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Victorious Horse of Hannover!

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    nicholasz219nicholasz219 Posts: 1,386 ✭✭✭
    Neat medal. I have one Hanover related piece and that is a medal from Great Britain. It is a "To Hanover" piece in white metal from 1837 to mark the occasion of Victoria's ascent to the throne. There was much German antipathy back then apparently concerning the head of British Empire having German roots. I did not know until just now that the horse was actually an image representing the state of Hannover as I thought it meant for her to get on her horse and head out.

    Apparently the anti-German sentiment was sort of a cultural denigration by Britons toward their eastern neighbors. George I, the first of the House of Hanover received the brunt of the criticism:

    The British perceived him as too German, and in the opinion of historian Ragnhild Hatton, wrongly assumed that he had a succession of German mistresses.[86] However in mainland Europe, he was seen as a progressive ruler supportive of the Enlightenment who permitted his critics to publish without risk of severe censorship, and provided sanctuary to Voltaire when the philosopher was exiled from Paris in 1726.[82] European and British sources agree that George was reserved, temperate and financially prudent;[37] George disliked to be in the public light at social events, avoided the royal box at the opera and often travelled incognito to the house of a friend to play cards.[38] Despite some unpopularity, the Protestant George I was seen by most of his subjects as a better alternative to the Roman Catholic Pretender James. William Makepeace Thackeray indicates such ambivalent feelings as he wrote:

    His heart was in Hanover. He was more than fifty-four years of age when he came amongst us. We took him in because we wanted him, because he served our turn. We laughed at his uncouth German ways, and sneered at him ... I, for one, would have been on his side in those days. Cynical and selfish as he was, he was better than a King out of St Germains [James, the Stuart Pretender] with a French King's orders in his pocket, and a swarm of Jesuits in his train.[87]

    I thought it was a neat little piece of propaganda, and now I have to dig it out and show it here.
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