This arrangement of 1458 allowed him to have a befitting marriage and offspring entitled to inherit, and so increased the chances of survival of the comital house.

It involved a division and took account of the old treaties: the Barony of Bitsch went back to Lorraine and the administrative district of Lemberg, which had been an allod of the counts of Zweibrücken, was allocated to Hanau-Lichtenberg.

As a result, the Bitsche territory remained Roman Catholic, whilst the Lutheran confession was introduced into the district of Lemberg.

The next male of kin was Friedrich Casimir, Count of Hanau-Lichtenberg, then still a minor under the guardianship of Georg II of Fleckenstein-Dagstuhl.

The inheritance could finally be secured by a treaty of 1643 between Friedrich Casimir and Landgravine Amalie Elisabeth, née countess of Hanau-Münzenberg, daughter to Philipp II.

Therefore, Friedrich Casimir granted – should the house of Hanau be without male heirs – the inheritance of Hanau-Münzenberg to the descendants of Amalie Elisabeth.

The marriage was arranged to avoid such claims and to take advantage of the fact that she was Calvinist as the majority of the population in Hanau-Münzenberg, contrary to Friedrich Casimir who was a Lutheran.

[3] Regarding the question if the administrative district of Babenhausen was part of Hanau-Münzenberg or Hanau-Lichtenberg nearly led into a war of both landgraviats in 1736 and into an extensive lawsuit at the Reichskammergericht during the next decades.

The suit ended with a compromise to divide the administrative district of Babenhausen into two equal parts between the parties.

[4] In 1803 due to territorial reforms following the French Revolution the former county of Hanau-Lichtenberg was divided: All of it left of the Rhine became part of France, all of it right of the river fell to the Grand Duchy of Baden.