FREDERICK WILLIAM CHARLES, King of Wiirtemberg, was born at Treptow, in Pomerania, November 6, 1754 ; succeeded his father, Frederick Eugene, as Duke of Wfirtemberg in 1797 • became elector in 1803; and assumed the royal title on the 1st of 1806. In 1780 be married Augusta Caroline Frederica Louisa, princess of Brunswick Wolfenbtittel, by whom he had two sons, William, the present king, and Paul, and a daughter Catherine, who was married to Jerome Bonaparte, king of Westphalia. As his father was personally engaged in the Seven Years' War in the armies of Prussia, his early education was very carefully directed by his mother, Sophia Dorothea, daughter of the Margrave of Bnindenblirg-Schwedt, a highly-accom plished and excellent princess. After the peace in 1763 his father was at leisure to attend to the education of his son, who possessed great natural abilities. He was however brought up in many respects on the French model, to which his four years' residence at Lausanne contributed. His natural eloquence was aided by an extraordinary memory; he was well versed in mathematics, natural philosophy, history, and geography, and cultivated his taste for the fine arts, especially in his journey to Italy in 1782; but with too much vivacity for calm examination, he often hastily adopted a false view, and was thus led in his subsequent life into many errors. In many points he. took Frederick tho Great for his model. As well as his seven brothers lie entered the Prussian service, and in the war of the Bavarian succession attained the rank of major-generaL After his return from Italy, whither he accompanied his sister and her husband the Grand Duke Paul of Russia, be was made lieutenant-general, aud governor general of Russian Finland. He renounced this connection in 1787, and lived first at Mourepos, near Lausanne, and then at Bodenheim, near Mentz. He witnessed at Versailles the first proceedings of the National Assembly. When his father, after the death of two brothers without male descendants, became Duke of Wtirtemberg in 1795, Frederick, as crown-prince, opposed in 1796 the entrance of the French into Franconia, but was defeated. After this event be lived for a time at Anspach, then at Vienna and London, where in 1797 he married Charlotte Augusta Matilda, princess-royal of England, with whom he returned to Stuttgardt in June the same year.
When he succeeded to the government in December 1797, his duchy, which had already suffered severely in the war with France, was 153 German (about 3000 English) square miles in extent, with 600,000 inhabitants. Frederick, by his interest at the courts of Vienna and St. Petersburg, obtained by the decision of the German diet of the 23rd of February 1803, besides the electoral dignity, an ample indemnity for his loss of territory on the left bank of the Rhine. The chief object of his policy was to preserve and extend his dominious. On the 2nd of October 1805 Napoleon arrived at Ludwigslust, and on the following day issued the declaration of war against Austria. Frederick was compelled to join France, and furnished 8000 men.
By steadily adhering to the system of Napoleon be acquired in and after the peace of Presburg the possession of an independent kingdom of the extent of 368 German (nearly 7400 English) square miles, with 1,400,000 inhabitants. After he had assumed the title of king, on New Year's Day 1806, he published the organisation of his greatly enlarged dominions, by which a uniform system of administration was introduced into the old and new provinces. Desirable as this might be (and he is highly commended for it by some writers), it certainly did not give satisfaction to his subjects. Accustomed, and indeed compelled, to act with energy in his foreign affairs, he sought to make everything in his internal government bend to his will, without regard to long-cherished prejudices or even to long-established rights. He joined the Rhenish Confederation, was at the meeting of Napoleon and Alexander at Erfurt iu October 1808, and in the campaign of 1812 furnished his contingent as member of the confederation, After the battle of Leipzig he formally renounced, in November 1813, the Rhenish Confederation, and joined the allied powers against France. He went in person to the congress at Vienna, where he was received with great respect by the assembled sovereigns. In the thirteeuth article of the Act of Congress it was enacted that representative assemblies should be introduced into all the states of Germany—a benefit for which Germany is in great measure indebted to the Prince Regent of England. The king of Wurtemberg (though he did not accede to the German Confederation till the 1st of September 1815) drew up a constitution, which he presented as an ordinance to the states which he had convoked; but it was unanimously rejected : the deputies required the ancient constitution, and speedy relief for the miseries of the people. Accustomed to implicit obedience, and not a little natonished at this behaviour, he still redressed many grievances, and after dissolving the assembly in August 1816, he called another in October, and unexpectedly prescribed fourteen propositious as the basis of a constitution, which were favourably received by the people. A new constitution was drawn up ; but before it could be discussed he died, on the 30th of October 1816, in the sixty-second year of his age and the nineteenth of his reign. His character was essentially despotic, but he had too much good sense and too enlightened an understanding to be systematically a tyrant. He desired the good of his people, though of the means of promoting that -he conceived himself to be the best judge. It must be said to his praise that his edict of the 15th of October 1806, secured to all his Christian subjects equal security for their rights and the free exercise of their religious worship. He introduced neither French laws nor French forms of administration ; everything in Wtirtemberg remained German ; and Wurtemberg was happily preserved from the degradation of becoming a French province.