William II of the Netherlands
William II ruled the Netherlands from 1840 to 1849 and turned it into a constitutional monarchy in a single day. Born in The Hague in 1792, he spent his youth in exile after the French occupation, was educated in Berlin and at Oxford, and served on Wellington's staff in the Peninsular War, where he was popular with the British officers who called him Slender Billy. He commanded a Dutch-Belgian corps at Quatre Bras and Waterloo in 1815, where he was wounded in the shoulder. His handling of troops was criticised by professional soldiers, and his personal courage was not. He was briefly a candidate for the Belgian throne in 1830, and commanded the Ten Days' Campaign of 1831 that defeated the Belgian army before French intervention halted it. He succeeded on his father's abdication in 1840, inheriting an enormous debt from the failed attempt to hold Belgium, and governed conservatively. The revolutions of 1848 changed him abruptly. In March, with revolts across Europe and unrest in Amsterdam, he reversed his position completely — saying, in the phrase attributed to him, that he had gone from conservative to liberal in a single night. He appointed a commission under Johan Rudolf Thorbecke, his political opponent, to draft a new constitution. It transferred responsibility for government from the king to ministers accountable to parliament, introduced direct elections to the lower house, and guaranteed freedom of assembly, education and religion. It is the foundation of Dutch parliamentary democracy and has been amended rather than replaced since. He died suddenly at Tilburg in March 1849, months after signing it.
- Lived: 1792 CE – 1849 CE
- Nationality: Dutch
- Roles: king, head_of_state
