William III

Stained glass window of William III at the Palace of Anjou.

**William III** (13 September 1448 – 25 December 1481), also called **William of Dover** and the **Hammer of the Germans** (Latin: ***Willelmus Germanicus***) was King of England and France from 1472 to 1481. Before his accession to the throne, he was referred to by the ancestral title of Prince of Wales, although as king he became the first to conquer the Duchy of Brittany, thus uniting all the former Celtic Britonnic people into a single nation.

William's rule was marked by a series of victorious conquests and stabilisations of the English dominion over France. He is most remembered for his participation in the German Wars, in which he crushed the majority of the forces of the Holy Roman Empire at the city of Trier in 1474. Following this victory, he married Matilda of Austria, the Emperor's daughter. Enabled by Papal decree, William also crusaded in the Levantine, aiming to restore the forgotten Kingdom of Jerusalem. Despite his initial victory and the placement of his son Edward as the King of Jerusalem, the local population retaliated and removed English rule.

On 25 December 1481, William was hosting a Christmas Ball for the nobility of France in the Palace of Anjou, then only a small keep in Bordeaux. The ball, however, was attended by hundreds. A fire accidentally broke out in the kitchens below the banqueting hall which was too difficult to extinguish, and William was trampled to death by the fleeing nobility, succeeded by his only surviving son, William IV, who razed the hall in question.

## Early life

William was born in 1472 at Dover Castle as the third son of Henry VII of England and France and Joanna of Navarra. He outlived both of his elder brothers, Arthur, Prince of Wales and Edmund, Duke of Cambridge, both of whom tragically died in 1453, the Year of the Red Deaths. The former was slain in battle against the Scots in the January of that year, the latter perishing in a shipwreck in the Atlantic Ocean, attempting to discover the New World. Although while one might imagine this would have put William off fighting or sailing for life, he gloried in both, perhaps as a contemporary scholar suggests, to "prove he was better than death."

William was the first English monarch to attend Kingsent College in Bordeaux, where he met his closest companions, Peter Longchamps and Henry Harcourt. Both were later admitted into the Order of the Garter and named Earl of Hertford and Baron Harcourt respectively.

### Prince of Wales

At Kingsent College, William acquired a reputation for bawdiness, and at the age of 17 had a son with a woman of little significance known as Eleanor. The birth of William's illegitimate son, William FitzWilliam, created a rift in the House of Lancaster as the more proud and religious Henry VII grew disgusted by William's attitude. In 1466, William and all his issue were disinherited from the English and French thrones, after which William left England for exile in Cyprus.

## King of Cyprus (1466–1471)

During his self-exile in Cyprus, the Mediterranean island was enveloped in a civil war against the Byzantine Empire, which had elevated heavy taxes in the region to pay for its war against the Ottomans. The local gentry pleaded to William that he take control of the island; thus, he was declared King of Cyprus, resurrecting the Crusader title.

His first measure was a treaty of non-aggression with the Byzantine Emperor, after which William miraculously gathered the "fury and spirit" of the Cypriot people and asked for a renewed crusade into Jerusalem. The Christian world, having abandoned knightly chivalry in favour of the renaissance years ago, was aghast by this request, but with William's charisma and courage, even the tenacious Pope Peter II managed to be persuaded.

The crusade of 1468 lasted for five years. Eventually, William captured the city of Jerusalem but with heavy losses. He installed his second son, Edward, as a puppet king to exact Angevin influence in the region, but a plague reduced morale within the rabble of the city, who rose up and murdered the young child, ending Plantagenet influence there forever. In 1471, the gentry of Cyprus declared a vote of no confidence in their king and forced him into exile again. William stayed in the *Villa Guglielmo* in Florence for one year before his father's death in 1472.

## King of England (1472–1482)

With Henry VII having, by parliamentary decree, effectively disinherited the hitherto *in absentia* William III from the English throne, the kingdoms were in turmoil. On Henry's deathbed, he had called for his confessor to "summon his son" to no avail. In this respect, the separate English parliament chose to create an interregnum where England was momentarily ruled by Everard de Bohun, Lord Protector.

In France, however, the French claimant Philippe de Valois was briefly invited to France to replace the Plantagenet line, where nobles from Champagne and Toulouse hailed him as Philip VII. Thirteen days later, William arrived in Bordeaux to the entire city's celebration, and Philip was forced into exile in Austria. A month later, William set sail for London where he was bloodlessly offered the crown.

William's reign involved countless wars against the Holy Roman Empire as well as the Counts of Toulouse and Champagne to prove himself as the true King of England and France. Even the new Pope disapproved of the Plantagenet usurper, excommunicating him in 1476. Overall, William's glories in battle against the empire led to even his foes branding him the "Hammer of the Germans" or "William Germanicus", as a Romantic triumph.

## Death

On 25 December 1481, during a Christmas Day celebration at the Palace of Anjou, a fire broke out in the kitchens below the great hall where the overcrowded throng of nobles were feasting. In an effort to escape the burning hall, William was trampled to death alongside 21 others. The hall was razed by his son, William IV.

## Issue

William III married Matilda of Austria in 1474, a marriage which resulted in three children:

* John, Duke of Cornwall (1474–1476)
* William IV, King of England and France (1476–1505)
* Edward, King of Jerusalem (1478–1480)