincial army and who should lead it. On June 14, 1775, the Second Continental Congress appointed George Washington to assume command of the disorganized militias that had surrounded Boston a month prior. But it was not in time. On June 17, 1775, General William Howe launched an assault on Charlestown and Breed’s Hill just north of Boston. The battle opened with a barrage from British warships stationed around the colonial entrenchments at Breed’s Hill. Taking command of the Continental Army was Israel Putnam, who ordered the militiamen to stand their ground against the assault. It would take the British regulars three frontal assaults to secure a victory at Bunker Hill.

Now, it was apparent to all that this would be a long and costly war. Following the appointment of George Washington to lead the Continental Army, the Second Continental Congress drafted a Declaration of Causes stating why it was necessary to take up armed resistance against the British Army. In addition, they assumed the role of government by issuing paper money to pay for the troops, and even assigned a committee to negotiate with foreign powers. While doing so, members of the Continental Congress still clung to the hope that there could be reconciliation between the thirteen colonies and the mother country.

In May of 1775, only weeks after the Battles of Lexington and Concord, members of the Continental Congress debated sending King George an Olive Branch Petition. John Dickinson of Pennsylvania believed that the opening of hostilities was due to a misunderstanding. Dickinson, like many of his eighteenth century contemporaries, believed that a group of wicked ministers clouded the King’s judgment, and if the colonies wrote to him directly, he might understand that it was not the fault of the North American colonists, but the English Parliament. John Adams on the other hand believed that war was inevitable, and the petition would not be well received.

Richard Penn and Arthur Lee left for England with the petition in hand, and arrived on August 21, 1775. They first met with Lord Dartmouth, the Secretary of State for the North American colonies. But their real objective was to bring the petition to King George so they could state their case. The king rejected them on the grounds that the Continental Congress was an unlawful assembly, and their dealings up to that point had been illegal.

By now, King George and Parliament had learned of the Battle of Bunker Hill, and the continued encirclement of Boston by the nascent Continental Army. But the King was more concerned with the mixed messages he was receiving from the Continental Congress. While delegates to the Continental Congress were debating the Olive Branch Petition in May, John Adams wrote a letter to a friend expressing the inevitability of war. In this letter, he suggested that the colonists should capture royal officials, and build a navy to protect the eastern seaboard. This letter was in the hands of King George only days before Arthur Lee and Richard Penn arrived in England. John Adams’ belligerent tone undermined all efforts by patriots to reach a peaceful accord with Parliament and King George III. By the time Lee and Penn were received, King George understood that all of the colonists were taking up arms against the Crown.

In response to the petition, on August 23 the king issued A Proclamation for Suppressing Rebellion and Sedition. The royal proclamation declared that the colonies were in a state of rebellion, and that the Crown would do its utmost to bring an end to hostilities. King George blamed the delegates of the Continental Congress stating the colonists were “misled by dangerous and ill-designing men.” Further, the king announced that the Crown will “accordingly strictly charge and command all of Our Officers as well Civil as Military; and all Our obedient and loyal subjects, to use their utmost Endeavors to withstand and suppress such rebellion.” The British government and the North American colonies were now at war.

In the early days of the conflict, the colonists struggled to wage war effectively. But in May 1775, Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold seized a retinue of canons from Fort Ticonderoga and Crown Point. By March of 1776, 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. On March 17, General Howe and the British Army evacuated the Shawmut Peninsula, leaving Boston in the hands of the Continental Army.

In August of 1776, 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, 1777. This victory gave the Continental Army hope, as France now joined the Americans in the War of Independence. Shortly after, Spain and the Dutch Republic joined the United States and France in their fight against the British Empire.

In spite of this King George was encouraged by Howe’s success in New York. George Washington and the Continental Army were on the retreat, and Howe’s force was numerically superior. In the winter of 1777-78, 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. In June of 1778, Washington’s Army emerged from the cold and sickness that characterized Valley Forge with a reinvigorated fighting spirit. On October 19, 1781, 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 1783, the Treaty of Paris secured a victory for the United States.

The Movement for Parliamentary Reform and the French Revolution

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 1783. Pitt was only twenty four years old, but was capable of reestablishing faith in George’s constitutional monarchy. But in 1788, that faith was shaken when the King suffered a bout of insanity believed to be caused by porphyria. During this time, William Pitt and Charles Fox made the decision to install his son, the Prince of Wales, as the regent in George’s absence. In February 1789, 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.

Then, on July 14, 1789 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. When the Brunswick Manifesto was read in Paris declaring the Duke of Brunswick’s intention to restore the Bourbons to the throne and punish revolutionaries, the Parisian population violently attacked prisoners in local jails. On September 5, 1792, thousands of prisoners of the revolution were massacred in the streets in what became known as the September Massacres. All hopes that France would follow Britain’s lead in establishing a constitutional monarchy were dashed.

Drawing on ideas from the Enlightenment, Maximillian Robespierre assumed de facto leadership of France in 1792 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, 1794. But by then, France’s reputation, and respect for the ideas from the age of enlightenment had been permanently damaged.