Hanover

“ What I regard as most desirable for the interest of Hanover and your majesty, purely from my own conviction, may easily be imputed to other motives, and will by some be so imputed. It is therefore doubly necessary that I should always be completely informed what your majesty's views really are, that I may act accordingly."
"Do not trouble yourself to fight against foolish notions," said the king, with his peculiarly engaging and gracious smile. "I am sure, my dear Meding, you will always have my interests and the interests of Hanover at heart. ”

“ About six o’clock that evening we reached Hanover and were marched off through some of the main streets to an unknown destination. The town is all right; it is the people that spoil it. Proceeding down some broad streets we passed some very fine buildings, statues and fountains. Once a well-dressed woman unintentionally crossed our path, with the result that a sentry roughly threw her aside without a word of apology. ”

“ Nov. 9, Hanover.—Another day of fatigue and two tedious posts have brought me here. The country has improved during this last day’s journey. There is a road edged with trees, instead of the miserable track, scarce discernible, through sand or heath; and here and there the eye is refreshed with a cultivated field and distant wood. I am not out of humour with German travelling, slow as it is. I have found all the people I employed, obliging, though not empressé, and there is a quietness in their manner that pleases. ”

“ Friedrich, in alliance with France, how easy for him to catch Hanover by the throat at a week's notice, throw a death-noose round the throat of poor Hanover, and hand the same to France for tightening at discretion! Poor Hanover indeed; she reaps little profit from her English honors: what has she had to do with these Transatlantic Colonies of England? An unfortunate Country, if the English would but think; liable to be strangled at any time, for England's quarrels: the Achilles'-heel to invulnerable England ”

“ How could an open country be defended against an enemy who could march 150,000 men into it,446 and if necessary reinforce them by as many more? Should Hanover suffer by her connection with Great Britain, we ought not to make peace without exacting full and ample compensation for all the damage and injury she might have sustained. But the idea of defending Hanover by subsidies was preposterous, absurd, and impracticable. Then, excited by this favourite theme beyond the limits he had imposed on himself, he struck home at the King and his darling patrimony. ”

“ Hanover is the headquarters of the X. Prussian army corps, has a large garrison of nearly all arms and a famous military riding school. It occupies a leading position among the industrial and commercial towns of the empire, and of recent years has made rapid progress in prosperity. It is connected by railway with Berlin, Hamburg, Bremen, Hameln, Cologne, Altenbeken and Cassel, and the facilities of intercourse have, under the fostering care of the Prussian government, enormously developed its trade and manufactures. ”

“ The sovereign of Hanover was a positive despot, both politically and socially. Everything had to be done to please him, to amuse him, to conciliate him. The women around the Court were always vying with each other to see who should most successfully flatter the King, or, in the King's absence, the Royal Prince. It was intellectually a very stupid Court. Its pleasures were vulgar, its revels coarse, its whole atmosphere heavy and sensuous. Frederick was said, however, to have given some evidence of a more cultivated taste than might have been expected of a Hanoverian Crown Prince. ”

“ These were times when Hanoverians, who stood in fear of Prussia, never lay down in bed but with arms at their side; times when young peasants who, influenced by soft attractions, stole by night from one village to another to pay their devoirs to bright eyes waking to receive them, walked through perils, love in their hearts, and a musket on their shoulders. The enrollers of Frederick, and indeed those of his great son after him, cast a chill shadow of fear over every age, sex, and station of life. ”

“ English money, however, came to the rescue; in 1758 Ferdinand, duke of Brunswick, cleared the electorate of the invader; and Hanover suffered no loss of territory at the peace of 1763. Both George I. and George II. preferred Hanover to England as a place of residence, and it was a frequent and perhaps justifiable cause of complaint that the interests of Great Britain were sacrificed to those of the smaller country. ”

“ In 1885 measures were taken to incorporate the province of Hanover more thoroughly in the kingdom of Prussia, and there is little doubt but that the great majority of the Hanoverians have submitted to the inevitable, and are loyal subjects of the king of Prussia. ”

“ Hanover is a thorn in our flesh, and even with the best intentions towards us, cripples us greatly. When she bears us ill-will, as for some time past has been the case, she is really dangerous. If I were the complete Machiavelli I am accused of being, I should direct my whole attention to the acquisition of Hanover. ”

“ The blackened shell of the building stands in cold decrepitude, a melancholy vestige of usefulness outlived. In consequence of the stoppage of the works, Hanover has lost seven-eighths of its population, and only about fifty inhabitants remain in the white cottages grouped about the Big House, who are employed in agricultural labors and occupations connected with the forest. ”

“ George’s, Hanover-Square, the Church so distinguished for marriages in high-life, and for a fashionable prestige altogether. Here one sees Hanover indeed! The names of its successive Churchwardens are emblazoned on the galleries, and I observed that they were generally those of noblemen and gentry. Fashion was much too prominent. A young and well-looking preacher, in Episcopal robes, appeared in the pulpit, and discoursed articulately, and with some spirit, (on Rev. xxii. 17,) though not remarkably in other respects. ”

“ It is well known how inconsiderable, in the sight of those by whom the succession was established, Hanover appeared, in comparison with Britain. Those men, to whom even their enemies have seldom denied praise for knowledge and capacity, and who have been so loudly celebrated by many, who have joined in the last address, for their honest zeal, and the love of their country, enacted, that the king of Britain should never visit those important territories, which we have so solemnly promised to defend, at the hazard of our happiness. ”

“ The Court of Hanover at the time of Caroline’s marriage was one of the principal courts of North Germany, not equal in importance to that of Berlin, or in splendour to that of Dresden, but second to no others. During the reign of the first Elector, Ernest Augustus, and his consort, the Electress Sophia, Hanover had gained materially in power and importance. The town became the resort of wealthy nobles, who had before divided their attentions between Hamburg and Brunswick. ”

“ Hanover (2,278) , a Prussian province since 1866, formerly an independent kingdom; stretches N. from Westphalia to the German Ocean, between Holland on the W. and Saxony on the E.; the district is well watered by the Elbe, Weser, and Ems; in the S. are the Harz Mountains; for the rest the land is flat, and much of it is occupied by uncultivated moors; agriculture and cattle-rearing are, however, the chief industries, while the minerals of the Harz are extensively wrought ”

“ When he left the Duke of Newcastle, when he coalesced with the Duke of Newcastle, when he thundered against subsidies, when he lavished subsidies with unexampled profusion, when he execrated the Hanoverian connection, when he declared that Hanover ought to be as dear to us as Hampshire, he was still invariably speaking the language of a virtuous and enlightened statesman.
The truth is that there scarcely ever lived a person who had so little claim to this sort of praise as Pitt. ”

“ Almost all industries are represented; chief among them are machine-building, the manufacture of india-rubber, linen, cloth, hardware, chemicals, tobacco, pianos, furniture and groceries. The commerce consists principally in wine, hides, horses, coal, wood and cereals. There are extensive printing establishments. Hanover was the first German town that was lighted with gas. ”

“ For it is apparent, my lords, that if the designs of France be such as the noble lords who oppose the motion represent them, Hanover is much nearer to danger than Britain; and, therefore, they only fight for their own preservation; since, though they have for a single year been blessed with a neutrality, it cannot be imagined, that the same favour will be always granted them, or that the French, when they have overrun all the rest of Germany, will not annex Hanover to their other dominions. ”

“ Few strangers visit the city who have not heard of the man, and who do not feel gratified to have seen his likeness in his bust. Fewer, whose love of books has carried them to the royal library, have not in silence looked, and with a melancholy interest, on the chair in which he sat when the death-stroke came upon him, and at the book which he was still holding in his hand when the sudden summons came.
Bursting its old boundaries, like Hamburg, Brunswick, Breslau, and many other fortified cities, the walls and ditches and towers of Hanover are gradually disappearing. ”

“ My heart beats, as in the time of the great Wellington!"
"Then Germany was united," said the king, with a deep sigh.
The generals sat in consultation at Herrenhausen, the aides-de-camp galloped to and from the town, the telegraph conveyed orders to all the commandants of troops in the kingdom, and the city of Hanover was in a fever of excitement. Small crowds assembled in the usually quiet streets, and the position of affairs was loudly discussed. ”

“ The King who had been at Hanover five months now made ready to return to England.51 He had131 greatly enjoyed his visit to the Electorate, and had given several fêtes, including a farewell masquerade in the gardens of Herrenhausen, where the hedges of clipped hornbeam acted as screens and the grass as a carpet; the whole scene was illuminated by coloured lights.52 The King followed at Hanover the same clockwork rule he had established in England. “Our life is as uniform as that of a monastery,” wrote one of the King’s English retinue who was lodged at the Leine Schloss. ”

“ It was not the king or his German advisers, but the British ministry acting through Townshend, who had accompanied the king on his journey to Hanover as soon as parliament was up (June 1725) , that devised the counter-check of the treaty of Hanover (3 Sept.) between Great Britain, France, and Prussia. George I shrank from a course which might bring invasion upon Hanover, and the ban of the empire upon himself, and all this for the sake of purely English questions, such as Gibraltar and Minorca, the Ostend Company and the Pretender. ”

“ Having supported Austria in the diet of the German confederation in June 1866, he refused, contrary to the wishes of his parliament, to assent to the Prussian demand that Hanover should observe an unarmed neutrality during the war. As a result his country and his capital were at once occupied by the Prussians, to whom his army surrendered on the 29th of June 1866, and in the following September Hanover was formally annexed by Prussia. ”

“ The proposed creation of peers in Prussia gives occasion for the growing sentiment in Hanover to show itself, which favours the absolute merging of the ancient Electorate in its more powerful neighbour. ”

“ The River Leine divides it into the old and new Towns, which are both encompass'd with Ramparts that scarce deserve the Name. There is nothing very extraordinary in the Palace or Castle, which is rather commodious than magnificent; and the Town of Hanover, generally speaking, is but ill built. The most remarkable Structure in it, is the Roman Catholick Church, which was granted to those of that Communion by Ernest-Augustus of Brunswic-Lunenbourg-Hanover; that being one of the Conditions which the Emperor Leopold demanded of him when he honour'd him with the Electoral Dignity. ”

“ Among its manufactures are foundry and machine-shop products, flour, silk, waggons, shoes, gloves, furniture, wire cloth and cigars. The settlement of the place was begun mostly by Germans during the middle of the 18th century. Hanover was laid out in 1763 or 1764 by Col. Richard MacAllister; and in 1815 it was incorporated. On the 30th of June 1863 there was a cavalry engagement in and near Hanover between the forces of Generals H. J. Kilpatrick (Union) and J. E. B. Stuart (Confederate) preliminary to the battle of Gettysburg. ”

“ Since, the Accession of the Hanover Family to the Throne of Great Britain, London is infinitely larger than it was. There’s one intire Quarter goes by the Name of Hanover. The Parliament being apprehensive, that in Process of Time the Town would grow too big to support itself, pass’d an Act some Years ago for restraining the building on new Foundations ”

“ No, no, those that have a true value for the house of Hanover, would by no means desire them to come hither, or desire you to bring them on such terms; first let the world see you are in a condition to support and defend them, that the pretender, and his power and alliances of any kind, shall not disperse and ruin him and you together; first unite and put yourselves into a posture that you may defend the succession, and then you may have it ”