William I of the Netherlands (24 August 1772-12 December 1843) was King of the Netherlands and Grand Duke of Luxembourg from 16 March 1815 to 7 October 1840, preceding William II of the Netherlands.
Biography[]
William was born in Huis ten Bosch, United Provinces on 24 August 1772, the son of Prince Willem V of Orange and Wilhelmina of Prussia. He was made a general in the Dutch States Army in 1790, and he became commander-in-chief of the mobile army in February 1793 after the Netherlands entered the French Revolutionary Wars against the French Republic. He commanded the troops that took part in the Flanders campaign of 1793-95, and his most important battle was the Battle of Fleurus in 1794. In the winter of 1794-1795, French forces invaded the Netherlands, and Dutch revolutionaries took over the Dutch government in many places across the country. On 18 January 1795, the Stadtholder and the Prince of Orange both fled to Britain, going into exile as the Dutch Republic was replaced by the "Batavian Republic" client state of France. In 1799, he took part in a failed Anglo-Russian invasion of Holland, and he later served in the Prussian Army at the Battle of Jena-Auerstedt in 1806 and in the Austrian Reichsarmee at the Battle of Wagram in 1809.
Restoration to the throne[]
On 30 November 1813, during the final campaign against Napoleon I, William landed at Scheveningen in Holland, and he became "Sovereign Prince" of the United Netherlands on 20 November 1813. On 16 March 1815, after Napoleon's escape from Elba, William proclaimed himself "King of the Netherlands" and "Grand Duke of Luxembourg", backed by the powers at the Congress of Vienna. He divided the States General into two chambers, founded several trade institutions, founded the universities of Leuven, Ghent, and Liege, imposed Dutch as the official language of Flanders, failed to crush the Belgian Revolution, and fought against constitutional changes in 1840. The very conservative William refused to live with the constitutional changes, and he abdicated on 7 October 1840. He died in Berlin in 1843 at the age of 71.