King George III (1738-1820) was King of Great Britain and Ireland for 59 years, longer than any other monarch until Queen Victoria. During his reign, Britain was victorious in the Seven Years' War but lost the American Revolution. George III suffered from intermittent bouts of mental illness, including becoming blind and insane in his final years. He oversaw both Britain's rise as a world power but also the loss of its most important colonies.

1. King George the iii
England’s longest-ruling monarch before Queen Victoria, King George III (1738-1820) ascended the British throne in 1760.
During his 59-year reign, he pushed through a British victory in the Seven Years’ War, led England’s successful resistance to
Revolutionary and Napoleonic France, and presided over the loss of the American Revolution. After suffering intermittent
bouts of acute mental illness, he spent his last decade in a fog of insanity and blindness.

2. The Georgian era (1714-1830) spanned
the combined reigns of the five British
monarchs from the Electorate of
Hanover, a member state of the Holy
Roman Empire. George III was the first
Hanoverian king born in England rather
than Germany. His parents were
Frederick, prince of Wales, and
Augusta of Saxe-Gotha.

3. King George the iii wife
On his father’s death in 1751, the 12-year-old George became prince of
Wales. He was cared for in relative isolation by his mother and tutored by
the Scottish nobleman Lord Bute.

4. George III became king of Great Britain and
Ireland in 1760 following his grandfather
George II’s death. In his accession speech
to Parliament, the 22-year-old monarch
played down his Hanoverian connections.
“Born and educated in this country,” he
said, “I glory in the name of Britain.”

5. King George the iii son
A year after his coronation, George was married to Charlotte of
Mecklenburg-Strelitz, the daughter of a German duke. It was a political
union—the two met for the first time on their wedding day—but a
fruitful one, producing 15 children.

6. George III worked for an expedited end
to the Seven Years’ War (1756-63),
taking a position that forced his
influential war minister William Pitt the
Elder (who wanted to broaden the
conflict) to resign in 1761. The next
year George appointed Lord Bute as his
prime minister, the first in a quick
succession of five ineffective ministers.

7. King George the III daughter
In 1764 Prime Minister George Grenville introduced the Stamp
Act as a way of raising revenue in British America. The act was
fervently opposed in America, especially by the pamphleteers
whose paper would be taxed. Parliament would repeal the act
two years later, but mistrust persisted in the colonies.

8. In 1770 Lord North became prime
minister, beginning a 12-year period
of parliamentary stability. In 1773
he passed an act taxing tea in the
colonies. The Americans
complained of taxation without
representation (and staged the
Boston Tea Party), but North held
firm with George’s backing.

9. King George theIII
The American Revolution began on April 19, 1775, with the Battles of
Lexington and Concord. The next year, the Declaration of Independence
laid out the Americans’ case for freedom, portraying George III as an
inflexible tyrant who had squandered his right to govern the colonies. In
reality the situation was more complex: Parliamentary ministers, not the
crown, were responsible for colonial policies, though George still had
means of direct and indirect influence.

10. The king was reluctant to come to
terms with his army’s defeat at
Yorktown in 1781. He drafted an
abdication speech but in the end
decided to defer to Parliament’s peace
negotiations. The 1783 Treaty of Paris
recognized the United States and
ceded Florida to Spain.

11. King George the III house
This is were his family read all his books in his liberty.

12. At the end of 1783, Lord North’s coalition was forced
out by William Pitt the Younger, who would be prime
minister for more than 17 years. In 1778 George
lapsed into a months-long period of violent insanity.
He was restrained with a straitjacket and suffered
various treatments as crisis of rule unfolded around
him. He recovered the next year and reigned for the
next 12 as a newly beloved monarch and symbol of
stability in the era of France’s revolutionary chaos.
George’s support of England’s role in the French
Revolutionary Wars of the late 1790s offered early
resistance against the Napoleonic juggernaut

13. This is king George's crown
Some people think there are 2,012 diamonds.

14. George suffered a second major bout of insanity
in 1804 and recovered, but in 1810 he slipped
into his final illness. A year later his son, the
future George IV, became prince regent, giving
him effective rule for the War of 1812 and
Napoleon’s final defeat at Waterloo in 1815.
George III died blind, deaf and mad on January
29, 1820. His illnesses may have been caused by
porphyria, an inherited metabolic disorder,
though a 2005 analysis of hair samples
suggested arsenic poisoning (from medicines
and cosmetics) as a possible cause.