William I of the Netherlands

Born into the last stadtholder's family in 1772, William fled when French revolutionaries overran the Dutch Republic in 1795. He commanded troops in Flanders, ruled a brief German principality until Napoleon crushed it, then waited in exile for Europe to turn. When it did in 1814, he returned and declared himself Sovereign Prince; a year later he elevated the title to king and took Luxembourg as his grand duchy. He wrote a constitution that gave him sweeping power, founded universities, pushed industry and commerce. But his campaign to impose Dutch language and Reformed religion on the Catholic, French-speaking south backfired - economic tension boiled over into the Belgian Revolution of 1830. After nine years of failed suppression, he signed the Treaty of London in 1839, ceding independence. Frustrated by constitutional limits and personal trouble, he abdicated in 1840, handed the throne to his son, and retired to Berlin, where he died three years later.