Hesse-Hanau

When the hereditary prince of Hesse-Cassel, the later Frederick II, converted to Roman Catholicism, his father, the reigning landgrave William IX decided to do what he could to limit his son's future realm. He therefore made the county of Hanau-Münzenberg, incorporated with Hesse-Cassel in 1736, a secundogeniture of Hesse-Cassel, transferring it to the oldest son of Frederic, the hereditary count William.[1][2]

Wilhelmsbad was built during the short sovereignty of Hesse-Hanau.

As count William was underage, his mother the landgravine, princess Mary of Great Britain, ruled as his legal guardian. After his access to the throne of Hesse-Cassel in 1760, landgrave Frederick II repeatedly tried to reunite Hesse-Hanau with Hesse-Cassel, but his efforts failed due to the resistance of Great Britain and the Protestant estates. As further protection, troops from Hanover were garrisoned in Hanau. When William came of age in 1764 he took over the government of the county. At the death of Frederick II in 1785, William became landgrave of Hesse-Cassel. The government of Hesse-Hanau remained in general separate from Hesse-Cassel. Cabinet and war office were, however, merged with those in Hesse-Cassel, and the court of appeal of Cassel got jurisdiction over Hanau in 1792.[3] Until then Hesse-Hanau was ruled as an independent state, undergoing extensive modernizations with the erection of significant buildings in the capital of Hanau.[4] Means for this came from the subsidies the reigning count received from his uncle, king George III of Great Britain. In return, Hesse-Hanau made available a contingent of 2,400 soldiers for the use of the British Crown in the American Revolutionary War.[5]

The Hesse-Hanau contingent in the American Revolutionary War, contained the following units:[6]

• Hessen-Hanauisches Regiment Erbprinz 1776
• Hessen-Hanauisches Jägerkorps Creutzburg 1777
• Hessen-Hanauische Artillerie-Kompanie Pausch 1777
• Hessen-Hanauisches Freikorps Janecke 1781

With the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1803, Hesse-Cassel became an electorate, while Hesse-Hanau became the principality of Hanau. In 1806, however, Hesse-Cassel was incorporated into the French satellite kingdom of Westphalia, while Hanau came under French military occupation, then in 1810 being incorporated into the Grand Duchy of Frankfurt, another French satellite. It was first after the German War of Liberation in 1813, that the sovereignty of Hesse-Cassel was restored. The incorporation of Hanau in Hesse-Cassel was, however, not completed until the death of prince-elector William in 1821, and the administrative reforms under his successor William II, when the county became the landkreis of Hanau.[7]