Hanover

The town grew strong in the 14th century. From 1350 a wall eight metres high with 34 towers replaced its palisades, and in 1371, during the War of the Lüneburg Succession, it won the Great Privilege, with customs and mill rights and the right to fortify itself. As a Hanseatic town it sent linen as far as London and brought back furs from Novgorod and herring from southern Sweden. In 1533 a crowd on the market square swore to stand by Luther's word, and the council, which had held to the old faith, fled to Catholic Hildesheim.

Hanover's rise as a capital began in 1636, in the middle of the Thirty Years' War, when Duke George of Calenberg made the fortified town of some 4,000 people his residence. The court brought it eighty good years: Leibniz arrived in 1676 as court councillor and librarian, and in 1692 the Welf duchy was raised to the ninth electorate of the Empire. Then in 1714 Elector George Louis inherited the British throne as George I and moved to London, and Hanover was left a residence town without its prince.