When William of Orange landed in Devon in 1688, he brought with him a force of some 40,000 men, carried by a huge fleet of 463 ships – three times the size of the Spanish Armada. The Dutch-born prince arrived with the intention of usurping a legitimate monarch – James II of England – but he did so at the behest of a powerful group of nobles. As a result, his invasion of England passed off so peacefully it became known as the ‘Glorious Revolution’.
William’s claim to the throne was based on the fact that he was the grandson of Charles I, and the husband of Mary, James II’s daughter. Perhaps most importantly, he was also a staunch defender of Protestantism at a time when the country’s national religion was seen to be under imminent Catholic threat. If it was largely accepted in England, however, William’s intervention was violently resisted in Scotland and Ireland, where the cause of the exiled James continued to thrive. In Europe, meanwhile, the new king would continue his long-running struggle with Louis XIV, leading a military alliance which waged war with France for nine years.
In our two-part special feature for this issue, Graham Goodlad looks first at the life and career of the last British monarch to manage a sustained military campaign in person, and then analyses in detail his part in the battle against French domination of the Low Countries.
This is an extract from a special feature on William III from the June/July 2025 issue of Military History Matters magazine.
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