Royal history is at the heart of the stories
we tell about the past.
We often think it's definitive.
Kings and queens,
dates and facts,
all unchanging and fixed forever.
But it's not like that at all.
History is a cacophony of voices,
all of them competing to tell their own version of the story.
And, when revolution's in the air,
that competition gets really intense.
In this series, I'm lifting the lid
on three revolutionary moments in royal history.
The French Revolution -
Was it really a peasants' revolt or more of a bourgeois backlash?
The Russian Revolution -
Was it really a victory for Lenin and the Bolsheviks?
And, in this episode, George IV and the Regency.
When the madness of King George Ill
forced him to hand power to his extravagant son.
We think of the Regency as a genteel, well-ordered age,
full of Jane Austen-type balls
and beautiful architecture
and gallant, red-coated officers thrashing Napoleon at Waterloo.
But behind the facade of Georgian elegance
was an age of rebellion, suppressed by fibs.
Why was a British massacre airbrushed out of history?
It becomes very dangerous to attack anyone connected to King George IV.
Who really won the Battle of Waterloo?
And was the United Kingdom as united as we think?
It was the most astounding piece of propaganda in the 19th century.
As the French Revolution inspired rebellion across Britain,
the monarchy fought to stop a revolution at home.
Maintaining royal power meant distorting the story,
suppressing the story,
sometimes even making the story up as you went along.
So, what was really going on in the age of the Regency?
In the 1780s, the British monarchy was in trouble.
King George Ill had lost the American colonies
in the Revolutionary War.
Radical politicians were fighting to reduce the power of the Crown...
...and the Prince of Wales was using public money
to go on a spending spree.
He was partying and gambling,
getting expensive renovations done to his grand London house,
and he was thinking about buying
an extravagant holiday house in Brighton as well.
Very soon, the Prince of Wales had to ask Parliament
for more money to clear his debts.
But Parliament was fighting back.
MPs were reluctant to give more money to Prince George,
because of a royal scandal, which could stop him ever becoming King.
A rumour was circulating in the press that the Prince of Wales
had secretly married a Catholic,
and this wasn't just a private matter.
Angry MPs knew that if he really had secretly married a Catholic,
he would've violated the Act of Settlement.
The husband of a Catholic could never be king.
MPs demanded to know if the prince
had forfeited his right to the throne.
Whig MP Charles James Fox, a close friend of the prince,
stood up in Parliament to answer them.
Fox said that this rumoured marriage,
not only could never have happened legally,
but in fact had never happened in any way whatsoever,
and that to suggest otherwise was a malicious falsehood.
But that wasn't quite true.
In December 1785, the heir to the throne had indeed married
Maria Fitzherbert, a Catholic.
Caricatures were filled with images of the couple cavorting together.
But marrying her was illegal on two counts,
not only because his wife was Catholic,
but also, the Prince couldn't marry without his father's permission.
So, George had lied to Fox
and told him that the marriage would never happen.
And that's because George wasn't just the Prince of Wales,
he was also the Prince of Fibs.
George's lie helps keep the course of royal history right on track.
The secret wedding was brushed aside as legally invalid,
George could still one day be king.
And this wouldn't be the only time royal fibs were used
to cover up the truth in this volatile era.
Three years after the secret wedding,
another royal crisis would call for political spin.
In November 1788, King George Ill was brought to Kew Palace
to be treated for the first of several periods of mental illness.
The madness of King George has come to define his place in history.
George Ill is often remembered today as the "Mad King" who lost America.
People have this idea of him as a weak king,
volatile, running amok through the palace corridors, in his nightshirt.
But to the people actually alive in the 18th century,
it wasn't like that at all.
George's subjects didn't see much of his madness
and certainly not images of the King in freezing baths
or straightjackets.
In an age when print shop windows were full of cartoons,
lampooning figures of authority,
images of a mad King George are almost non-existent.
The public's attention was being diverted
to a different royal problem.
This is the only known satirical print of King George Ill
during the first period of his mental illness,
and it's a sympathetic image.
The poor guy's clearly suffering in his bed,
unlike his son, who's bursting drunkenly in with his mates.
And he's shouting out, "Damn me,
"l'lljust see if the old fellow's dead or not".
It's pretty clear that one of these two is out of control and dangerous,
but it's not the King, it's the Prince.
The King's son had been a target for the cartoonists
for most of his adult life.
The Prince of Wales' lies and his louche lifestyle
made him an excellent subject of satire.
He was excessive in everything,
in women, in wine, in food,
in clothes and in art,
but this caricature image didn't leave much room for nuance.
To supporters of King George Ill, the Prince was trouble.
Young George seemed to stand for everything his father hated.
A friend of the Whigs, while his father preferred the Tories.
An exuberant spendthrift, while his father lived a quiet life.
The lover of a Catholic,
while his father felt duty-bound to defend the Protestant faith.
And the King's mental illness now meant the Prince
was an even bigger political problem.
The Prince might now have to step up and rule in his father's place.
In other words, a regency.
And as regent, the Prince would have the right
to dismiss the Tory government
and hand power to his friends in the Whig Party.
Worried Tories fought to avoid a regency
and pro-Tory cartoons emphasised the Prince's character flaws.
The political crisis helped cement the Prince's terrible reputation.
But mental illness had a very different effect
on King George lll's image.
What's interesting is that you might think that his image takes,
you know, takes a dive, or that his image suffers
during this period of the original madness.
But, actually, I think historians really think that in some ways,
once he recovers, his image actually improves.
Well, in the period before that first illness, you know,
he's not in a particularly good position.
He's lost the American colonies.
People aren't particularly happy about that.
And he's sort of struggled through the first period,
the first decades of his reign, but after his illness,
his reputation really actually surprisingly improves quite a bit.
I think, for the British nation, for the British people,
he is seen as ever more resolute and there is a sense of his recovery
as being enormously symbolically important.
He seems stronger.
The popular perception of the King as dangerously out of control
didn't really get going until the 20th century.
The notion of "George is mad", in a sense, for me,
all comes down to the American bicentennial,
the 200th anniversary of American independence,
which, in America, was a very big deal.
This 1976 moment was very, very big and it brought around,
brought about a reconsideration of George Ill.
It also elevated him to American consciousness.
Everything, from the way that children in elementary schools
are taught about the American Revolution,
to the way that there are popular film and television shows,
you need an antagonist,
and George Ill probably serves that purpose pretty well.
So, by the time we get to the famous film
about the madness of George Ill, the damage is done.
Yes. George Ill is out of control. He's unable to rule.
Yes. He is clearly the enemy of America. Yes, yes.
The American Revolution needs the King to have been,
you know, an unsympathetic figure. You need an enemy.
He was seen as this kind of antagonist to American liberty
and also mad and also, you know, mentally unstable.
And for Americans, that's very handy to have it both ways, isn't it?
In February 1789, the King recovered
and the political crisis was resolved.
Doctors' concerns that it might be a recurring illness
were hidden from the people.
Galas, processions and a huge Thanksgiving service at St Paul's
ensured the public knew that their King was well.
MUSIC: British National Anthem
This image of a strong and healthy King
would soon become even more important,
because just three months after the celebrations,
the French would rise up against their monarchy
and start their revolution.
Across the Channel, the people sent their king to the guillotine.
Rallying public support for the British monarch was now vital.
French revolutionary ideas were spreading across Europe.
And in 1793, Britain went to war with France to stop them.
This was a fight to secure the system of monarchy across Europe,
and George wanted a part in it.
Again and again, he had himself painted in military uniform.
These portraits presented the Prince of Wales as a gallant man of action,
about to gallop away on his horse,
or else leading his troops through the smoke of the battlefield.
This was an era of military heroes, like Nelson and Wellington.
And in these paintings, George was one of them.
Except that he wasn't.
George never actually went to a war,
and the military version of the Prince of Wales is a fib.
Why was George so keen on being presented as an action hero?
I think George wanted desperately to be part of a tradition
that had both military, royal and celebrity association.
He absolutely wanted to be that person to lead his forces
and soldiers, to stand up for the nation.
And he couldn't, he wasn't allowed. He wasn't allowed to go, basically,
because to be able to be the next King of England,
his safety was paramount.
But I think if we're really brutally honest about it,
he quite liked the military dress as well.
And I think he also saw that celebrities of the time
were often people who were returned,
fresh from the battlefields,
and he wanted a little bit of that public glamour as well.
Who would see all these pictures of the Prince of Wales?
Well, many of these pictures would have been on the walls
of the Royal Academy, in the famous summer exhibition
and it was somewhere that certainly, annually,
had THE most popular exhibition in London town.
And, in a way, I think that was the chance for George
to engage with some of the things on the walls of the academy
that he couldn't do in real life.
As British troops fought against the French republic,
these military paintings could strengthen the image
of monarchy at home.
He looks to the events of Revolutionary France
with real horror and real concern for those involved,
but also with a real sense that Britain still needs
to express monarchy in a way that feels grand,
and that inspires kind of awe.
And I think it's making sure that in an age where people were far less
frequently exposed to images of monarchy,
there were at least ways that images could be seen by the public
and they could really engage with that image.
Very few people would be likely to see him in real life.
So, if there was a gap between the image and the reality,
most people just wouldn't be aware.
Yeah, that's right. They wouldn't.
In an age of revolution, the monarchy needed stability.
Since his illegal wedding, the Playboy Prince
had enjoyed other affairs.
Now, he was to marry his Protestant cousin,
Caroline of Brunswick, and produce an heir.
Pictures painted this like a Jane Austen romance.
But that's nonsense.
This was the opposite of a fairy-tale royal wedding.
When they met in the flesh, Caroline said,
"Blimey, he wasn't that fat in his portrait!"
And George said, "Look at her, I need brandy".
They somehow stumbled through their marriage vows
and then he spent the wedding night drunkenly asleep in the fireplace.
Caroline and George stayed together just long enough
to produce a daughter.
After that, they lived apart.
George would soon accuse Caroline of infidelity,
and eventually, she left the country.
But Britain hadn't seen the last of Caroline of Brunswick.
While the Georgians tried to secure
the future of the monarchy in Britain,
a military hero was setting himself up
as the alternative to monarchy in France.
In 1804, 11 years after the execution of Louis XVI,
Napoleon Bonaparte crowned himself Emperor...
...and he, too, was using fibs to solidify his power.
Napoleon's coronation was really the Napoleon propaganda spectacular.
The whole thing was designed to legitimise his power.
In this painting he commissioned of the event,
he hasn't been afraid to ask for a few little
tweaked improvements to reality.
The artist originally painted the Pope
with his hands on his knees,
but he was told to show him blessing the coronation instead.
Also the proportions of the church have been shrunk,
and that was to make Napoleon look bigger.
The French Revolution was an inspiration
to radicals in Georgian Britain.
Progressive politicians were now calling for electoral reform
to give more British people a voice.
Reformers said that the diadem of Napoleon
was dimming the lustre of all the ancient crowns of Europe,
and that, in Britain,
the King was losing his hold upon the affections of his people.
But he was also, once again, losing his hold upon his mind.
In 1811, at the age of 48,
the Prince of Wales finally became Prince Regent.
George now presented himself as Napoleon's nemesis.
Napoleon had redesigned Paris
with a grand boulevard
and triumphal arches to celebrate his military victories.
George hopes to eclipse Napoleon with his own elegant boulevard,
London's Regent Street.
But it would take a battle, not architecture,
to cut Napoleon's empire down to size.
Waterloo has gone down in history as a great British victory,
won by British troops, and it's given its name to a railway station,
to a bridge, and to one of London's poshest streets.
But this story of Waterloo as a distinctly British victory
is a distortion of the truth.
It's true that the troops at the Battle of Waterloo
were led by the Duke of Wellington.
But he led an allied army.
Only around a third of Wellington's troops were British.
The rest were Dutch, Belgian and Hanoverian.
And in the decisive hours of the battle,
Wellington's 68,000 allied troops
were joined by 48,000 Prussians.
Most of the soldiers who defeated Napoleon were German!
So, how has it come to be remembered as this British victory?
The spin started on the night after the battle
when Wellington wrote the first definitive description of Waterloo.
The Prince Regent was dining at a house,
here, in St james's Square in London,
when Wellington's dispatch reached him.
In his report from the battlefield,
Wellington graciously acknowledges the Prussians.
He says that they gave cordial and timely assistance.
But even this first dispatch helps make it sound
like a British victory.
Wellington's report gave the battle its name.
The Prussian General Blucher wanted to call it
the Battle of Belle Alliance, a nod to the allied victory.
But Wellington wrote his victorious dispatch
from a village three miles from the battlefield...
...called Waterloo.
Very soon, Parliament was adding its weight
to the British version of the story.
Within a few clays of the victory,
the Foreign Secretary, Lord Castlereagh,
also acknowledged the assistance of the Prussians,
but he went on to say that this was a triumph of British arms
and that it exulted the military glory of the British nation.
Politicians knew that taking credit for the victory
would enhance Britain's power and authority in Europe.
And soon, alternatives to the great British narrative
were being silenced.
In 1830, the Army commissioned cartographer
Lieutenant William Siborne to make a model of Waterloo.
Siborne spent eight months surveying the battlefield.
To position his tiny soldiers,
he wrote to hundreds of Waterloo veterans,
asking them where they were
at around 7pm on the night of the battle.
When it came to making his model,
was accuracy important to Mr Siborne?
We have a letter in the collection where he actually says,
"All I want is the truth and I'm going to..."
The truth? Yes. That's a big thing to aim for.
Absolutely. Yes.
So, he definitely was... He was very meticulous.
Siborne's research suggested that the role of the Prussians
had been more important than the British had made out.
Partway through the project, he lost his funding.
During the project,
he managed to make an enemy of Wellington, or that's how it seems.
So, losing Wellington's favour actually made it impossible for him
to get any government money to finance the project.
Why? Why would the Duke of Wellington not want there to be
a model of the Battle of Waterloo? You'd think he'd love it.
Yeah, you would, but it seems like he was not particularly pleased
with the prominence that he thought was given
to the Prussian troops on the model.
So, there were slight hints for a long period that, unfortunately,
Siborne didn't get, about the fact that Wellington was not that happy,
and by the time he realised that the Prussians were probably an issue,
he made public that he would be happy
to remove the Prussians and go with what Wellington thought was correct.
It was a little bit too late and Wellington,
I mean, he had lost interest.
So, do you personally think that there might be
a few Prussians missing here?
There should be a few more appearing here.
There aren't that many left, but there are certain documents
that suggest that he removed some of the Prussians
from the battlefield.
Britain was determined to claim Waterloo as its own,
but the real victor appeared to be monarchy itself.
With Napoleon defeated, the French monarchy was restored.
The ideals of the French Revolution had been crushed.
But in Britain, revolutionary ideas didn't go away.
In the aftermath of Waterloo,
two very different pictures of Regency life
were starting to appear.
One was a nation of gallant heroes and a victorious Prince Regent,
splashing cash on extravagant royal palaces.
The other was less glorious.
Soldiers returning from war faced mass unemployment,
soaring food costs and a thirst for democracy.
Fewer than 2% of the people in Regency Britain had the vote.
The people wanted a voice
and there were ever louder calls to extend the franchise.
The Regent and his government feared revolution.
On August 16th, 1819,
60,000 men, women and children came flooding through here
towards what was then St Peter's Field in Manchester.
They'd come to attend a huge protest rally
and to hear the exciting, celebrated orator, Henry Hunt.
The authorities were determined to stamp out any hint of revolution,
so they told a lie.
They said the crowd was armed, violent and riotous.
In fact, the crowd were keen that this should come across
as a patriotic and a peaceful occasion.
A lot of the women in the crowd were wearing white dresses,
the colour of peace,
and the protesters even sang God Save The King.
MUSIC: British National Anthem
Magistrates gave the order to arrest the speaker, Henry Hunt.
The local militia charged in on horseback, brandishing sabres.
Up to 700 people were injured, 18 were killed,
including a two-year-old child.
It became known as the Peterloo Massacre.
After 20 minutes of bloodshed, a new battle began.
The battle to control the story of what had happened.
Officials continued to claim the militia were provoked,
by an armed and dangerous crowd.
In the People's History Museum, in Manchester,
is a walking stick that belonged to one of the protesters.
The magistrates were desperate to find weapons in this crowd.
They believe that this was a violent mob intent on revolution, really.
And an object like this would have been the perfect evidence
that this was actually a violent crowd.
So, after Peterloo, you can see an inscription written on it.
"L was one of the dreadful bludgeons,
"seen on the fields of Peterloo".
There's Peterloo in the capital letters there. Yep.
So, this is somebody being a bit ironic. This ordinary walking stick.
Yeah, it's a kind of mocking reference to the fact
that the government is saying this is a violent...
A dreadful bludgeon. Yeah.
I mean, clearly this is not a violent weapon,
and it shows the really contested nature of this history,
even in the months after Peterloo,
that people are fighting over the meaning.
What would Prince George himself say to us had happened?
He's briefed by the military and by the government
on what's happened, and he formally sends his thanks
to the Yeomanry and to those who have crushed
the demonstration at Peterloo.
To us, the Prince Regent appears open to criticism.
Did anybody criticise him at the time?
Well, people did. So, in 1820, a radical newspaper
writes that George is a flippant, callous leader, really,
and these words become very dangerous.
Actually, a shopkeeper, who sells this newspaper,
goes to prison for selling these seditious words.
The government brings in the Six Acts,
so it becomes illegal to meet and to protest against the government.
The radical newspapers, they're clamped down on,
so the taxes are raised
and the story of Peterloo goes underground, really.
Anyone who tries to talk about what they've witnessed
or what they've experienced at Peterloo
really has the threat of imprisonment.
We're veering towards a totalitarian state, then,
when you cannot publish or even speak criticism.
Yeah, I mean there's a huge clamp down on anyone
who dares to speak out against the monarchy
and those who supported the massacre.
What do you think the authorities were trying to achieve
by all of this censoring, silencing of the story?
Well, the authorities were panicking at the idea of revolution,
that the revolution in France, which was still in living memory,
might spread to Britain,
and so they hoped with these very authoritarian laws
that they might stop that spread of revolution,
and so there was a desperate attempt to stop any real reforms
being given to ordinary people.
Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley
responded to Peterloo with The Masque of Anarchy.
His poem called for the masses to rise like lions
against the ruling elite of Regency Britain.
He told the people to...
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you
Ye are many - they are few!
But Shelley couldn't find a publisher in his lifetime.
They were all too afraid to print it.
To maintain power, monarchy and parliament
had silenced the story of Peterloo.
For the voice of the people to be heard,
Reformers would now start spinning their own fibs.
On January 29th, 1820, King George Ill died.
After nine years of his Regency,
the Prince could finally become King George IV.
This is a whole lot of commemorative cups and plates,
the sort of thing that's familiar from royal weddings,
jubilees, that sort of thing.
But these genteel royal knick-knacks are not what they seem.
Each one of these represents a slap in the face to King George IV
because this lot celebrate the woman he didn't want to be Queen.
At the hint of a coronation, George's wife, Caroline,
returned from Europe, determined to take her place as Queen.
George was having none of it.
He wanted a divorce but if he tried to get one,
he might open himself up to criticism
for the mistresses that he'd had.
So, George decided to bring his case against Caroline before Parliament.
Politicians, rather than a court,
should decide if Caroline was guilty of adultery.
This was effectively trial by Parliament.
If Caroline wanted to be Queen, she'd have to put up
with her sex life being trotted out and picked over
in front of the entire nation.
Witnesses told tales of debauchery,
stained bedsheets and a bath shared with an Italian lover.
But Caroline thought of a way of getting the upper hand.
Ooh, thanks.
By telling just a little lie,
she could reposition herself as the people's radical Queen.
Caroline was no political radical,
but she did want revenge on her husband.
So she made an alliance with the people fighting for the vote.
During her trial, the radicals used the press and caricatures
to spin Caroline into the figurehead for a wronged people.
Tradesmen, shopkeepers and women's groups signed petitions of support.
And Caroline's radical allies scripted replies in her name
to fans across the country.
To her supporters in Sunderland,
Caroline said, "If the highest subjects in the land
"can be divorced, dethroned, debased by an arbitrary power,
"then the constitutional liberty
"of the kingdom will be shaken to its base."
The newspapers loved her.
They called her the French revolutionary leader.
Caroline's lawyer soon warned MPs
that to save themselves and the Crown,
they must find her innocent.
So, every day that she goes down for the trial,
there is a - what the government refers to as - mob
waiting to roar support.
It's an extraordinary time.
It sounds like an unholy alliance between Caroline and the radicals.
Why did the radicals want to help Queen Caroline?
The radicals are certainly...
...seeing an opportunity coming after Peterloo,
and then these coercive acts,
following that by the government.
By focusing on the Queen,
they can attack the King and the government,
but they're not criticising
or saying anything seditious or treasonable,
because they're saying the Queen is a wronged woman.
So, a cheer for Queen Caroline is secretly a boo for the King,
and for the Tory government. Absolutely.
And an unspoken wish that the franchise could be extended. Yeah.
Fear of revolution helped to sway Parliament's decision
to abandon the trial.
George's coronation could finally go ahead.
In July 1821, George IV processed through the streets
to Westminster Abbey.
King George hopes that he could use his coronation
to stabilise the monarchy and outshine Napoleon
as a truly regal leader.
But it didn't go entirely elegantly.
There were complaints about the horrendous cost of it all,
and there was an uninvited guest.
Caroline turned up and she was banging on the door of the abbey,
demanding to be let in, as Queen of England.
But she was kept out and had to slink away humiliated.
Once again, George would turn to art
to tell his version of royal history.
So, Kathryn, this is George's big moment, he's finally become King.
What's he trying to express through this coronation portrait?
Obviously, there's been huge political turmoil.
There's been military turmoil in Britain.
So, this is the moment where he can present himself
in this magnificent way to his people
and show them, here we are, monarchy is still strong.
Monarchy is back!
It summarises monarchy in every way you can think of, really.
All that gold, the diamonds, everything is showing.
And even just his pose.
He appears in this portrait to be this towering figure.
I don't think he was more than 5'7",
but Lawrence makes him into this great majestic figure.
You can see this great swagger of monarchy.
So, it's not a portrait of a man, it's a portrait of an institution.
What are the sort of hidden messages of the painting?
Well, the key one, really, is the table,
which just appears in the corner of the portrait.
And, in fact, that was a table that was made for Napoleon,
and after the defeat of Napoleon and the restoration of the monarchy,
Louis XVIII presented it to George IV.
And you can just see this lovely gesture that George,
just with a single fingertip, is resting upon Napoleon's table.
I think that just sort of sums up his attitude,
that sort of slightly insolent nod to his defeat of Napoleon.
There's a real sense of one-upmanship here, isn't there?
There is, definitely.
It's, "l can do it bigger and better, but also I've defeated you".
I think that the political underpinning of that
is really in response to what Napoleon is doing,
and that he's trying to make sure
that that's not going to happen again.
George is clearly excellent at style,
some people might say at the expense of substance,
but perhaps, in an age of revolution,
it's more important that kings project their majesty, do you think?
I think he's very conscious of how he appears in public.
This great glittering backdrop, this very sparkling court
that he creates, is all designed, really, to present the monarchy
in the place where he felt it belonged.
George, really, is trying to protect the monarchy at that moment
as the leaders of Europe.
King George wanted to dazzle his people
with the spectacle of monarchy,
and that meant new bling.
George had this diamond diadem created to wear
on the way to his coronation.
It's still worn by the Queen today.
George wanted his diadem to contain symbols
of all the different bits of the United Kingdom.
So, it's got an Irish shamrock, the English rose
and the Scottish thistle,
he's setting out his stall as a unifying monarch.
But to unify the country he'd have to rely on a few fibs.
The union between Britain and Ireland had been forged in 1800
to curb rebellion and help discourage an alliance
with Revolutionary France.
Part of the deal was the promise of Catholic emancipation.
This would allow Catholics, who made up 80% of the Irish population,
to hold public office and become MPs.
But that promise had turned out to be a lie.
George Ill had vowed never to allow Catholic emancipation.
He felt it went against the oath he'd made at his coronation,
which was to support the Protestant faith,
but his son appeared to think otherwise.
When George IV announced a trip to Ireland
a month after his coronation in 1821,
it seemed that Catholic emancipation might finally be on the horizon.
George IV was welcomed to Dublin by cheering crowds.
After all the negativity at the affair with Queen Caroline,
this is a real tonic to him.
He told the people he met implausibly, but sincerely,
that his heart had, in fact, always been Irish.
At the centre of the festivities was Daniel O'Connell,
leader of the Campaign for Catholic Emancipation.
In the past, O'Connell had publicly criticised George.
Now, he was determined to gain maximum advantage
from the King's visit.
Patrick, what are both sides hoping to achieve
from this visit to Dublin by George IV?
I think the King was trying to show that he was
the King of a United Kingdom, and a genuinely United Kingdom,
that his subjects in Ireland loved him, that he loved them,
and that they were part of this relationship
that really was only in existence for 20 years.
So, I think there was a good reason for the King to want to do it.
For Daniel O'Connell, it was more cynical.
It was about making this huge demonstration of Catholic loyalty,
so that George IV might be persuaded,
might be convinced, that the Catholics could be trusted
and that therefore emancipation could be granted.
George departed from Ireland, here from the quayside at Dun Laoghaire.
The town was renamed Kingstown in his honour.
And, before he went,
Daniel O'Connell crowned him with the victorious wreath of laurel.
Full of enthusiasm, George said to the cheering crowd,
that if ever the opportunity arose for him
to do something to serve Ireland, he would do it.
This didn't turn out to be strictly accurate.
George's visit celebrated the union and gave Irish Catholics hope.
But, once again, he was fibbing.
He'd sworn as King to defend the Protestant faith.
Back in England, there was no movement on emancipation.
So, what happened when it became clear
that George really wasn't going to help the Catholics?
Suddenly, you had a backlash against O'Connell,
because O'Connell had been going around the country,
wearing a fur cap that had a gold band on it
and he'd been telling everyone that this had been a gift from the King.
But as soon as it looked like the King
wasn't going to change his mind,
O'Connell had to deny that the cap was a gift he had.
He said, "That was just a joke, I was only pretending".
People began telling stories about
how O'Connell had humiliated himself at Dun Laoghaire, at Kingstown.
How he had waded out in the harbour
to present this laurel crown to the King and O'Connell denied that.
There was this belief that he had gone too far
and had gained nothing in return.
So, O'Connell started, once again, abusing the King
and moving on from it.
Over the next seven years,
three emancipation bills were defeated at Westminster.
Eventually, O'Connell tried a new tactic.
He got himself elected!
The government realised that
denying O'Connell his parliamentary seat in London
could spark a rebellion in Ireland.
In 1829, the Catholic Relief Act granted emancipation.
King George was finally forced to concede power to the people.
Emancipation was cheered and celebrated by Irish people,
who had no ambition to ever sit in Parliament,
but it was still meaningful for them
because it was a campaign for civil rights.
The emancipation itself has to be understood
because it's not just a religious thing
and it's not really even a religious thing.
It's a civil rights issue, a campaign to ensure that Catholics,
who had the right to vote, would be able to sit in parliament,
would be able to become judges and kings' councils.
And also be equal in their own country,
no longer feeling that they were inferior,
no longer feeling that they were slaves,
and that is why they gave O'Connell the name Liberator.
And that is why O'Connell became
one of the great figures in Irish history,
because he had led this mass peaceful movement
and he had brought the British Empire to its knees
and he had done it without having to fire a single shot.
A year after George's Irish trip,
he embarks on another visit to quell rebellion - to Edinburgh.
In 1820, Scottish workers had called a general strike
under the revolutionary motto, Liberty or Death.
The three leaders of the strike were hanged and beheaded.
Could a royal visit inspire some loyalist spirit?
The Edinburgh George IV visited was a tartan extravaganza.
Everywhere you looked, there were clan chiefs or people
holding Highland Bulls to celebrate the King.
Even George himself had been persuaded
to truss himself up into a tartan costume.
But this tartan city was an illusion,
a bit like the mythical village of Brigadoon.
Tartan wasn't even an Edinburgh thing.
It was a Highland tradition.
England supporter, are you? Er, no, the other one.
Aye. Funny that. Yeah.
And it was associated with the Hanoverian's great rivals,
the Jacobites.
Just 77 years earlier,
the Jacobite rebellion had fought to put a Stuart King
back on the British throne.
But in 1746, George's family had crushed them at Culloden.
And the wearing of Highland dress,
a sign of political allegiance to the jacobites,
had been banned for 35 years.
Now, the King's visit would rewrite history.
The man in charge of it all was Sir Walter Scott,
the best-selling author of romanticised historical fiction.
This pamphlet was published just before the royal visit
and it's called Hints To The Inhabitants Of Edinburgh,
suggesting to them how to behave and what to wear.
The author here is given as "An Old Citizen".
Actually, that was Sir Walter Scott himself.
And he says, basically, you can't wear too much tartan.
Scott was a Tory unionist
and he was willing to tweak the truth to support his cause,
even if that meant turning Hanoverian George into a Scotsman.
"He comes as the descendant of a long line of Scottish kings,
"the blood of the heroic Robert Bruce, the blood of the noble,
"the enlightened, the generous James I is in his veins."
And he concludes, triumphantly,
"that we are the clan and the King is our chief."
300,000 people turned out to see George in Scotland.
The image of the Tartan King was captured by court painters
and mocked by cartoonists.
What was Scott up to when he staged-managed this amazing visit
to Edinburgh by George IV?
In some ways, it was the most astounding piece of propaganda
in the 19th century.
The fact that you have a Hanoverian King, dressed up as a Jacobite,
is quite striking, you know,
given that only two generations beforehand,
these people were trying to oust his whole family.
But Scott nuances everything to say,
"George IV is yourjacobite King".
It invokes an idea of loyalty
and it was trying to heal divisions
between Hanoverian and Jacobite, between English and Scottish.
Scott manages to somehow fuse all this together,
into a cohesive whole that is Scotland
and admits George IV as their King.
And how did Scottish people themselves react
to being encouraged to put on fancy dress?
It was something which many of the other people,
lowlanders like me, found quite objectionable,
people refer to it as nauseous
and Sir Walter has made us ridiculous
by claiming we're all Highlanders.
They simply didn't like it, but it was something that translates,
and I think one can measure the success,
if you look at any kind of cultural depiction
of Scotland, nowadays, it's tartan. Yes.
Doesn't matter if it's The Simpsons or if it's Braveheart,
tartan equals Scotland,
and that's what Scott did.
We had this ancient garb, as he would've called it.
Ancient garb. That's a great word for it.
Ancient garbage, some might say! LUCY LAUGHS
Did this help neutralise any actual Scottish rebellion
that might have been otherwise brewing?
I think it did.
I think because there's a certain idea of...
...it alljust being a fiction.
Of it not actually making any difference.
There's a great sense that, look, what does it matter?
And yet, it's so significant that through this,
given that the 19th century will become the age of revolutions,
and particularly nationalist revolutions
from Finland through to Hungary,
where doesn't have a revolution?
Scotland.
Well, the solution, obviously, is just put men into skirts.
George's Edinburgh visit was a triumph.
But winning over his people in person
was becoming more of a challenge.
The King was now in his '60s, obese and unhealthy.
He began to think of his legacy.
Once again, George was hoping that his lasting image
would be as the vanquisher of Napoleon.
In later life, he'd sometimes reminisce about how he himself
had been on the battlefield at Waterloo,
which left the Duke of Wellington, rolling his eyes
and muttering about the madness that ran in the royal family.
To cement his place in history,
George would rely on his favourite spin doctors - art and architecture.
In 1825, he began transforming London's Buckingham House
into a grand palace.
In front of Buckingham Palace was to be an arch
to rival the Arc de Triomphe,
celebrating Britain's victory over Napoleon
and topped with a statue of George.
At Windsor, he raised the height of the Round Tower
to make it more imposing...
...and inside the castle, he planned to display portraits of the leaders
who'd ended the march of French Republicanism at Waterloo.
The paintings were all to be gathered together
into one amazing room that's still called the Waterloo Chamber.
What's being celebrated here
is not so much the fighting on the battlefield.
Instead, these people are the architects
of the peace that followed.
These are the builders of a new Europe.
And this is a pantheon of heroes
in which George could take his place.
But George wouldn't live to see his version of history completed.
He died in 1830.
The money for his triumphal arch ran out,
and the smaller version, now known as Marble Arch,
was moved away from Buckingham Palace.
George's heroic legacy remained a fantasy.
Instead, he was remembered for his excesses
and his extravagance.
After his death, The Times was scathing.
"There never was an individual less regretted
"by his fellow creatures than this deceased King.
"What eye has wept for him?"
It was the caricature version of George that won out.
He'd made countless attempts to control his own story,
but, ultimately, he failed.
After George's death,
the memory of Peterloo could no longer be suppressed.
Shelley's forbidden poem, The Masque of Anarchy,
was finally published in 1832,
the same year as the first of the great reform acts
started to extend the vote.
It was later quoted by Gandhi
during the campaign for Indian independence...
...by students at Tiananmen Square in 1989...
...and by protesters in Cairo during the Arab Spring.
And in Britain, fighters for democracy
kept digging beneath the facade of the Regency for inspiration.
In October 1905, Christabel Pankhurst and another suffragette
came here to the Free Trade Hall in Manchester.
They wanted to attend a big meeting at the Liberal Party.
They had some questions for the party leaders about votes for women.
Now, this place had enormous significance
for Christabel Pankhurst
because the building stands on what had been the field of Peterloo,
where her own great-grandfather, as she'd often been told,
had only just escaped being massacred.
After disrupting the meeting, Pankhurst spat at police officers.
These two were the first suffragettes
to be imprisoned for militant action.
And the Pankhursts would later point out
that they and their ancestor had fought for democracy
on the very same site.
To the suffragettes then, the Regency wasn't a time
of fancy balls and fancy manners,
it was a time when rebellion was born.
Georgian fibs were used to maintain power and control,
and George's impact may have been greater than history remembers.
Throughout his regency and reign, the monarchy remained intact.
Napoleon was defeated and there was no revolution in Britain.
George lived through a time when thrones were falling.
The French Revolution had just happened.
Does he bear any credit for seeing things through
in Britain, without revolution?
I think he probably doesn't bear much credit for it
in terms of the actual military victories
that kept Napoleon from our shores,
but he certainly was preoccupied with what monarchy might seem
or be or embody in his own time period.
He argues for a state of splendour that would somehow set Britain
on an international stage and give it that kind of credibility
for monarchy-led constitution.
I think George's legacy is absolutely the kind of pomp
and circumstance that we have that surrounds monarchy today.
That aspect of the glamour and the splendour of monarchy
is something that we still want to see in the 21st century.
Many of George's attempts to spin the story of Great Britain
and its monarchy have survived.
His version of the United Kingdom,
whether that's tartan-clad spectacle
or conquerors of Napoleon,
is still how the nation presents itself to the world.
His palaces are still the seat of monarchy.
His diamond diadem still sparkles on our currency and our Queen.
And maybe his excessive dazzle
still blinds us to the truth to this day.
This period of history is often remembered as genteel and refined.
We concentrate on the style of it rather than the substance.
But this was also an age which saw stirrings of revolution,
even in Britain, and monarchy had to react to that.
Stories about ridiculous George and his lavish lifestyle,
tend to crowd out the grittier reality
of the age of the Regency.
Next time, the Russian Revolution.
Was Lenin really the leader who toppled the monarchy?
How did Eisenstein help create the cult of Lenin?
And is Vladimir Putin the true heir to the czars?