The young king was the grandson of William II. His father, Prince William, had died in his infancy and his grandfather was stern about the young prince's upbringing. The dislike that the young man had for the king grew to hatred as he grew older. The prince viewed Virginia as a more aggressive force than the king did and saw greater opportunities for his kingdom than were being taken advantage of.
He had been in love with a noble Virginian woman in his youth but was denied marrying her by his grandfather. In 1828, therefore, the prince decided not to marry until he was king. Five years later, when he succeeded the throne, he had his wish, but did not yet make any matrimonial decisions.
The first sign that William III had other ambitions was his devotion to increasing the size of his military. However, the House of Burgesses had trouble funding an increased military without knowing its intended use. Louisiana, now under the leadership of the able Louis III, viewed his eastern neighbor with great suspicion, fearing the Virginians had ambitions which might threaten his own realm. William's response to his parliament was simply that he felt the realm was in need of a strong military force to protect its homefront from aggressors at home as well as to expand its empire abroad - namely in southern Africa, where the Dutch were having problems with the native population. Other proposals involved Mexico's growing Empire in South America and in the far west.
Parliament granted the king's wish for increased spending on his army and navy and set about drawing up plans to reorganize the army into a well-oiled, modern military machine. New rifled muskets were imported from Great Britain and Prussia to be studied, replicated and improved while a new system of flying artillery (mobile guns drawn by horses) was studied to improve battlefield efficiency and mobility. A huge army fortress was erected at Arlington, Virginia, and two Military Universities were opened in 1847 to train all officers of the service in "the Military Arts." The naval base at Norfolk, Virginia, was doubled in size and Charleston, South Carolina became a secondary (Southern) naval base. Rail-lines were further improved using a new electro-magnetic system which allowed for speedy, cheap transportation of goods from all over the empire and by 1850, had nearly doubled the Virginian trade revenue.
The king had been keen on European politics during his upbringing and had set his sights on the Infanta of Spain, Maria, for years. In 1849, he agreed to marry the young princess, though a Catholic, if she agreed to convert to Anglican Protestantism on their marriage. With an increasingly imperialistic France to the north threatening invasion, the princess had little choice but to accept the marriage proposal and the apostasy required of her if the Virginian king would agree to use military force to halt any French invasion of Spanish territory. Parliament and the King's council highly approved, imagining that the threat of war with France would be enough to deter French aggression against Spain. Against popular opinion, however, William and Maria were married on June 14, 1850 in a grand ceremony which looked more like a week-long party of balls and banquets than any traditionally quiet royal marriage ceremony in Virginia's past.
Almost exactly a year later, in June 1851, the French under General Jean Claude de Saint Martin invaded Spain with a force of 150,000 men. Virginia mobilized and responded with a declaration of war against Imperial France and deployed its army of 100,000 under the 43-year-old General Lord William Henry Lee to Gibraltar. A British contingent of 75,000 men under General Lord Raglan arrived in Portugal to secure that nation from French aggression in May 1851 and planned its own operations in Spain. The Iberian War began in earnest.
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