Ernest Augustus, Crown Prince of Hanover 21/22 December 1878, he and Princess Thyra married at Christiansborg Palace in Copenhagen. Queen Victoria appointed the Duke of Cumberland a colonel in the British Army in 1876 and promoted him to major general in 1886, lieutenant general in 1892 and general in 1898. Although he was a British peer and a prince of Great Britain and Ireland, he continued to consider himself an exiled monarch of a German realm and refused to disclaim his succession rights to Hanover, making his home in Gmunden, Upper Austria. The Duke of Cumberland was also first in the line of succession to the
Invasion of Hanover (1757) negotiating table. Since 1714 Britain and the Electorate of Hanover had shared a single monarch. George II was ruler of both states – and the French believed they could exert pressure on him as King of Great Britain by occupying Hanover. In response Britain initially planned to hire 50,000 Russian troops to defend Hanover but later altered the plan by making an alliance with Prussia and forming an Army of Observation composed of Hanoverian, Brunswick and Hessian troops mostly paid for by the British government. A number of British officers, such as Jeffrey Amherst and Guy Carleton, were given commands