Dr Jason McElligott, University College Dublin

From 1672, when he became Stadtholder of Holland and Captain-General of the United Provinces, until his death in 1702, William was almost constantly at war, preparing for war, or cultivating allies for the next round of conflict.

After the battle of Seneff in 1674 the great French general Condé said that William was 'a gifted youngster - but foolhardy, much too foolhardy'. By the 1690s, however, William was universally recognised as a formidable general. Later commentators have not been so kind, and it has become commonplace to argue that William was a poor or unlucky general.

Most commanders of the period lived apart from their men in considerable comfort when on campaign. William, by contrast, prided himself on living and sleeping among his men. He often bedded down in the trenches and is known to have accompanied his men on day and night patrols. He was genuinely concerned for the welfare of his men and instituted a pension plan for elderly and crippled soldiers which was so generous that it threatened to bankrupt him in the late 1690s; even then he ordered that no man was to be discharged from his service until there was money to pay his pension.

William had a natural flair for organisation. His close attention to the logistics of the Irish campaign was one of the main reasons for his success. He was also a first-class diplomat - an important skill in managing the various autonomous provinces which made up The Netherlands. These skills were also important in holding together his armies, which were often coalitions of Protestant and Catholic forces from across Europe. He was happy to work with and fight alongside anybody, so long as they were opposed to the ambitions of Louis XIV.

He had nothing but contempt for people like the English M.P. Sir John Reresby who complained in 1688 that William had brought 4,000 Roman Catholics to England in his army.

War was a terrible burden upon the civilian population. There was relatively little risk of civilians being caught-up in the actual fighting, but conflict brought hunger, disease, rape and robbery. William's troops often stole food and he sometimes allowed his men to plunder towns. He does, however, seem to have enforced a ban on the rape of civilians.

William certainly had his faults. He had not served a military apprenticeship before being made supreme commander, a weakness which sometimes manifested itself in a lack of strategic thinking; in 1674 he marched his troops through a narrow pass close to the French army at Seneff, and his opponents gleefully took this unexpected opportunity to give him a very bloody nose. He was prone to bouts of depression and often needlessly delayed giving orders or making decisions. His willingness to get his hands dirty in battle was both a strength and his most serious shortcoming. Too often he was in the thick of the action in a small section of the battlefield when he should have been back at his headquarters making decisions about the battle as a whole.

William won fewer battles than he lost or drew, and in this respect he does not belong among the premier league of seventeenth-century generals like Cromwell, Turenne, Condé, and Luxembourg.