Electorate of Hesse

The Electorate of Hesse, also known as Hesse-Kassel or Kurhessen, was the title given to the old Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel after Francis II elevated its ruler to the rank of elector in 1803, with a vote in any future imperial election. When the empire was abolished in 1806, William I chose to keep the electoral title, even though there was no emperor left to elect. In 1807, by the Treaties of Tilsit, the land was annexed to the Kingdom of Westphalia, but the Congress of Vienna restored the electorate in 1814, and it remained the only electorate inside the German Confederation. It was made up of several detached territories north of Frankfurt, and it lasted until Prussia annexed it in 1866 after the Austro-Prussian War. The landgraviate itself had been born in 1567, when the old landgraviate of Hesse was divided among the heirs of Philip the Magnanimous; his eldest son William IV took Hesse-Kassel, including the capital Kassel. Under Landgrave William IX, who reigned from 1785, Hesse-Kassel fought France in the War of the First Coalition, made peace at Basel in 1795 and lost its left-bank lands in 1801.