Kingdom of Hanover in the context of Unification of Germany

Because of the Salic law of succession, all monarchs of Hanover were male, electors from 1692 until 1814 and kings from 1814 until 1866. Their wives were thus electresses and then queens.

The House of Hanover (German: Haus Hannover German pronunciation: [haʊ̯s haˈnoːfɐ]) is a German royal house with roots tracing back to the 17th century. Its members, known as Hanoverians, ruled Hanover, Great Britain, Ireland, and the British Empire at various times during the 17th to 20th centuries. Originating as a cadet branch of the House of Welf (also "Guelf" or "Guelph") in 1635, also known then as the House of Brunswick-Lüneburg, the Hanoverians ascended to prominence with Hanover's elevation to an Electorate of the Holy Roman Empire in 1692. In 1714 George I, prince-elector of Hanover and a descendant of King James VI and I, assumed the throne of Great Britain and Ireland, marking the beginning of Hanoverian rule over the British Empire. At the end of this line, Queen Victoria's death in 1901, the throne of the United Kingdom passed to her eldest son Edward VII, a member of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, through his father Albert, Prince Consort. The last reigning members of the House of Hanover lost the Duchy of Brunswick in 1918 when Germany became a republic and abolished royalty and nobility.

The formal name of the house was the "House of Brunswick-Lüneburg, Hanover line". The senior line of Brunswick-Lüneburg, which ruled Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, became extinct in 1884. The House of Hanover is now the only surviving branch of the House of Welf, which is the senior branch of the House of Este. The current head of the House of Hanover is Ernst August, Prince of Hanover.

The territorial evolution of the British Empire is considered to have begun with the foundation of the English colonial empire in the late 16th century. Since then, many territories around the world have been under the control of the United Kingdom or its predecessor states.When the Kingdom of Great Britain was formed in 1707 by the union of the Kingdoms of Scotland and England, the latter country's colonial possessions passed to the new state. Similarly, when Great Britain was united with the Kingdom of Ireland in 1801 to form the United Kingdom, control over its colonial possessions passed to the latter state. Collectively, these territories are referred to as the British Empire. When much of Ireland gained independence in 1922 as the Irish Free State, the other territories of the empire remained under the control of the United Kingdom.

From 1714 to 1837, the British throne was held by a series of kings who were also the rulers of the German state of Hanover. However, this was purely a personal union, with Hanover maintaining its political independence otherwise, and so it is not usually considered to have formed part of the British Empire.

The Battle of Waterloo was fought on Sunday 18 June 1815, near Waterloo (then in the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, now in Belgium), marking the end of the Napoleonic Wars. The French Imperial Army under the command of Napoleon I was defeated by two armies of the Seventh Coalition. One was a British-led force with units from the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Hanover, Brunswick, and Nassau, under the command of field marshal Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington. The other comprised three corps of the Prussian army under Field Marshal Blücher. The battle was known contemporaneously as the Battle of Mont Saint-Jean in France (after the hamlet of Mont-Saint-Jean) and La Belle Alliance in Prussia ("the Beautiful Alliance"; after the inn of La Belle Alliance).

Upon Napoleon's return to power in March 1815, the beginning of the Hundred Days, many states that had previously opposed him formed the Seventh Coalition to oppose him again, and hurriedly mobilised their armies. Wellington's and Blücher's armies were cantoned close to the northeastern border of France. Napoleon planned to attack them separately, before they could link up and invade France with other members of the coalition. On 16 June, Napoleon successfully attacked the bulk of the Prussian Army at the Battle of Ligny with his main force, while a small portion of the French Imperial Army contested the Battle of Quatre Bras to prevent the Anglo-allied army from reinforcing the Prussians. The Anglo-allied army held their ground at Quatre Bras but were prevented from reinforcing the Prussians, and on the 17th, the Prussians withdrew from Ligny in good order, while Wellington then withdrew in parallel with the Prussians northward to Waterloo on 17 June. Napoleon sent a third of his forces to pursue the Prussians, which resulted in the separate Battle of Wavre with the Prussian rear-guard on 18–19 June and prevented that French force from participating at Waterloo.

The King of Hanover (German: König von Hannover) was the official title of the head of state and hereditary ruler of the Kingdom of Hanover, beginning with the proclamation of King George III of the United Kingdom, as "King of Hanover" during the Congress of Vienna, on 12 October 1814 at Vienna, and ending with the kingdom's annexation by Prussia on 20 September 1866.

Bremerhaven (German pronunciation: [ˌbʁeːmɐˈhaːfn̩] ; Low German: Bremerhoben) is a city on the east bank of the Weser estuary in northern Germany. It forms an exclave of the city-state of Bremen. The River Geeste flows through the city before emptying into the Weser.

Bremerhaven was founded in 1827 as a seaport for Bremen, and it remains one of the busiest ports in the country. It was historically rivalled by Geestemünde [de] on the opposite side of the Geeste, which belonged to Hanover (and later Prussia). Geestemünde united with neighbouring Lehe [de] to form the city of Wesermünde [de] in 1924, and Bremerhaven was itself annexed to Wesermünde in 1939, but the entire conurbation was restored to Bremen in 1947.

Ernst August von Hannover (German: Ernst August Albert Paul Otto Rupprecht Oskar Berthold Friedrich-Ferdinand Christian-Ludwig Prinz von Hannover Herzog zu Braunschweig und Lüneburg Königlicher Prinz von Großbritannien und Irland, lit. 'Ernest August Albert Paul Otto Rupert Oscar Berthold Frederick-Ferdinand Christian-Louis, Prince of Hanover, Duke of Brunswick and Lüneburg, Royal Prince of Great Britain and Ireland'; born 26 February 1954) is the head of the House of Hanover, members of which reigned in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (Great Britain and Ireland were separate kingdoms, 1714 to 1801) from 1714 to 1901, the Kingdom of Hanover from 1814 to 1866 (electorate, from 1714 to 1814), and the Duchy of Brunswick from 1913 to 1918. As the husband of Princess Caroline of Monaco, he is the brother-in-law of Albert II, Prince of Monaco.

Hanover (/ˈhænoʊvər, -nəv-/ HAN-oh-vər, HAN-ə-vər; German: Hannover [haˈnoːfɐ] ; Low German: Hannober) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Lower Saxony. Its population of 535,932 (2021) makes it the 13th-largest city in Germany as well as the fourth-largest in northern Germany after Berlin, Hamburg and Bremen. Hanover's urban area comprises the towns of Garbsen, Langenhagen and Laatzen and has a population of about 791,000 (2018). The Hanover Region has approximately 1.16 million inhabitants (2019) and is the largest in the Hanover–Braunschweig–Göttingen–Wolfsburg Metropolitan Region, the 17th biggest metropolitan area by GDP in the European Union.

Before it became the capital of Lower Saxony in 1946, Hanover was the capital of the Principality of Calenberg (1636–1692), the Electorate of Hanover (1692–1814), the Kingdom of Hanover (1814–1866), the Province of Hanover of the Kingdom of Prussia (1868–1918), the Province of Hanover of the Free State of Prussia (1918–1947) and of the State of Hanover (1946). From 1714 to 1837 Hanover was by personal union the family seat of the Hanoverian Kings of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, under their title of the dukes of Brunswick-Lüneburg (later described as the Elector of Hanover).

The Royal Guelphic Order (German: Königlicher Guelphen-Orden), sometimes referred to as the Hanoverian Guelphic Order, is a Hanoverian order of chivalry instituted on 28 April 1815 by the Prince Regent (later King George IV). It takes its name from the House of Guelph, of which the House of Hanover was a branch. Since Hanover and the United Kingdom shared a monarch until 1837, the order was frequently bestowed upon British subjects.

Ernest Augustus (German: Ernst August; 5 June 1771 – 18 November 1851) was King of Hanover from 20 June 1837 until his death in 1851. As the fifth son of George III of the United Kingdom and Hanover, he initially seemed unlikely to become a monarch, but none of his older brothers had a legitimate son. When his brother William IV, who ruled both kingdoms, died in 1837, his niece Victoria inherited the British throne under British succession law, while Ernest succeeded in Hanover under Salic law, which barred women from the succession. This ended the personal union between Britain and Hanover that had begun in 1714. He remained heir presumptive to the British throne until the birth of Victoria, Princess Royal in 1840.

Ernest was born in London but was sent to Hanover in his adolescence for his education and military training. While serving with Hanoverian forces near Tournai against Revolutionary France, he received a disfiguring facial wound. He was created Duke of Cumberland and Teviotdale in 1799. Although his mother, Queen Charlotte, disapproved of his marriage in 1815 to her twice-widowed niece, Frederica of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, it proved happy. The eldest son of George III, the Prince of Wales (later George IV), had one child, Charlotte, who was expected to become the British queen, but she died in 1817, giving Ernest some prospect of succeeding to the British and Hanoverian thrones. However, his elder brother Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, fathered the eventual British heir, Victoria, in 1819 shortly before the birth of Ernest's only child, George.

The Province of Hanover (German: Provinz Hannover) was a province of the Kingdom of Prussia and the Free State of Prussia from 1866 to 1946.

During the Austro-Prussian War, the Kingdom of Hanover had attempted to maintain a neutral position, along with some other member states of the German Confederation. After Hanover voted in favour of mobilising confederation troops against Prussia on 14 June 1866, Prussia saw this as a just cause for declaring war; the Kingdom of Hanover was soon dissolved and annexed by Prussia. The private wealth of the dethroned House of Hanover was then used by Otto von Bismarck to finance his continuing efforts against Ludwig II of Bavaria.

The State of Hanover (German: Land Hannover) was a short-lived state within the British Zone of Allied-occupied Germany. It existed for 92 days in the course of the dissolution of the Free State of Prussia after World War II until the foundation of Lower Saxony in 1946. The state saw itself in the tradition of the former Kingdom of Hanover, annexed by Prussia in 1866, reflected in the Saxon Steed state emblem. After Lower Saxony was founded by merging Hanover with several smaller states, it continued to use the Hanover emblems.

German militarism was a broad cultural and social phenomenon between 1815 and 1945, which developed out of the creation of standing armies in the 18th century. The numerical increase of militaristic structures in the Holy Roman Empire led to an increasing influence of military culture deep into civilian life. Independent jurisprudence, conscription, but also increasing isolation of soldiers from the rest of society, as a result of the development of barracks at the end of the 18th century, led to this development being particularly strong in Germany. Several dozen German states had their own standing armies by about 1800. Besides the large army of the Kingdom of Prussia, the states of Württemberg, Saxony, Bavaria, the two Hessian states (Electoral Hesse and Hesse-Darmstadt), Hanover, Baden and Münster all had standing armies of up to 35,000 men. The Austrian Empire also played an important role in the development of German militarism up until 1866.

The 19th century saw a combination of militarism and nationalism. Within the then-dominant Prussian Army, reactionary and right-leaning tendencies were highly influential. Increasingly, the army developed to be the "School of the Nation". As a result, millions of young German men experienced a year-long process of socialisation as conscripts or reservists within the institution of the army. The socially well-respected army played a key role in the development of a hierarchical and uniformed society. Several paramilitary structures with the characteristics of mass movements developed in the German-speaking regions of Europe within the 19th and 20th century. During the first half of the 20th century, German militarism reached its peak with two World Wars, which were followed by a consistent anti-militarism and pacifism within Germany since 1945, with a strong non-conformist tendency within subsequent generations.

Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany (Frederick Augustus; 16 August 1763 – 5 January 1827), was the second son of George III, King of the United Kingdom and Hanover, and his consort Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. A soldier by profession, from 1764 to 1803 he was Prince-Bishop of Osnabrück in the Holy Roman Empire. From the death of his father in 1820 until his own death in 1827, he was the heir presumptive to his elder brother, George IV, in both the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and the Kingdom of Hanover.

Frederick was thrust into the British Army at a very early age and was appointed to high command at the age of thirty, when he was given command of a notoriously ineffectual campaign during the War of the First Coalition, a continental war following the French Revolution. Later, as Commander-in-Chief during the Napoleonic Wars, he oversaw the reorganisation of the British Army, establishing vital structural, administrative and recruiting reforms for which he is credited with having done "more for the army than any one man has done for it in the whole of its history".