Ernest Augustus was King of Hanover from 20 June 1837 until his death. He was the fifth son of King George III of the United Kingdom and Hanover. He succeeded in Hanover under Salic law, which barred women from the succession. He had a generally successful fourteen-year reign but excited controversy near its start.
About Ernest Augustus, King of Hanover in brief
Ernest Augustus was King of Hanover from 20 June 1837 until his death. He was the fifth son of King George III of the United Kingdom and Hanover. He succeeded in Hanover under Salic law, which barred women from the succession. Ernest was sent to Hanover in his adolescence for his education and military training. While serving with Hanoverian forces near Tournai against Revolutionary France, he received a disfiguring facial wound. The Prince served in the Low Countries in the War of the First Coalition under his elder brother Frederick, Duke of York, then commander of the combined British and Austrian forces. He died the next year and was succeeded by his son George. He had a generally successful fourteen-year reign but excited controversy near its start when he dismissed the Göttingen Seven, including the Brothers Grimm, from their professorial positions for agitating against his policies. There were persistent allegations that he had murdered his valet, had fathered a son by his sister Sophia, and intended to take the British throne by murdering Victoria. The King never left England in his life, he sent his younger sons to Germany in their adolescence. According to the historian John Van der Kiste, this was done to limit the influence Ernest’s eldest brother George, Prince of Wales, who was leading an extravagant lifestyle, would have over his younger brothers. In 1790, Ernest asked his father for permission to train with Prussian forces.
Instead, in January 1791, he and Prince Adolphus were sent toHanover to receive military training under the supervision of Field Marshal Wilhelm von Freytag. As a lieutenant, Ernest learned cavalry drill and tactics under Captain von Linsingen of the Queen’s Light Dragoons and proved to be an excellent horseman, as well as a good shot. After only two months of training, Freytag was so impressed by the Prince’s progress that he gave him a place in the cavalry as captain. In March 1792, Ernest was commissioned as a colonel into the 9th Regiment of the Hanoverians. Seeing action near Walloon, he sustained a sabre wound to the head, which resulted in the Battle of Tourcoing in August 1793, which led to his retirement from the army. He later married Frederica of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, his twice-widowed niece, in 1815. Although his mother Queen Charlotte disapproved of his marriage, it proved happy. In 1817, he was created Duke of Cumberland and Teviotdale in 1799. His older brother Edward Augustus fathered the eventual British heir, Victoria, in 1819 shortly before the birth of Ernest’s only child, George. His eldest son, George, had one child, Charlotte, expected to become the British queen, but she died in 1817. The kingdom joined the German customs union in 1850 despite Ernest’s reluctance, he died the year before he died. His younger brother Frederick was then the commander of combined British, Austrian and German forces.
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