Kingdom of Hanover

The Kingdom of Hanover was established in October 1814 by the Congress of Vienna, restoring George III to his Hanoverian lands after the Napoleonic age. Its capital was Hanover, with Gottingen and Osnabruck among its towns; it reached the North Sea, bordered the Netherlands and the free cities of Hamburg and Bremen, and succeeded the old Electorate of Hanover, joining thirty-eight other sovereign states in the German Confederation in June 1815. It was ruled by the House of Hanover, a Welf cadet line, in personal union with Great Britain, whose king lived in London, so a viceroy, usually a younger prince of the British family, governed Hanover. The union ended in 1837, when Victoria's accession in Britain could not carry the semi-Salic Hanoverian throne while a dynastic male lived, and her uncle Ernest Augustus took the German crown, followed by his only son George V. Having backed Austria in the Austro-Prussian War, Hanover was conquered by Prussia in 1866 and became the Prussian Province of Hanover, entering the German Empire with Prussia in 1871; it was briefly revived as a state in 1946 before merging into Lower Saxony.