George II: The Last British Monarch To Lead His Troops In Battle

Thank you my friend SGT (Join to see) for making us aware that during the War of the Austrian Succession at the Battle of Dettingen in Bavaria. King George II of Britain personally led troops into battle on June 27, 1743.

The First Georgians The German Kings Who Made Britain Episode 3 BBC full documentary 2014
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QqzjW-W7pc


Image:
1. King George II was in his element and famously led British troops to victory over the French at the Battle of Dettingen in 1743.
2. George II with his mother and sister Sophia, circa 1691
3. King George II pianted by Thomas Hudson
4. King George II

Biographies
1. englishmonarchs.co.uk/hanover_2.htm
2. madmonarchist.blogspot.com

1. Background from {[http://www.englishmonarchs.co.uk/hanover_2.htm]}
George II was born at Schloss Herrenhausen, Hanover, on 10th November, 1683. He was to be the only son of George, Prince of Brunswick-Luneberg (later George I of Great Britain) and his first cousin Sophia Dorothea of Celle.

Scandal engulfed the Hanoverian family when George's father divorced his tragic mother for adultery, after which he imprisoned her for life in the Castle of Ahlden. Sadly, the young George was never to see her again. George accompanied his father to England when he ascended the throne of Britain in 1714. Relations between father and son were always fractious, they avoided meeting whenever possible and the King at one time would not even allow his son and his wife to see their children, an act which was bitterly resented by his son and daughter-in-law.

In acknowledgement of his place in the succession to the British throne, Queen Anne admitted Prince George into the Order of the Garter in 1706. The last Stuart monarch also created him Duke of Cambridge, Earl of Milford Haven, Viscount Northallerton and Baron Tewkesbury on 9 November of the same year. His father ascended the English throne on the death of Queen Anne in 1714 and George accompanied him to England. Never close, the pair became increasingly estranged, the new Prince of Wales did all in his power to encourage opposition to his father's policies, setting up home at Leicester House, in London, he made it a base for his father's opponents. Sir Robert Walpole managed to bring about a temporary reconciliation between father and son in 1720.

George II ascended the British throne on his detested father's death on 11 June 1727 and was crowned at Westminster Abbey . One of the Georges 's first acts as King was to make away with his father's will under the nose of the astonished Archbishop of Canterbury.

George II was not a particularly attractive character, he was prone to rages against anyone with whom he differed, in the course of which he kicked his coat and wig about. He was a tall man, with the Hanoverian bulging blue eyes, he was of limited intelligence who could be arrogant, vain and obstinate. He inherited his father's love of opera and patronized George Frederick Handel, who had been George I's court musician in Hanover. His interests included history and military memorabilia.

Robert Walpole succeeded in excluding Britain from continental conflicts for the first twelve years of the reign, but, against his minister's wishes, the king declared war on Spain in 1739. The Spanish war extended into the 1740's as a component of the War of Austrian Succession, in which England fought against French dominance in Europe. George was to gain the distinction of being the last British monarch to lead his troops into battle at the Battle of Dettingen on 16 June, 1743, a highly significant victory for the British Army during the War of the Austrian Succession about which Handel composed his Dettingen Te Deum. In the 1750's war was again declared with France, and conflicts took place in Europe, North America and India. Government faltering in response to the French crisis brought William Pitt the Elder to the forefront of British politics. The reign was also marked by a substantial extension to the British Empire in India and North America.

George was married to Caroline of Anspach on 22 August 1705 at Hanover. Caroline too, was German, born in 1683, she was the daughter of John Frederick, Margrave of Brandenburg-Anspach and Eleanore of Saxe-Eisenach. She was a self opinionated young woman who had previously rejected a proposal of marriage from the King of Spain as she would not contemplate changing her Protestant religion.

Interested in politics, Caroline's considerable influence over George was exercised in favour of Sir Robert Walpole, When George travelled abroad the Queen was invariably appointed as regent. An intelligent and learned woman, she became a benefactress of the Queen's College, Oxford. Hervey's memoirs recall:-" The queen loved reading, and the conversation of men of wit and learning. But she dared not indulge herself so much as she wished to do in this pleasure for fear of the king, who often rebuked her for dabbling in all that lettered nonsense, as he called it." Although George always had mistresses he became devoted to her.

After a previous aborted mission, Charles Edward Stuart, the son of James Stuart, the Old Pretender, succeeded in landing in Scotland with a small band of followers and raised a further rebellion in the Jacobite bid for the the throne in 1745. Charles, better known to history as 'Bonnie Prince Charlie', raised his father's standard at Glenfinnan, where many of the Highland clans gathered to support his cause.

It was an impetuous enterprise, but the strong headed young Charles was not one to listen to advice. The rebellion met with some initial success and won a battle against the government's forces at Preston pans on 21st September, after which the decision was reached to march into England. Having reached as far into England as Derby but not having acquired the level of support he had anticipated in the country, Charles was forced to reluctantly return to Scotland.
The rebel army was pursued north by government troops lead by George II's younger son, the vastly obese William, Duke of Cumberland. At Battle of Culloden, on 16th April 1746, Charles' army of hungry and weary Highlanders was annihilated by Cumberland's army. Bonnie Prince Charlie himself fled the field and was to spend months hiding out in the Highlands waiting for a ship to take him to France. Cumberland then subdued the Highland Scots with such ferocity that his actions earned him the name of Butcher Cumberland.

The pattern of George's fractious relationship with his father was sadly echoed in that with his own eldest son, Frederick Prince of Wales. They mutually loathed each other. Queen Caroline equally strongly disliked her son, stating "My dear first born is the greatest ass, and the greatest liar, and the greatest canaille, and the greatest beast, in the whole world, and I most heartily wish he was out of it."

When Frederick died prematurely of a burst abscess on the lung, on 20th March, 1751, George's grandson, also George, suceeded to his father's position as heir apparent. The Prince of Wales was buried on 13th April, at Westminster Abbey, the King did not attend the funeral and Frederick was largely unmourned by his parents. His son George was a likeable and good natured youth whose relationship with his grandfather was not as difficult.

Following the birth of her last child, Princess Louisa, in 1724, the Queen developed a hernia, which went untreated. Eventually, in 1737, surgery became necessary. The operation was carried out without the use of anaesthetic, the queen was reported to have borne the pain bravely. Although the operation itself was successful, gangrene set in and as Queen Caroline lay dying, she urged her husband to marry again, he is said to have replied "No, no!... I shall have mistresses instead". Queen Caroline died on 1 December 1737. George II who slept in a cot by her bed during her final illness, was reported to be devastated at her loss.

By October 1760, George II was blind in one eye, and hard of hearing. He died on 25th October, 1760, at the age of 76, of an aortic dissection, whilst using the toilet, at Kensington Palace. On the morning of 25 October, he rose as usual at 6:00 am and went to his close stool, alone. After a few minutes, his valet heard a loud crash. He entered the room to find the king on the floor. George was lifted into his bed, and Princess Amelia was sent for, but before she reached him, he was dead. A post-mortem revealed that the right ventricle of the king's heart had ruptured as the result of an incipient aortic aneurysm.

George was buried at Westminster beside his much loved wife, Caroline of Anspach. He was succeeded by his grandson George III.

THE CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN OF GEORGE II AND CAROLINE OF ANSPACH
(1) Frederick Louis, Prince of Wales (1707 - 1751) (m) Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha Issue:-
(i) Augusta Frederica, Duchess of Brunswick
(ii) King George III
(iii) Edward Augustus, Duke of York
(iv) Princess Elizabeth Caroline
(v) Prince William Henry, Duke of Gloucester
(vi) Prince Henry, Duke of Cumberland
(vii) Princess Louisa
(viii) Prince Frederick
(ix) Caroline Matilda, Queen of Denmark and Norway

(2) Anne, Princess Royal, Princess of Orange (1709 - 1759) (m) William IV, Prince of Orange Issue:-
(i) Princess Carolina of Orange-Nassau
(ii) Princess Anna of Orange-Nassau
(iii) William V, Prince of Orange
(3) Princess Amelia Sophia Eleanor (1711 - 1786) no issue
(4) Princess Caroline Elizabeth (1713 -1757) no issue
(5) Prince George William (1717 -1718) no issue
(6) William Augustus ( 1721 1765) no issue

(7) Mary, landgravine of Hesse-Kassel (1723 - 1772) (m) Frederick II, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel. issue:-
(i) William I, Elector of Hesse
(ii) Prince Charles of Hesse-Kassel
(iii) Prince Frederick of Hesse-Kassel

(8) Louise, Queen of Denmark and Norway (1724 - 1751) (m) King Frederick V of Denmark Issue:-
(i) Sophia Magdalena, Queen of Sweden
(ii) Caroline, Electress of Hesse
(iii) Christian VII of Denmark
(iv) Louise, Princess Charles of Hesse-Kassel"

2. Background from {[http://madmonarchist.blogspot.com/2015/08/monarch-profile-king-george-ii-of-great.html]}
"After Queen Anne came to the British throne, with no surviving children, the succession laws were altered to ensure that a Catholic could not succeed to the throne, which meant that the rest of the Stuarts were disinherited and Prince George of Hanover suddenly became a future heir to the British throne. In 1705 he was made a British subject and invested with the Order of the Garter the following year and made Duke of Cambridge along with a number of other noble titles. Also in 1705 he married Princess Caroline of Ansbach, a wife of his own choosing. Despite a number of infidelities during his married life, he probably always loved Caroline best and she had a very strong though subtle hold on him from that time forward. She was a big, flirtatious blonde who was very clever, very outgoing and very interested in advancing her own power and influence which she was able to do masterfully. George was so devoted to Caroline that he caught smallpox from her in 1707, after the birth of their first child, when he refused to leave her side. Thankfully, both recovered and, having secured the succession, Prince George had the joy of finally going to war, fighting in the Battle of Oudenarde with the great Marlborough in the War of the Spanish Succession. “Corporal John” gave the Prince high marks for his service in combat though George’s father did nothing but belittle it.

In 1714 the Stuart Queen Anne passed away and the Hanoverians came to England to take up the British throne with the coronation of King George I. As in Hanover, the new Prince of Wales was excluded from the halls of power by his father and not given anything to do of any significant importance. When he proved more popular than his father the situation did not improve and George I actually separated his son from his children, later allowing him to visit his children only once a week. Naturally, Prince George began to associate with the King’s political enemies and the rift between him and his father only widened. They remained bitter and unreconciled until George I died in 1727, in Hanover, and his son became King George II of Great Britain & Ireland. He didn’t even attend his father’s funeral but no one in England seemed to hold it against him. Prior to his accession, George II had become very disgusted with politics and to the extent that he did involve himself in government it was mostly in the directions that Queen Caroline advised. He was more interested in battles, buttons and regimental uniforms than he was in politics.
Like his own father, he carried on the tradition of having a very poor relationship with his son, Frederick, Prince of Wales, who he had left behind in Germany when he came to England and did not see again for more than a decade. When the Prince came to England he was immediately scooped up by the King’s political opposition which did no good for peace in the family. After an intense quarrel broke out when George II refused to give his son more money, the Prince of Wales and his family were banished from court. Not long after, Queen Caroline died which depressed George II greatly. Famously, on her deathbed, the Queen urged her husband to marry again after she was gone to which the sobbing George II replied, “No, I shall only have mistresses!” These mistresses were invariably German and during his reign King George II became ever more focused on German affairs which did nothing to help his popularity in England. The political establishment generally supported him for staying out of their affairs and essentially allowing the masters of Parliament to govern the country but while he might not have been seen as a hated figure, he was increasingly seen as target for mockery and grumbling. What King George II most wished for was a good war and he was finally to have one, though at one point the war spread a little too close to home for his comfort.

The King actually got out in front of his government in supporting the Archduchess of Austria and Queen of Hungary, Maria Theresa, in the War of the Austrian Succession in his capacity as Elector of Hanover. He was convinced that a Hapsburg defeat would allow France to threaten Hanover and possibly dominate Europe though it was a struggle to get the British government to go along. The King had also been thwarted in his efforts to reform and strengthen the British army which Parliament always wanted to downsize. When war came, King George II was in his element and famously led British troops (as part of a wider coalition) to victory over the French at the Battle of Dettingen in 1743. This would be the last time that a reigning British monarch led his troops personally on the battlefield though it did not result in the boost to his popularity that most might have expected. Most viewed it as essentially a war between Prussia and Austria, a German affair that no Englishman should have to risk his life or his pocketbook for. In the end, peace was finally settled but not before an off-shoot of the conflict nearly cost King George II his British throne.

In an effort to bedevil the British on the cheap, the King of France backed another rebellion in Scotland by the Jacobites (loyalists of the House of Stuart) to force George II back to Hanover and restore the (Catholic and pro-French) Stuarts to the British throne. There had been an earlier Jacobite rising in 1715 but it had been crushed in its infancy with little difficulty. The 1745 uprising would be a different matter even after King Louis backed out from sending support. Under the dynamic leadership of “Bonnie Prince Charlie”, grandson of the late King James II, the Jacobites came fairly close to success despite having all of the odds heavily stacked against them. Often portrayed as a war between Scotland and England, it was actually much more complicated than that. The mostly Protestant lowland Scots were firmly Hanoverian in sympathy and while loyalty to the Stuarts was more widespread in the Catholic highlands, it was by no means universal. Likewise, there were Irish and English volunteers who fought for the Stuart cause just as there were Scots who fought for “German Georgie” (as the Jacobites tended to call him).

The Bonnie Prince and his Jacobites, in their plaids and kilts with white roses in their bonnets, occupied Edinburgh, won a surprising victory at Prestonpans over General John Cope and then invaded England, very nearly reaching London where George II had ships prepared to take him to Hanover if the need should arise. However, aside from a few hundred volunteers, England did not rally to the Prince as he had promised his chieftains they would. Most Englishmen neither loved nor hated George II with any great passion and were content to ‘wait and see’ how events would unfold. If the Prince was victorious, they would cheer his arrival and say “good riddance” to George of Hanover but if he should lose, they were content to go on with business as usual and no one wanted to risk backing a loser and being condemned as traitors. With the odds so heavily stacked against the Jacobites, most Englishmen wouldn’t risk backing him until he won another great victory and that chance would never come as the Scottish chieftains overruled their Prince and marched back to Scotland. They won another victory over General Hawley at Falkirk but continued to retreat until their ragged remnant was crushed at the Battle of Culloden by the King’s son the Duke of Cumberland in 1746. King George II and the House of Hanover was secure on the British throne and would never be so troubled again.

With the end of the war, King George II was forced to return to his peacetime routine of family quarrels and political headaches until the outbreak of the French and Indian War in America over control of the Ohio Country. This later merged into what is known in Europe as the Seven Years’ War starting in 1756 between Prussia, Britain, some minor German states and Portugal on one side and France, Austria, Russia, Spain, Sweden and Saxony on the other (with various Native American tribes and the Mughal Empire of India also joining in the contest). This was to prove a critical time for the future of the British Empire and a decisive moment in the long-standing feud with France. However, King George II was not to play a major part in it. The Duke of Cumberland, his favorite son, proved an incompetent commander when faced with professional armies rather than half-starved Scots armed with swords, and while George II was mostly concerned with Hanover and wished to focus on Europe, his government moved to focus on the war in America. The result was a victory that would determine the fate of North America with French Canada falling to the British though at the same time setting the stage for the American War for Independence.

The war was a great victory and made Britain a major imperial power, however, King George II would not live to see the final defeat of his nemesis King Louis XV of France. Half blind and almost deaf, the 76-year old monarch died at Kensington Palace on October 25, 1760 and the throne passed to his grandson King George III. He had never been a very popular monarch. He was certainly more popular as Prince of Wales but even then was seen as something of a foreign oddity and after coming to the throne he seemed to become ever more like his father, ever more hateful toward his children and ever more obsessed with German affairs. His lack of concern for affairs in Britain allowed the grip of Parliament to be strengthened at the expense of the monarchy, a trend which started with the downfall of the Stuarts and coincided with the rise in status of the King’s prime minister and the way the monarch was increasingly seen as an unnecessary part of government. Still, any proud native of the British isles could not say that the reign of King George II had been all that bad with the numerous victories in war and expansion of the British Empire in North America, the Caribbean and India that these brought about. Perhaps it was simply that, at the end of the day, George II was still seen as a German prince who just happened to be King of Great Britain. It was not until the reign of his grandson that the House of Hanover gave Britain a thoroughly British monarch.

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Great history share brother David, thank you.

Great share and very interesting. But a crappy way to die.