On October 25, being the forty-ninth anniversary of his accession, the jubilee of George III. was celebrated with hearty and sincere rejoicings. His popularity was not unmerited. He was politically shortsighted, but within his range of vision few saw facts so clearly; he was obstinate and prejudiced, but his obstinacy was redeemed by a moral intrepidity of the highest order, and his prejudices were shared by the mass of his people. Having lived through the seven years' war, the war of the American revolution, and the successive wars of Great Britain against the French monarchy and the French republic, he was now supporting, with indomitable firmness, a war against the all-conquering French empire--the most perilous in which this country was ever engaged. The colonial and Indian dominions of Great Britain, reduced by the loss of the North American colonies, had been greatly extended during his reign in other quarters of the globe. His subjects regarded him as an Englishman to the core; they knew him to be honest, religious, virtuous, and homely in his life; they justly believed him, in spite of his failings, to be a power for good in the land; and they rewarded him with a respect and affection granted to no other British sovereign of modern times before Queen Victoria. They had good cause to desire the continuance of his life and reason, knowing the character of his heir-apparent, and contrasting the domestic habits of Windsor with the licence of Carlton House. FOOTNOTES: [31] Colchester, _Diary_ (Feb. 4, 1806), ii., 35, 36. [32] Holland, _Memoirs of the Whig Party_, ii., 91-94. [33] Holland, _Memoirs of the Whig Party,_ ii., 173-205, 270-320; Colchester, _Diary_, ii., 92-115; Malmesbury, _Diaries_, iv., 357-72; Walpole, _Life of Perceval_, i., 223-33; Buckingham, _Courts and Cabinets_, iv., 117-50. Holland accuses the king of treachery and duplicity, and Lewis (_Administrations of Great Britain_, p. 294) repeats this charge in milder terms. But the documents quoted do not prove any want of straightforwardness, and the king's conduct was the logical consequence of his action in 1801. [34] In the following year Napoleon consented to evacuate all the Prussian fortresses except three, on condition that the Prussian army should not exceed a total of 40,000 men. [35] _Annual Register_, xlix. (1807), 249-70, 731-38; Rose, in _English Historical Review_, xi. (1896), 82-92. [36] Captain Mahan, _The Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire_, ii., 272-357, shows that the policy of the orders in council was essential to British safety. [37] The course of this war is related continuously in chap. v. [38] Rose, _Life of Napoleon I._, ii., 190, note.