Brunswick-Lüneburg, Electorate of (Electorate of Hanover)
Substate | Defunct
1692 CE to 1806 CE
The Electorate of Brunswick-Lüneburg, colloquially Electorate of Hanover, is established in 1692 as the ninth Electorate of the Holy Roman Empire and formally approved in 1708.
It is ruled by the House of Hanover, a cadet branch of the House of Welf, which at this time rules and earlier had ruled a number of principalities, which had several times been partitioned among several heirs from the Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg.
After 1705, only two of these territories exist.
One is the Principality of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, which remains independent as the Duchy of Brunswick (new title adopted in 1815) until 1918.
The other, the new Electorate, is based on the dynastic line of the Principality of Calenberg.
With the ascension of its prince-elector as King of Great Britain in 1714, it becomes ruled in personal union with Great Britain.
As a consequence, a reluctant Great Britain is forced time and again to become involved with the fate of the German possessions of its King.
However, internally, it remains a separately ruled territory with its own government and bodies.
Merged into the Napoleonic Kingdom of Westphalia in 1807, it is re-established as the Kingdom of Hanover in 1814, with the personal union with the British crown lasting until 1837.
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She is succeeded by her second cousin, George I, of the House of Hanover, who is a descendant of the Stuarts through his maternal grandmother, Elizabeth, daughter of James VI & I.
A series of Jacobite rebellions breaks out in an attempt to restore the Stuart monarchy, but all ultimately fail.
Several Planned French invasions are attempted, also with the intention of placing the Stuarts on the throne.
The English capital of London is adopted as the capital of the Union.
With the imminent formation of a single Hanoverian state, and the Hanoverians’ continuing contributions to the Empire's wars, Ernest Augustus is made elector of Brunswick-Lüneburg (i.e., Hanover), in 1692 in return for lavish promises of assistance.
Indignant protests follow this proceeding.
A league is formed to prevent any addition to the electoral college; France and Sweden are called upon for assistance.
This agitation, however, soon dies away, and his son is confirmed as elector by the imperial diet.
George's prospects are now better than ever, as the sole heir to his father's Electorate—the ninth of the Holy Roman Empire—and his uncle's duchy.The Welf family has divided into several branches over the past five centuries.
Chief among these are those of Brunswick-Luneburg and Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel.
Ernest Augustus had in 1679 become reigning Duke of Lüneburg-Calenburg (which becomes known as the duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg or, more popularly, because of its capital city, the duchy of Hanover).
His wife, Sophia of the Rhineland Palatinate, is the last surviving offspring of the marriage between Frederick V, elector Palatine, and Elizabeth (Stuart) of Bohemia, daughter of James I of England.
Two of Ernest Augustus’s three brothers had died childless and the third, George William of Celle, had married his mistress in order to legitimize his only daughter, Sophia Dorothea of Celle, but looked unlikely to have any further children.
Under Salic law, where inheritance of territory was restricted to the male line, the succession of Ernest Augustus’s sons to his father's and uncle's territories now seemed secure.
The family had agreed in 1682 to adopt the principle of primogeniture, meaning George, the eldest, would inherit all the territory, and not have to share it with his brothers.
The same year, George married his first cousin, Sophia Dorothea, thereby securing additional incomes that would have been outside Salic laws requiring male inheritance.
The marriage of state was arranged primarily as it ensured a healthy annual income, and assisted the eventual unification of Hanover and Celle.
Sophia was at first against the marriage, looking down on Sophia Dorothea's mother (who was not of royal birth) and concerned by Sophia Dorothea's legitimated status, but was eventually won over by the advantages inherent in the marriage.
George and his brother, Frederick Augustus, served in the Great Turkish War at the Battle of Vienna in 1683, and Sophia Dorothea had borne George a son, George Augustus.
Frederick Augustus had been informed the following year of the adoption of primogeniture, meaning he would no longer receive part of his father's territory as he had expected.
It led to a breach between father and son, and between the brothers, that lasted until Frederick Augustus's death in battle in 1690.
Sophia Dorothea had borne a second child, a daughter named after her, in 1687, but there have been no other pregnancies.
George Louis of Hanover and his wife Sophia Dorothea have become estranged—George prefers the society of his mistress, Melusine von der Schulenburg, by whom he had two daughters in 1692 and 1693, respectively; and Sophia Dorothea, meanwhile, had her own romance with the Swedish Count Philip Christoph von Königsmarck.
Threatened with the scandal of an elopement, the Hanoverian court, including George's brothers and Sophia, urges the lovers to desist, but to no avail.
According to diplomatic sources from Hanover's enemies, in July 1694, the count is killed, possibly with the connivance of George, and his body thrown into the river Leine weighted with stones. (The murder was claimed to have been committed by four of Ernest Augustus's courtiers, one of whom—Don Nicolò Montalbano—was paid the enormous sum of one hundred and fifty thousand thalers, which was about one hundred times the annual salary of the highest-paid minister.)
Sources in Hanover itself, including Sophia, deny any knowledge of Königsmarck's whereabouts.
George's marriage to Sophia Dorothea is dissolved, not on the grounds that either of them had committed adultery, but on the grounds that Sophia Dorothea had abandoned her husband.
George Louis, with the concurrence of Sophia Dorothea’s father, has his former wife imprisoned in the Castle of Ahlden in her native Celle.
She is denied access to her children and father, forbidden to remarry and only allowed to walk unaccompanied within the castle courtyard.
She is however endowed with an income, establishment and servants, and is allowed to ride in a carriage outside her castle, albeit under supervision.
Ernest Augustus of Brunswick-Lüneburg dies on January 23, 1698, leaving all of his territories to his son George Louis with the exception of the Prince-Bishopric of Osnabrück, an office he had held since 1661.
George, who has received a thorough education in the diplomatic and military arts, thus becomes Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg (also known as Hanover, after its capital) as well as Archbannerbearer and a Prince-Elector of the Holy Roman Empire.
His court in Hanover is graced by many cultural icons such as the mathematician and philosopher Gottfried Leibniz and the composers George Frideric Händel and Agostino Steffani.
Ernest Augustus was born at Herzberg am Harz, the son of George, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg and Anne Eleonore of Hesse-Darmstadt (Ernest Augustus is thus descended from the Albertinian line of the Habsburg family and also the House of Hohenzollern).
He married Sophia of the Palatinate in Heidelberg in 1658.
As the fourth son, he had little chance of succeeding his father as ruler, and so, in 1662, his relatives had appointed him administrator of Osnabrück; according to the Peace of Westphalia, every second incumbent of the Osnabrück see was to be appointed by the dukes of Brunswick-Lüneburg.
However, after two of his elder brothers had died without sons, Ernest Augustus had inherited part of his father's territories in 1679, namely Calenberg (including Göttingen).
Against the protestations of his five younger sons, Ernest Augustus in 1683 had instituted primogeniture, so that his territory would not be further subdivided after his death, and also as a precondition for obtaining the coveted electorship.
He participated in the Great Turkish War on the side of Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I.
He was in 1692 appointed prince-elector by the Emperor; however, the electorship will not come into effect until 1708.
The death of William III brings an end to the Dutch House of Orange, members of which had served as stadtholder of Holland and the majority of the other provinces of the Dutch Republic since the time of William the Silent (William I).
The five provinces of which William III was stadtholder—Utrecht, ...
...Zeeland, ...
...Gelderland, ...
Thus, he is the last agnatic descendant of William I to be named stadtholder for the majority of the provinces.
Under William III's will, John William Friso stands to inherit the Principality of Orange as well as several lordships in the Netherlands.
He was an agnatic relative of the Princes of Orange, as well as a descendant of William the Silent through a female line.
However, King Frederick I of Prussia also claims the Principality as the senior cognatic heir, stadtholder Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange having been his maternal grandfather and William III his first cousin.
Anne is the mother of seventeen children by her husband Prince George of Denmark, but none of them will survive childhood and she will die without heir to enable the Hanoverian Succession.
In the Netherlands, the Staten Generaal do not appoint a new stadtholder and the United Provinces thus become a true republic again.