April 24, 1533: Birth of Willem I the Silent, Prince of Orange

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Anne of Saxony, Dutch Uprising, King Philip II of Spain, Margaret of Parma, Prince of Orange, Stadtholder of Holland, the Netherlands, Willem the Silent, William the Silent, Zeeland and Utrecht

Willem the Silent (April 24, 1533 – July 10, 1584) was the main leader of the Dutch Revolt against the Spanish Habsburgs that set off the Eighty Years’ War (1568–1648) and resulted in the formal independence of the United Provinces in 1581. Born into the House of Nassau, he became Prince of Orange in 1544 and is thereby the founder of the Orange-Nassau branch and the ancestor of the monarchy of the Netherlands. In the Netherlands, he is also known as Father of the Fatherland.

Early life and education

Willem was born on April 24, 1533 at Dillenburg Castle in the County of Nassau-Dillenburg, in the Holy Roman Empire. He was the eldest son of Count Wilhelm I of Nassau-Dillenburg and Juliana of Stolberg.

Willem’s father had one surviving daughter by his previous marriage, and his mother had four surviving children by her previous marriage. His parents had twelve children together, of whom Willem was the eldest; he had four younger brothers and seven younger sisters. The family was religiously devout and Willem was raised a Lutheran.

In 1544, Willem’s agnatic first cousin, René of Châlon, Prince of Orange, died in the siege of St Dizier, childless. In his testament, René of Chalon named Willem the heir to all his estates and titles, including that of Prince of Orange, on the condition that he receive a Roman Catholic education.

Willem’s father acquiesced to this condition on behalf of his 11-year-old son, and this was the founding of the House of Orange-Nassau. Besides the Principality of Orange (located today in France) and significant lands in Germany, Willem also inherited vast estates in the Low Countries (present-day Netherlands and Belgium) from his cousin. Because of Willem’s young age, Emperor Charles V, who was the overlord of most of these estates, served as regent until Williem was old enough to rule them himself.

On July 6, 1551, Willem married Anna, daughter and heir of Maximiliaan van Egmond, an important Dutch nobleman, a match that had been secured by Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. Anna’s father had died in 1548, and therefore Willem became Lord of Egmond and Count of Buren upon his wedding day. The marriage was a happy one and produced three children, one of whom died in infancy. Anna died on March 24, 1558, aged 25, leaving Willem much grieved.

On August 25, 1561, Willem of Orange married for the second time. Willem’s second wife was Anna of Saxony, the daughter of Maurice, Elector of Saxony, and Agnes, eldest daughter of Philipp I, Landgrave of Hesse

His new wife was described by contemporaries as “self-absorbed, weak, assertive, and cruel”, and it is generally assumed that Willem married her to gain more influence in Saxony, Hesse and the Palatinate. The couple had five children. They divorced in 1571.

The marriage used Lutheran rites, and marked the beginning of a gradual change in his religious opinions, which was to lead Willem to revert to Lutheranism and eventually moderate Calvinism. Still, he remained tolerant of other religious opinions.

Up to this time Willem’s life had been marked by lavish display and extravagance. He surrounded himself with a retinue of young noblemen and dependents and kept open house in his magnificent Nassau palace at Brussels.

Consequently the revenue of his vast estates was not sufficient to prevent him being crippled by debt. But after his return from France, a change began to come over Willem. King Felipe II of Spain made him councillor of state, knight of the Golden Fleece, and stadtholder of Holland, Zeeland and Utrecht, but there was a latent antagonism between the natures of the two men.

Willem married for a third time to the former Abbess of Jouarre, Charlotte de Bourbon-Montpensier, a daughter of Louis II of Bourbon, Duke of Montpensier, and his first wife, Jacqueline de Longwy.

Willem also served the Habsburgs as a member of the court of Margaret of Parma, governor of the Spanish Netherlands and natural half-sister to Felipe II.

The Dutch uprising began with the increased opposition to Spanish rule among the then mostly Catholic population of the Netherlands. Lastly, the opposition wished to see an end to the presence of Spanish troops.

Willem was unhappy with the centralisation of political power away from the local estates and with the Spanish persecution of Dutch Protestants, Willem joined the Dutch uprising and turned against his former masters. The most influential and politically capable of the rebels, he led the Dutch to several successes in the fight against the Spanish. Declared an outlaw by Felipe II of Spain in 1580, he was assassinated by Balthasar Gérard in Delft in 1584.

Willem’s eldest son, Philip Willem, by his first wife Anna van Egmont, succeeded him as Prince of Orange.

On this date in History: June 4, 1941. Death of Wilhelm II, German Emperor and King of Prussia.

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Augusta Viktoria of Schleswig-Holstein, Frederick William IV of Prussia, Friedrich III of Germany, German Emperor, German Empire, Huis Doorn, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Princess Hermine of Reuss-Greiz, the Netherlands, Victoria Princess Royal, Wilhelm I of Germany, Wilhelm II, Wilhelm II of Germany, World War I

Wilhelm II (Friedrich Wilhelm Viktor Albert; January 27, 1859 – June 4, 1941) was the last German Emperor and King of Prussia, ruling the German Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia from June 15, 1888 to his abdication November 9, 1918. He was the eldest grandchild of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and related to many monarchs and princes of Europe, most notably King George V of the United Kingdom and Emperor Nicholas II of Russia.

Wilhelm II, German Emperor and King of Prussia

Wilhelm was born at the Crown Prince’s Palace, Berlin, to Prince Friedrich-Wilhelm of Prussia (the future Friedrich III) and his wife, Victoria, Princess Royal, the eldest daughter of Britain’s Queen Victoria and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.

At the time of his birth, his great-uncle Friedrich-Wilhelm IV was king of Prussia, and his grandfather and namesake Wilhelm was acting as Regent. He was the first grandchild of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, but more important, as the first son of the Crown Prince of Prussia, Wilhelm was second in the line of succession to Prussia, from 1861 onwards and also, after 1871, to the newly created German Empire, which, according to the constitution of the German Empire, was ruled by the King of Prussia. At the time of his birth, he was also sixth in the line of succession to the British throne, after his maternal uncles and his mother.

Friedrich III, German Emperor and King of Prussia (Father)

Princess Victoria, Princess Royal of the United Kingdom (Mother)

In 1863, Wilhelm was taken to England to be present at the wedding of his Uncle Bertie (later King Edward VII), and Princess Alexandra of Denmark. Wilhelm attended the ceremony in a Highland costume, complete with a small toy dirk. During the ceremony, the four-year-old became restless. His eighteen-year-old uncle, Prince Alfred, charged with keeping an eye on him, told him to be quiet, but Wilhelm drew his dirk and threatened Alfred. When Alfred attempted to subdue him by force, Wilhelm bit him on the leg.

First Marriage

Wilhelm and his first wife, Princess Augusta-Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein, were married on February 27, 1881. Princess Augusta-Victoria was the eldest daughter of Friedrich VIII, future Duke of Schleswig-Holstein and Princess Adelheid of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, a great-niece of Queen Victoria. She grew up at Dolzig until the death of her grandfather, Christian-August II, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg, in 1869. The family then moved to Primkenau to a country estate her father inherited.

Princess Augusta-Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein

Wilhelm and Princess Augusta-Victoria had seven children.

Accession

Wilhelm’ s father, Emperor Wilhelm I, died in Berlin on March 9 1888, and Prince Wilhelm’s father ascended the throne as Emperor Friedrich III. Friedrich was already suffering from an incurable throat cancer and spent all 99 days of his reign fighting the disease before dying, which occurred on June 15, of that same year. His 29-year-old son succeeded him as Wilhelm II, German Emperor and King of Prussia.

Wilhelm II took control of foreign and military policy with a bellicose “New Course” to cement Germany’s status as a respected world power. However, he frequently undermined this goal by making tactless, bombastic and alarming public statements without seeking his ministers’ advice.

Additionally, his regime did much to alienate itself from the other Great Powers by initiating a massive naval build-up, and challenging French control of Morocco. His turbulent reign ultimately culminated in Germany’s absolute guarantee of military support to Austria-Hungary during the crisis of July 1914, one of the key developments leading to the outbreak of World War I.

A lax wartime leader, he left virtually all decision-making regarding military strategy and organisation of the war effort to the Great General Staff. This broad delegation of authority gave rise to a de facto military dictatorship whose belligerent foreign policy led to the United States’ entry into the war on 6 April 1917. Thereafter Wilhelm’s roll was regulated to that of a figurehead. After losing the support of the German military and his subjects in November 1918, Wilhelm abdicated and fled to exile in the Netherlands.

Second Marriage

Empress Augusta-Victoria known affectionately as “Dona”, was a constant companion to Wilhelm, and her death on April 11, 1921 was a devastating blow. It also came less than a year after their son Prince Joachim committed suicide.

The following January, Wilhelm received a birthday greeting from a son of the late Prince Johann-George of Schönaich-Carolath. The 63-year-old Wilhelm invited the boy and his mother, Princess Hermine of Reuss-Greiz, to Doorn. Wilhelm found Hermine very attractive, and greatly enjoyed her company. The couple were wed in Doors on November 9, 1922 , despite the objections of Wilhelm’s monarchist supporters and his children. Hermine’s daughter, Princess Henriette, married the late Prince Joachim’s son, Prince Charles-Franz-Josef, in 1940, but divorced in 1946. Hermine remained a constant companion to the ageing former emperor until his death.

Antisemitism

Wilhelm’s biographer Lamar Cecil identified Wilhelm’s “curious but well-developed anti-Semitism”, noting that in 1888 a friend of Wilhelm “declared that the young Emperor’s dislike of his Hebrew subjects, one rooted in a perception that they possessed an overweening influence in Germany, was so strong that it could not be overcome”. Cecil concludes: Wilhelm never changed, and throughout his life he believed that Jews were perversely responsible, largely through their prominence in the Berlin press and in leftist political movements, for encouraging opposition to his rule.

Exile

On November 10, 1918, Wilhelm II crossed the border by train and went into exile in the Netherlands, which had remained neutral throughout the war. Upon the conclusion of the Treaty of Versailles in early 1919, Article 227 expressly provided for the prosecution of Wilhelm “for a supreme offence against international morality and the sanctity of treaties”, but the Dutch government refused to extradite him, despite appeals from the Allies. King George V wrote that he looked on his cousin as “the greatest criminal in history”, but opposed Prime Minister David Lloyd George’s proposal to “hang the Kaiser”.

Wilhelm first settled in Amerongen, where on November 28, he issued a belated official statement of abdication from both the Prussian and imperial thrones, thus formally ending the Hohenzollerns’ 400-year rule over Prussia. Accepting the reality that he had lost both of his crowns for good, he gave up his rights to “the throne of Prussia and to the German Imperial throne connected therewith.” He also released his soldiers and officials in both Prussia and the empire from their oath of loyalty to him.

He purchased a country house in the municipality of Doorn, known as Huis Doorn, and moved in on May 15, 1920. This was to be his home for the remainder of his life. The Weimar Republic allowed Wilhelm to remove twenty-three railway wagons of furniture, twenty-seven containing packages of all sorts, one bearing a car and another a boat, from the New Palace at Potsdam.

Wilhelm died of a pulmonary embolus in Doorn, Netherlands, on June 4, 1941, at the age of 82, just weeks before the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union. German soldiers had been guarding his house. Hitler, however, was angered that the former monarch had an honor guard of German troops and nearly fired the general who ordered them when he found out. Despite his personal animosity toward Wilhelm, Hitler wanted to bring his body back to Berlin for a state funeral, as he regarded Wilhelm a symbol of Germany and Germans during World War I. Hitler felt that such a funeral would demonstrate to the Germans the direct descent of the Third Reich from the old German Empire, thereby giving his regime a sense of continuity.

However, Wilhelm’s wished to return to Germany only after the restoration of the monarchy. The Nazi occupational authorities granted him a small military funeral, with a few hundred people present. The mourners included August von Mackensen, fully dressed in his old imperial Life Hussars uniform, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, and Reichskommissar for the Netherlands Arthur Seyss-Inquart, along with a few other military advisers. However, Wilhelm’s request that the swastika and other Nazi regalia be not displayed at his funeral was ignored, and they are featured in the photographs of the event taken by a Dutch photographer.

Wilhelm was buried in a mausoleum in the grounds of Huis Doorn, which has since become a place of pilgrimage for German monarchists. Small but enthusiastic and faithful numbers of them gather there every year on the anniversary of his death to pay their homage to the last German Emperor.

William & Mary proclaimed joint sovereigns.

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Felipe II of Spain, Glorious Revolution, King William III of England, Kings and Queens of England, Kings and Queens of Ireland, kings and queens of Scotland, Queen Mary I of England, the Netherlands, William and Mary

On this date in History: February 13, 1689. William III-II and Mary II were created joint sovereigns of England, Scotland and Ireland.

William III (Dutch: Willem; November 4, 1650 – March 8, 1702), also widely known as William of Orange, was sovereign Prince of Orange from birth, Stadtholder of Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Gelderland and Overijssel in the Dutch Republic from 1672 and King of England, Ireland and Scotland from 1689 until his death in 1702. As King of Scotland, he is known as William II. He is sometimes informally known in Northern Ireland and Scotland as “King Billy.”

William III-II, Prince of Orange, Stadtholder of Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Gelderland and Overijssel in the Dutch Republic. King of England, Ireland and Scotland.

Mary II (April 30, 1662 – December 28, 1694) was Queen of England, Scotland, and Ireland, co-reigning with her husband and first cousin, King William III and II, from 1689 until her death; popular histories usually refer to their joint reign as that of William and Mary. William and Mary, both Protestants, became king and queen regnant following the Glorious Revolution, which resulted in the adoption of the English Bill of Rights and the deposition of her Roman Catholic father, James II and VII. William became sole ruler upon her death in 1694. He reigned as such until his own death in 1702, when he was succeeded by Mary’s sister Anne.

Mary II, Queen of England, Scotland, and Ireland.

William summoned a Convention Parliament in England, which met on January 22, 1689, to discuss the appropriate course of action following James’s flight. William felt insecure about his position; though his wife preceded him in the line of succession to the throne, he wished to reign as king in his own right, rather than as a mere consort. The only precedent for a joint monarchy in England dated from the 16th century, when Queen Mary I married Felipe II of Spain. Felipe II remained king only during his wife’s lifetime, and restrictions were placed on his power.

William, on the other hand, demanded that he remain as king even after his wife’s death. When the majority of Tory Lords proposed to acclaim her as sole ruler, William threatened to leave the country immediately. Furthermore, Mary, remaining loyal to her husband, refused.

The House of Commons, with a Whig majority, quickly resolved that the throne was vacant, and that it was safer if the ruler were Protestant. There were more Tories in the House of Lords, which would not initially agree, but after William refused to be a regent or to agree to remain king only in his wife’s lifetime, there were negotiations between the two houses and the Lords agreed by a narrow majority that the throne was vacant. The Commons made William accept a Bill of Rights, and, on February 13, 1689, Parliament passed the Declaration of Right, in which it deemed that James, by attempting to flee, had abdicated the government of the realm, thereby leaving the throne vacant.

The Crown was not offered to James’s infant son, who would have been the heir apparent under normal circumstances, but to William III-II and Mary II as joint sovereigns. It was, however, provided that “the sole and full exercise of the regal power be only in and executed by the said Prince of Orange in the names of the said Prince and Princess during their joint lives.”

William III-II and Mary II were crowned together at Westminster Abbey on April 11, 1689 by the Bishop of London, Henry Compton. Normally, the coronation is performed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, but the Archbishop at the time, William Sancroft, refused to recognise James’s removal.

William also summoned a Convention of the Estates of Scotland, which met on March 14, 1689 and sent a conciliatory letter, while James sent haughty uncompromising orders, swaying a majority in favour of William. On April 11 the day of the English coronation, the Convention finally declared that James was no longer King of Scotland. William II and Mary II were offered the Scottish Crown; they accepted on May 11.

The Declaration of Breda.

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Breda, Charles II of England and Scotland, English Civil War, General Monck, Kings and Queens of England, kings and queens of Scotland, Restoration, The Declaration of Breda, the Netherlands

On this date in History: April 4, 1660. Charles II, King of England, Scotland and Ireland issues The Declaration of Breda.

The Declaration of Breda (dated April 4, 1660) was a proclamation by Charles II of England, Scotland and Ireland in which he promised a general pardon for crimes committed during the English Civil War and the Interregnum for all those who recognised Charles as the lawful king; the retention by the current owners of property purchased during the same period; religious toleration; and the payment of pay arrears to members of the army, and that the army would be recommissioned into service under the crown. The first three pledges were all subject to amendment by acts of parliament.

The declaration was named after the city of Breda in the Netherlands. It was actually written in the Spanish Netherlands, where Charles had been residing since March 1656; however, at the time of writing, England had been at war with Spain since 1655. To overcome the difficulties, both practical and in terms of public relations, of a prospective King of England addressing his subjects from enemy territory, Monck advised Charles to relocate himself to the United Netherlands, and to date his letters as if they were posted from Breda. Charles left Brussels, his last residence in the Spanish Netherlands, and passing through Antwerp arrived in Breda on April 4, and resided there until May.

Backgrounds

The declaration was written in response to a secret message sent by General George Monck, who was then in effective control of England. Monk believed, as the country was beginning to succumb to anarchy, that the king could be the only person to restore stability to the realm. On May 1, 1660, the contents of the declaration and accompanying letters were made public. The next day Parliament passed a resolution that “government ought to be by King, Lords and Commons” and Charles was invited to England to receive his crown. On May 8, Charles was proclaimed King. On the advice of Monck, the commons rejected a resolution put forward by jurist Matthew Hale (a member for Gloucestershire) for a committee to be formed to look into the concessions offered by Charles and to negotiate conditions with the King such as those put forward to his father in the treaty of Newport.

Contents

The declaration was drawn up by Charles and his three chief advisors, Edward Hyde, the James Butler, Marquis of Ormond, and Sir Edward Nicholas, in order to state the terms by which Charles hoped to take up “the possession of that right which God and Nature hath made our due”.

The declaration promised a “free and general pardon” to any old enemies of Charles and of his father who recognised Charles II as their lawful monarch, “excepting only such persons as shall hereafter be excepted by parliament”. However it had always been Charles’s expectation, or at least that of his chancellor, Edward Hyde (later Earl of Clarendon), that all who had been immediately concerned in his father’s death should be punished, and even while at a disadvantage, while professing pardon and favour to many, he had constantly excepted the regicides.

Once Charles was restored to the throne, on his behalf Hyde steered the Indemnity and Oblivion Act through parliament. The act pardoned most who had sided with Parliament during the Civil War, but excepted the regicides, two prominent unrepentant republicans, John Lambert and Henry Vane the Younger, and around another twenty were forbidden to take any public office or sit in Parliament.

In the declaration Charles promised religious toleration in areas where it did not disturb the peace of the kingdom, and an act of parliament for the “granting of that indulgence”. However parliament chose to interpret the threat of peace to the kingdom to include the holding of public office by non-Anglicans. Between 1660 and 1665 the Cavalier Parliament passed four statutes that became known as the Clarendon Code. These severely limited the rights of Roman Catholics and nonconformists, such as the Puritans who had reached the zenith of their influence under the Commonwealth, effectively excluding them from national and local politics.

The declaration undertook to settle the back-pay of General Monck’s soldiers. The landed classes were reassured that establishing the justice of contested grants and purchases of estates that had been made “in the continued distractions of so many years and so many and great revolutions” was to be determined in Parliament. Charles II appeared to have “offered something to everyone in his terms for resuming government”.

Copies of the Declaration were delivered to both houses of the Convention Parliament by Sir John Grenville. Other copies with separate covering letters were delivered to Lord General George Monck to be communicated to the Lord President of the Council of State and to the Officers of the Army under his command, and to the Generals of the “Navy at Sea” and to the Lord Mayor of London.

What makes a Kingdom?

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Adolph of Luxembourg, Baden, Holy Roman Empire, Kingdom, Luxembourg, Napoleon, Reichsdeputationshauptschluss, the Netherlands, Württemberg, Willem III of the Netherlands

This entry is more about examining some unanswered questions than and observations. Throughout European history many kingdoms have come and gone. What has intrigued me is the decisions for some of these realms to be a kingdom while some held lower titles. The thing that intrigues me is that there are no hard, set-in-stone, criteria for what state or territory should be called a kingdom. Geographical size and population do not seem to matter. Here is a dictionary definition of a kingdom.

king·dom  [king-duhm]
noun
1. a state or government having a king or queen as its head.
2. anything conceived as constituting a realm or sphere of independent action or control: the kingdom of thought.
3. a realm or province of nature, especially one of the three broad divisions of natural objects: the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms.
4. Biology . a taxonomic category of the highest rank, grouping together all forms of life having certain fundamental characteristics in common: in the five-kingdom classification scheme adopted by many biologists, separate kingdoms are assigned to animals (Animalia), plants (Plantae), fungi (Fungi), protozoa and eucaryotic algae (Protista), and bacteria and blue-green algae (Monera).
the spiritual sovereignty of God or Christ.

Here is the definition of a realm from Wikipedia.

A realm ( /ˈrɛlm/) is a community or territory over which a sovereign rules; it is commonly used to describe a kingdom or other monarchical or dynastic state.

The Old French word reaume, modern French royaume, was the word first adopted in English; the fixed modern spelling does not appear until the beginning of the 17th century. The word supposedly derives from medieval Latin regalimen, from regalis, of or belonging to a rex, (king).[1]
“Realm” is particularly used for those states whose name includes the word kingdom (for example, the United Kingdom), to avoid clumsy repetition of the word in a sentence (for example, “The Queen’s realm, the United Kingdom…”). It is also useful to describe those countries whose monarchs are called something other than “king” or “queen”; for example, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg is a realm but not a kingdom since its monarch holds the title Grand Duke rather than King.

From my research it seems who holds the title of a king or queen is pretty arbitrary. I have read that only an emperor can grant the title of king or queen. However, that doesn’t seem to be true. The Congress of Vienna created the Electorate of Hanover a kingdom in 1814 and I do not think any emperor granted that title. In 1830 Belgium became a sovereign state and decided upon a constitutional monarchy and chose Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to be their king. They could have just as easily have called Belgium a Grand Duchy although I don’t think Leopold would have been happy with a lesser title.

Speaking of separation of states and titles, in 1890, when King Willem III of the Netherlands died, he was also the Grand Duke of Luxembourg, but because Luxembourg went by the Salic Law which barred women from ruling in their own right, the throne of the Netherlands went to Willem III’s daughter, Queen Wilhelmina, while Luxembourg went to the the nearest male relative, Adolphus of Nassau-Weilburg. I always wondered, with Luxembourg now separate from the Netherlands could they have elevated their rulers title to that of king?

One of the more curious discrepancies (from my point of view) over the creations of a kingdom and its arbitrary nature is between the states of Baden and Württemberg. For a long period of their respective histories within the Holy Roman Empire both Baden and Württemberg were duchies. However, it must be noted that during that portion of their history Baden was not unified and several lines of the House of Zähringen ruled over Baden. It became unified under Duke Carl-Friedrich of Baden-Durlach after the death of August-Georg of Baden-Baden in 1771 without heirs.

In 1803 came the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss which was a redistribution and restructuring of the empire which resulted in the secularization of ecclesiastical principalities and mediatisation of numerous small secular principalities and Free Imperial Cities. This act created more imperial electors (those in charge of electing the emperor) and the rulers of both Baden and Württemberg were made electors of the empire.

However, this new reorganization of the empire was short lived for within three years the empire itself was dissolved. As the empire was dissolving in those early years of the 19th century, the rulers of Baden and Württemberg sided with Napoleon who had his carving knives out eager to incorporate former German territories into his empire. For their support of Napoleon both of their territories were expanded and titles were elevated. This is where the arbitrary nature of the what constitutes a kingdom come in. Baden became a Grand Duchy while Württemberg became a kingdom. Even though Württemberg was the larger territory, although not by much, both states had been a duchy and then briefly an electorate within the empire. The same situation existed in Saxony. It too, became a kingdom after having been an electorate and this state was even smaller than Baden. So why was Württemberg and Saxony elevated to kingdom status while Baden became only a Grand Duchy? I have never found an answer to that question. I wonder if it was ever considered to raise Baden to the kingdom?

Questions like these make history fun for me. History often talks about what happened I like to find out why things happened the way they did.

 

 

Charlemagne.

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Augustus Ceasar, Belgium, Byzantine Empire, Charlemagne, Charles the Great, Emperor Augustus, France, Germany, Louis the Pious, Luxembourg Italy, Otto the Great, Pope Leo III, Roman Empire, the Netherlands

He was named Charles and it is one of the very rare people, I honestly cannot think of another, who had their name and sobriquet actually become their entire name. He was called Charles the Great and in Latin this was Carolus Magnus and this was rendered in English Charlemagne. He was the eldest son of Pepin the Short, King of the Franks and his wife Bertrada of Laon. When his father died in 768 Charlemagne was co-king with his brother Carloman for a brief time.

Books have been written about him and I could not do a biography justice in this small blog. As with other recent entries I will focus solely on what I admire about him. Charlemagne was a man ahead of his times. He would be the first of a list of European rulers to have forged an empire after the fall of Rome. Although some historians debate whether he founded the Holy Roman Empire or Otto of Franconia was the founder, the fact remains his empire would have repercussions throughout Europe for over a thousand years.

Charles ruled the Kingdom of the Franks from 768 until 800 when he was crowned Emperor by Pope Leo III on Christmas day of that year. He was given the title, Emperor of the Romans, and was seen as a revival of that empire that had began with Augustus in 27 BC and it challenged the Byzantine Empire in the east as both empires claimed to be the true Roman Empire.

What is remarkable about Charlemagne is that he seemed to have forged this mighty empire through his own judiciary, executive and military skills. Many of the titles of future monarchs and nobility were created during Charlemagne’s time on the throne. Many of these offices were created in an effort for Charlemagne to have local recognition across his far flung empire. He reformed political offices and well as the church, educational systems and systems of laws.

Charlemagne was also quite the ladies man. He had eighteen children over the course of his life with eight of his ten known wives or concubines. Despite all of the children by the time of his death he had outlived alll of his sons except one of them. In 813, Charlemagne crowned his only surviving son, Louis the Pious, king of Aquitaine, as co-emperor. In 814 after 47 years of rule and at the age of 72, old for that time, Charlemagne died. His foot print on history is immeasurable and many kings and emperor since his time tried to emulate him. His empire covered what would later become modern Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg  Italy and Austria. All of these states count Charles the Great as their leader.

71st Anniversary of the Death of the last Kaiser

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German Emperor, Huis Doorn, Kaiser Friedrich III of Germany, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, King of Prussia, Princess Royal, Princess Victoria, Queen Victoria, the Netherlands

June 4, 1941 former Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, King of Prussia died at Huis Doorn in the Netherlands at the age of 82. The Kaiser had been living in the Netherlands in exile since the end of World War I in 1918 and moved in to Huis Doorn in 1920. He was buried in a mausoleum in the grounds of Huis Doorn attended by members of his family and Field Marshal August von Mackensen along with a few other military advisers. His body has never been returned to Germany out of respect for his wish that his body should only be returned there if and when the monarchy is reestablished. Huis Doorn is now a museum open to the public but recent financial difficulties may result in the building being shut down and sold. 

Wilhelm II has always been an interesting subject to study. Son of Kaiser Friedrich III of Germany and King of Prussia and Princess Victoria, Princess Royal of Great Britain, Wilhelm II was also the eldest grandchild of Britain’s Queen Victoria.  Born with a withered left arm from complications of his birth the last German Emperor had a bi-polar personality that was bombastic and arrogant but also warm and friendly to those he respected. He was a scapegoat for World War I and history has shown that not all the blame for the war rests on his shoulders.