William III of Orange

(1650–1702)

   Stadtholder and English king. In 1672–1675, the five Dutch provincesthat had decided not to take a stadtholder after the death of his father William II in 1650, ap pointed William III to the position of stadtholder. He became the ar chitect of the great coalitions against the French king Louis XIV, for example, the League of Augsburg in 1686 (whose main participants were the Dutch Republic, the Habsburg emperor, Spain, Sweden, Brandenburg, and Savoy). After the Glorious Revolution of 1688–1689 in England, he was offered, on the basis of his marriage to his cousin Mary II Stuart (1662–1694), the English, Scottish, and Irish crowns. Northern Ireland Protestants still admire him because he defeated his Roman Catholic father-in-law James II in the battle of the Boyne (1690). The coalition with Great Britain was only fa vorable for the Dutch Republic in the short term. William’s death meant the extinction of the House of Orange-Nassau in the male line. His inheritance was divided between the Frisian Nassau-Dietz family and the Brandenburg dynasty of the Hohenzollerns.