Landgraviate of Hesse-Darmstadt
Landgraviate of Hesse-Darmstadt Landgrafschaft Hessen-Darmstadt (German) | |||||||||
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1567–1806 | |||||||||
Louis X | |||||||||
Historical era | Napoleonic Wars | ||||||||
• Established | 1567 | ||||||||
1806 | |||||||||
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The Landgraviate of Hesse-Darmstadt (
The residence of the landgraves was in Darmstadt, hence the name. As a result of the Napoleonic Wars, the landgraviate was elevated to the Grand Duchy of Hesse following the Empire's dissolution in 1806.
Geography
Like many petty German states, the landgraviate comprised a number of disconnected pockets of land (exclaves). These included the southern
History
The Landgraviate of Hesse-Darmstadt came into existence in 1567, when George, youngest of the four sons of Landgrave Philip I "the Magnanimous", received the Hessian lands in the former upper County of Katzenelnbogen. His eldest brother William IV received the Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel, while the second son Louis IV obtained Hesse-Marburg, and the third Philipp II became Landgrave of Hesse-Rheinfels.
Hessian War
The Hesse-Rheinfels line became extinct on Philip's death in 1583. When, in 1604, the childless Landgrave Louis IV of Hesse-Marburg died at
The inheritance conflict was continued in the broader context of the Thirty Years' War, in which Hesse-Kassel sided with the Protestant estates and Hesse-Darmstadt sided with the Habsburg emperor. The Hesse-Homburg and Hesse-Rotenburg estates seceded from the opponents in 1622 and 1627. Though Hesse-Darmstadt and Hesse-Kassel reached an agreement in 1627, the quarrels rekindled, resulting inter alia in the Siege of Dorsten and culminating in a series of open battles from 1645, when the Kassel Landgravine Amalie Elisabeth besieged Marburg. The conflict was finally settled on the eve of the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, more than eighty years after the division of the estates. Large parts of the disputed Upper Hesse territory, including Marburg, fell to the elder Kassel line, while Hesse-Darmstadt retained Giessen and Biedenkopf.
18th–19th centuries
In 1736, the Landgraves of Hesse-Darmstadt inherited the estates of the extinct Counts of
In 1806, upon the dissolution of the
Gallery
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Military regiment banner used during the Seven Years' War (the state flag did not exist or is missing)
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Coat of arms (1736–1804)
See also
- List of rulers of Hesse