William II succeeded his father as King in 1806. The new monarch inherited a state of immense economic and military power. At the beginning of his reign, the population of his country was exploding and moving westward towards the Mississippi. There was irrigable land and possible industry. Furthermore, under his leadership – he had been raised in the military style – the Royal Army became the most disciplined force on the continent. In 1810, in order to increase Virginia’s economic security, the king sent an expeditionary force to the Caribbean in order to secure from Republican France the islands which produced so much revenue – and to use slave labor to produce it. The Caribbean War lasted for three years, but Jourdan, now Supreme General of France, gave up sending so many troops to such a far away place and focused his attention on India and the Middle East. The increased revenue from these islands added infinitely to Virginia’s economic growth.
The “Warrior King” as his subjects began to call him, was just as unsupportive of the French regime to his west as he was to totalitarian France in Europe. However, he realized that maintaining good relations was beneficial to the economy as it was to the well-being of his subjects. Tobacco remained the chief source of income, though many of the gentry now found new lives in the Caribbean. Virginia had officially become an empire, exporting sugar, rice, coffee, tobacco and cotton.
In 1817, Louis XVI (Louis I of Louisiana), died of natural causes, leaving the throne to his son, Louis II. King Louis II had also been trained in the military, his father well-aware of his own short-comings. This king had very high aspirations for Louisianan military activity against the newly independent Mexican Republic. It was modeled on France's military-state and therefore was an immediate menace to royalty. In Georgia, the Director of that nation set his own sights on rebellious Florida. William II promised to support both nations in their endeavors in order to provide his army and navy with experience and glory. However, William also wanted to send his own forces to Cuba, plucking that cherry from France’s tree. By 1824, the entire enterprise had been a success for Virginia, Louisiana and Georgia. Georgia, which encompassed the former Carolinian colonies as well, voted overwhelmingly for a union with Virginia in 1826, doubling the territory of William II.
As the Industrial Revolution took off in England, the Virginians followed suit. Factories using slave labor provided a new aristocracy and merchant shops selling newly manufactured goods created a middle class, increasing leisure. The locomotive, invented in 1827, enabled shipment speed to greatly increase. William II was on the right side of history by embracing these innovations while many of the landed gentry shouted him down. However, as their wealth increased, they eventually quieted down.
The map of the Americas was beginning to take on a new shape. In the North, Canada was an unstable, independent colony without a mother country, racked by revolution, civil war and freezing disparity. The New England Republic was finding itself out-produced and inferior to its southern counterparts, but showed signs of industrial economic progress, refusing to join with the slave-based systems in the south. Overall, New England held a reputation for a more egalitarian society with wealth more evenly distributed throughout individual households than in their contemporary American neighbors. Puritan ideology had accounted for a more thorough theocracy based on hard labor for all citizens in New England, whereas Anglicanism had provided a basis for usury and slavery in the Kingdom of Virginia.
William II's reign ended abruptly in 1833 when he fell from his horse in a cavalry drill at which he was practicing as a corporal. Trampled under foot by numerous horses, the king died three days after his wounds had been inflicted, his internal organs having been smashed and battered. His grandson, William III, came to the throne on 18 March 1833 at the age of 24. Strangely enough, the King was not married and had no heir. The first order of business, then, was to find a wife. It was to prove a never-ending struggle for the king.
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