Hanoverian Army
It continued to be directly tied to Britain until 1837 when, after the death of William IV, Hanover's Salic Law led it to crown Ernest Augustus in preference to his niece Queen Victoria.
By the seventeenth century a branch of the family reigned over territories in Northern Germany centred around the city of Hanover, at a lesser level to the Electors who elected the Emperors.
[4] From 1689 Hanover was a significant part of the Grand Alliance formed to check the expansion of Louis XIV, which fought French armies to a standstill in a series of campaigns leading to the Treaty of Ryswick.
As well as his multiple German family alliances, George also had a now strong claim to the British throne through his mother due to his Protestant religion which excluded rival Jacobite claimants.
[6] Hanover despatched a contingent to serve in the Allied Army under John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, taking part in numerous campaigns including the decisive victory at Blenheim.
[8] At a strategy conference held in Hanover April 1708, George believed that he had persuaded Marlborough and Prince Eugene of Savoy to use their armies in Flanders as a feint to tie down French troops while he launched the main assault on the Rhine.
However he had been deliberately misled and in fact Marlborough used the threat of George's Imperial army as a diversion to support his own offensive, leading to his victory at the Battle of Oudenarde and the capture of Lille.
In 1712 they refused an order by their new British commander Ormonde to march away to Dunkirk and remained to support Prince Eugene in his unsuccessful Battle of Denain and the Rhine campaign of 1713.
Despite inheriting the throne of the larger Britain, George remained fixated on the electorate, and particularly wanted to advance Hanover's claims in the Great Northern War against Sweden.
Although Hanoverian units were a significant part of the plan to defend Britain's coasts, bad weather stalled the main invasion and the diversionary attack on Scotland was defeated by local forces at the Battle of Glenshiel.
In response Britain forged a coalition to support Maria Theresa and hired nearly 16,000 Hanoverian troops to serve in the Pragmatic Army assembled in the Low Countries.
A landing by Charles Edward Stuart in Scotland launched a fresh Jacobite rising led to the redeployment of British and allied German troops to counter the threat, which was largely ended at the Battle of Culloden in 1746.
