![]() ![]() ![]() (Except for the madness, which was a clinical fact – though its cause has been completely misunderstood.) By 18th-century standards, George was a model king: diligent, principled, cultured and humane. Yet all these accusations, as Andrew Roberts shows in this powerful new biography, were false. Republicans on both sides of the ocean could not have wished for a better argument for the abolition of kings. It did not help that he also had prolonged periods of insanity, straitjacketed and foaming at the mouth. At worst, he was a Machiavellian schemer at best, a great booby. During much of his very long reign (1760-1820), George was the target not just of scurrilous pamphlets and cartoons, but of heavyweight speeches denouncing his alleged tyranny. He was the man, apparently, who happily sent thousands of soldiers to gun down his American subjects and it was his despotic policies, imposing fierce new taxes and crushing civil liberties, that had led those subjects to rebel.įor those who found that story congenial, there was plenty of supporting evidence on this side of the Atlantic. ![]() So it’s no surprise that if there is one über-villain in the whole story of the American War of Independence, it is George III. And American history is mostly written by the Americans. History, as we know, is written by the victors. ![]()
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