King George III

George III (London, 4 June 1738 – Windsor, 29 January 1820) was King of Great Britain and Ireland from 25 October 1760 until the union of the two countries on 1 January 1801, becoming the first King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland until his death. He was also Duke and Prince-Elector of the Electorate of Brunswick-Lüneburg in the Holy Roman Empire until his promotion to King of Hanover on 12 October 1814. George was the third British monarch from the House of Hanover. King of the United Kingdom and Hanover Reign October 25, 1760 January 29, 1820 Coronation September 22, 1761 Predecessor George II Successor George IV Regent George, Prince of Wales (1811–1820)

Birth June 4, 1738

Norfolk House, London, Great Britain Death January 29, 1820 (age 81)

Windsor Castle, Windsor, Berkshire, United Kingdom Buried in February 16, 1820, St. George's Chapel, Windsor, Berkshire, England Full name George William Frederick Wife Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz Offspring George IV of the United Kingdom Frederick, Duke of York and Albany William IV of the United Kingdom Charlotte, Princess Royal Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn Augusta Sofia of the United Kingdom Elizabeth of the United Kingdom Ernest Augustus I of Hanover Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex Adolphus, Duke of Cambridge Mary of the United Kingdom Sofia of the United Kingdom Octavian of Great Britain Alfred of Great Britain Amelia of the United Kingdom Home Hanover Father Frederick, Prince of Wales Mother Augusta of Saxe-Gotha Religion Anglican Church

His life and reign were marked by political disputes in Parliament and a series of military conflicts, primarily against France, which Britain eventually defeated in the Seven Years' War. However, many of its North American colonies were soon lost in the American War of Independence. Further wars, beginning in 1793 against Revolutionary and Napoleonic France, concluded with the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. For the rest of his life, George suffered from a recurring and ultimately permanent mental disorder. Doctors were perplexed by his condition, although it has since been believed that the king suffered from porphyria. After a final relapse in 1810, a regency was established, and George, Prince of Wales, George III's eldest son and heir, reigned as Prince Regent. When George III died in 1820, the Prince Regent succeeded his father as George IV. Historical analyses of George III's life have been a "kaleidoscope of changing opinion" that have depended heavily on the prejudices of his biographers and the available sources.[1] His reputation in the United States was that of a tyrant, and in the United Kingdom he became "the scapegoat for the failure of imperialism", until a major reassessment during the second half of the 20th century.

George William Frederick (George William Frederick) was born at Norfolk House, London, on 4 June 1738, the eldest son of Frederick, Prince of Wales, and Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, and also a grandson of King George II of Great Britain. Born two months premature and believed to be a poor survivor, he was baptized the same day by Thomas Secker, the Bishop of Oxford. Secker baptized him again a month later in a public ceremony. His godparents were King Frederick I of Sweden (played by Lord Charles Calvert, 5th Baron Baltimore), his uncle Frederick III, Duke of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg (played by Lord Henry Brydges, Marquess of Carnarvon), and his great-aunt Sophie Dorothea of ​​Hanover (played by Charlotte Edwin). George grew up a healthy but reserved and shy child. The family moved to Leicester Square, where he and his brother Eduardo were educated by private tutors. Letters show that he could read and write in English and German, as well as comment on political events, as early as the age of eight. He was the first English monarch to systematically study science. In addition to chemistry and physics, his studies included astronomy, mathematics, French, Latin, history, music, geography, commerce, agriculture, and constitutional law, as well as dance, fencing, and horsemanship. His religious upbringing was entirely Anglican. At the age of ten, George participated in a family production of Joseph Addison's play "Cato," and said in the prologue, "What, thou boy! May it be truly said, a boy born in England, in England bred." Historian Romney Sedgwick says this line appears "to be the source of the only historical phrase with which he is associated."

His grandfather, King George II, disliked the Prince of Wales and took little interest in his grandchildren. However, Frederick died in 1751 of a lung wound, and George became heir apparent to the throne. He inherited one of his father's titles and became the Duke of Edinburgh. Now more interested in his grandson, the king three weeks later created him the new Prince of Wales. In the spring of 1756, George II offered him grand apartments at St. James's Palace, but he declined, guided by his mother and her confidant, Lord John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute, his future prime minister.[10] Augusta, now the Dowager Princess of Wales, preferred to keep him at home where she could imbue him with her firm moral values.

In 1759, George fell in love with Sarah Lennox, sister of Lord Charles Lennox, 3rd Duke of Richmond, but Lord Bute advised against the union, and George eventually abandoned his thoughts of marriage. "I was born for the happiness or misery of a great nation," he wrote, "and consequently I must often act contrary to my passions." Even so, his grandfather attempted to marry him to Duchess Sophia Caroline of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, but these met with resistance from Augusta. George II died on October 25, 1760, and George ascended the throne at the age of 22. The search for a suitable wife intensified. The new king eventually married Princess Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz on September 8, 1761, at St. James's Palace; the two met for the first time on their wedding day. Two weeks later, they were both crowned at Westminster Abbey. Remarkably, George never took a mistress (unlike his grandfather and his own children), and the couple had a genuinely happy marriage. They had 15 children, nine boys and six girls. George purchased Buckingham House in 1762 as a family retreat. His other residences were Kew Palace and Windsor Castle. St. James's was kept for official use. He did not travel much, spending his entire life in southern England. In the 1790s, the king and the royal family vacationed at Weymouth, Dorset, thus popularizing one of England's first seaside resorts.

In late 1810, at the height of his popularity but suffering from rheumatic pains and nearly blind with cataracts, George fell seriously ill again. He believed the relapse was caused by the stress of the death of his youngest and favorite daughter, Princess Amelia. The princess's nurse reported that "the scenes of despair and weeping every day... were melancholy beyond description." He accepted the need for the Regency Act 1811, with the Prince of Wales acting as regent for the remainder of George's life. Despite signs of recovery in May 1811, by the end of the year the king had become permanently insane and lived in seclusion at Windsor Castle until his death. Spencer Percival was assassinated in 1812 (the only British prime minister to die in this manner), and was succeeded by Lord Robert Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool. He oversaw the British victory in the Napoleonic Wars. The subsequent Congress of Vienna led to significant territorial gains for Hanover, which was elevated from an electorate to a kingdom. Meanwhile, George's health deteriorated. He suffered from dementia and became completely blind and increasingly deaf. He was unable to recognize or comprehend that he had been declared King of Hanover in 1814 and that his wife had died in 1818. At Christmas 1819, he spoke nonsense for 58 hours, and in his final weeks he was unable to walk. He died at Windsor at 8:38 p.m. on 29 January 1820, six days after the death of his fourth son, Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn. His favorite son, Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany, was at his side. George was buried on 16 February in St George's Chapel.

George lived for 81 years and 239 days, reigning for 59 years and 96 days; both his life and reign were longer than any of his predecessors. Since then, only Queens Victoria and Elizabeth II have lived and reigned longer. George was nicknamed "Farmer George" by humorists, initially to mock his interest in worldly rather than political matters, but later to contrast his homely frugality with the grandeur of his son and successor, George IV, and to represent him as a man of the people. Under George III, who was keenly interested in and loved agriculture, the British Agrarian Revolution reached its peak, and great advances were made in science and industry. His collection of mathematical and scientific instruments is now housed in the Science Museum, London; He financed the construction and maintenance of William Herschel's enormous telescope, the largest ever built. When Herschel discovered the planet Uranus in 1781, he first named it Georgium Sidus (George's Star) in honor of the king. George hoped that "the tongue of malice may never paint my intentions in the colors it admires, nor the flatterer extol me beyond my due." In the popular mind, he was both demonized and praised. Although very popular among the American colonists early in his reign, by the 1770s George had lost the loyalty of the American Revolutionaries, with at least half the colonists estimated to have remained loyal. The grievances in the American Declaration of Independence were presented as "repeated injuries and usurpations" that he committed to establish an "absolute tyranny" over the colonies. The wording of the declaration contributed to the American public perception of George as a tyrant.

Contemporary accounts of George's life are divided into two camps: one demonstrating "dominant attitudes in the later part of his reign, when the king became a revered symbol of national resistance to French ideas and French power," while the other "derives its views of the king from the bitter partisan strife of the first two decades of his reign, and they express in their works the opposing views." Based on the latter of these two assessments, nineteenth- and early twentieth-century British historians such as Sir George Trevelyan and Erskine May promoted hostile interpretations of George's life. However, the work of Lewis Bernstein Namier, who viewed George as "much maligned," initiated a mid-twentieth-century reassessment of the man and his reign. Scholars of the second half of the twentieth century, such as Herbert Butterfield and Richard Pares, are inclined to treat the king sympathetically, seeing him as a victim of circumstance and his illness. Butterfield dismisses the arguments of his Victorian predecessors with withering disdain: "Erskine May must be a good example of the way in which a historian may fall into error through an excess of brilliance. His capacity for synthesis and his ability to link together the various parts of the evidence...led him to a deeper and more complicated elaboration of error than some of his pedestrian predecessors...he inserted a doctrinal element into his history which, together with his original aberrations, was calculated to project the lines of his error, carrying his work still further from centrality or truth." In prosecuting war against the American colonists, George believed he was defending the right of an elected parliament to levy taxes, rather than seeking to expand his own powers and prerogatives. In the view of most modern scholars, during George's reign the monarchy continued to lose political power and grew into the embodiment of national morality.

4 June 1738 – 31 March 1751: His Royal Highness Prince George of Wales 31 March 1751 – 25 October 1760: His Royal Highness The Duke of Edinburgh 20 April 1751 – 25 October 1760: His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales October 25, 1760 – January 29, 1820: His Majesty the King In Great Britain, his official style was "George the Third, by the Grace of God King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, and so on." In 1801, when Great Britain was united with Ireland, he abandoned the title "King of France", which had been used by all British monarchs since Edward III's claim to the French throne in the Middle Ages. His style became "George the Third, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith." In Germany, he was the "Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, Archtreasurer and Prince-Elector of the Holy Roman Empire" until the end of the empire in 1806. He remained the duke until the Congress of Vienna declared him "King of Hanover" in 1814.

Historians believe that King George III had porphyria, one of a group of rare diseases caused by an alteration in the production of hemoglobin enzymes.

According to the Brazilian Porphyria Association (Abrapo), it is estimated that 1 in 10,000 Brazilians carries some genetic mutation. Porphyria, however, is even rarer: the number drops to 1 to 5 in 100,000 people. This is a group of at least eight different rare diseases that originate from a deficiency in the biosynthesis of heme (a component of hemoglobin essential for transporting oxygen to the body's cells). Chemical substances, called porphyrins, attach to cells as they are created by the body. This accumulation then manifests certain symptoms in the nervous system or skin. In addition to genetic and hereditary predisposition, other factors that favor the development of this disease, which, if not properly treated, can lead to death, include: specific diets; alcohol consumption; hormones; stress; excessive sun exposure.

The symptoms of porphyria are very similar to those of other diseases, which can initially make diagnosis difficult. According to Abrapo, the main symptoms are: abdominal discomfort; pain, redness and burning of the skin; skin blisters; reddish or brown urine; leg pain; nausea and vomiting; muscle weakness; heart palpitations; mental confusion; disorientation. These blood disorders are prevented, diagnosed or treated by hematologists, specialists in blood diseases.