WILLIAM II

William II: translation

(1792–1849)

King of the Netherlands. He succeeded his father William I in 1840 as monarch of the northern Netherlands. He had served as an officer with the British army under the Duke of Wellington in Spain and elsewhere from 1811 to 1813 (seeing action at the battles of Vitoria, Quatre Bras, and Waterloo) and commanded the troops against the BelgianRevoltin 1830–1831. In 1826, he mar ried Anna Pavlona, the sister of the Russian tsar, Alexander I. Dur ing William II’s reign, he had to accept certain limits on autocratic government, especially in 1848, the year of the revolutions, when he switched from a conservative to a “liberal” standpoint. The political leader of the Dutch liberals, Johan Rudolf Thorbecke, played an important role in the process of constitutional reform.