On 9 October 1806, Prussia declared war on France. This was the first time since 1795 that the monarchy had joined in a coalition war against France. In the separate Peace of Basel of 5 April 1795, Prussia had made a pact of neutrality and left the fight against the French army above all to Britain, Austria and Russia. As a consequence of this decade of neutrality, large parts of central, eastern and northern Germany, unlike the south and southwest, had escaped war. But when the Prussian government learned in August 1806 that Napoleon was engaged in alliance negotiations with Britain and had unilaterally offered the return of Hanover as an inducement, an unambiguous response seemed unavoidable. Hanover, a German electorate in personal union with the British monarchy, had been occupied by France in 1803. When French troops in 1805 violated the neutrality of Ansbach in Prussian territory on their march to face the Austrians and Russians, Prussia had remained at peace with France because of a formal treaty promising to give Hanover to Prussia in exchange for Ansbach being awarded to France’s ally Bavaria. Thus, when Napoleon offered Hanover to Britain, the path to war seemed inevitable for the Prussian monarch Friedrich Wilhelm III, who saw no “honorable” alternative.