The Vienna Congress of 1815 decisively renewed the affiliation of the Grafschaft with the King of Hanover. With the definitive expulsion of the French from the Grafschaf in 1813 by Russian troops following the Battle of Leipzig, count Alexis of Bentheim and Steinfurt was able to take possession of the country in his father's name for a few days, but had to yield to the Hanoverians. The Royal Britannic Hannoverian administration of Bentheim county was set up in Bentheim. The omission of references to the pledge characterized the objective of Hannoverian politics, with the intent to annex the Grafschaft permanently. In fact, the laws and regulations passed during the French Occupation were generally repealed, the legal authorities retained and also the city and local community administration related regulations remained in force, in doing so the concept of the mayor was replaced by Bürgermeister.

In 1815, the Vienna Congress arranged anew the territorial circumstances in all of Europe at the expense of many small states; its final act bestowed (which was elevated to a kingdom in 1814) to Hannover considerable territorial gains, it confirmed at the same time the Hannovarian pledge rights over the Bentheim Grafschaft and dictated that through its redemption the Grafschaft should be brought under the control of the Kingdom of Hannover.

In terminating the pledge contract of 1752 the discernably far sighted Hannoverian policy had the hoped for success; Prussia was eliminated as a competitor in the border region with the Netherlands, that is, Rheina-Wolbeck and Meppen, and surrendered East Frisia. An all around territorial stranglehold of Hannover by Prussia, which was completely within their means, was thereby avoided.

Against the provisions of the pledge contract, whose validity particularly regarding territorial sovereignty the Congress act of 1815 had explicitly acknowledged, Hannover began at once with the objective to virtually integrate the Bentheim territory into the prevailing system in the rest of the Hannoverian territories with concrete and massive inroads in its law and administration.

In 1816 the Hannovarian Military and Postal Administration, and in 1817 the general Taxation system were established. In 1818 even the general royal estates assembly was made responsible for Bentheim.

Hannover was completely aware of the questionable legality of its behavior, it was only possible for the Ministry to report in 1821 that apart from the pledge contract, Hannover had not yet obtained Sovereignty over Bentheim.

After years of tough negotiations between the two very unequal contractual partners, the king and the count (he was elevated to the rank of Prince by the Prussians; Hannover recognized the elevation) who due to widely divergent prospects about options and details of a compromise over the mutual financial claims and sovereign authority led to no conclusion, the king, in contempt of recognized legal principles, terminated the pledge on September 1, 1822 and discontinued the payments to the prince. Following these measures the prince was forced in 1823 to approve an arrangement over the annulment of the pledge, in which against the aim fixed in the Congress act he was exempted from only a portion of the pledge amount; it restored his domain to him and compensated him for the renunciation of effective sovereignty, ceded to him notably the goods of the disbanded Wietmarschen Cloister and also partially of the Frenswegens disbanded cloister.

With the authority of the victor, Napoleon disregarded customs and old ties and introduced the French way of governing. Bentheim county, which he had attached to the Ems departement, was broken up, and by 1808, three Cantons were established, of which the Bentheim Canton was integrated into the Coesfeld Arrondissement, and the Nordhorn and Emlignkamp Cantons into the Lingen Arrondissement. At the same time, municipal charters with the establishment of Prefectures and sub prefectures were integrated into Départements and Arrondissements and later the Town Halls into the Cantons. The High Court was initially transfered to Coesfeld and abolished soon after.

Around 1810, with the borders of the effective implementation of Napoleon's Continental blockade newly drawn, and the Grafschaft annexed to the hitherto French Imperial Ems department, it was again absurdly divided between the Dutch Départements Ijsselmündung and West-Ems. This territorial grouping was also not to last, already in April 1811, the entire Grafschaft became a part of the Lippe-Départements as the Arrondissement Neuenhaus. The seat of a sub prefecture was established in Neuenhaus,to which the Bentheim, Nordhorn and Neuenhaus cantons were subordinate. At the same time, Neuenhaus received a Tribune of the first Instance, added to which Justices of the Peace were appointed in Bentheim, Nordhorn and Emlichheim.

During the Seven Year's War (1756 - 1763) under the protection of French troops, Count Karl succeeded in temporarily regaining possession of his lands.

Hannover thereupon stopped its payments to the county debt redemption and at the end of the war did not initially resume them. Instead, the counts' king granted them a loan. The king wrote to his finance minister about it : "The more indebted the count is to us, the less he can hope to make his county free again."

Against this backdrop it is not surprising that in the following decade all efforts by the Bentheim counts to redeem the mortgage fell through. Hannover interpreted the provisions of the mortgage contract unilaterally to its own advantage. The king managed to discourage, through political pressure and as a result of the contractually guaranteed option to purchase of potential lenders to the counts, with whose help the mortgage redemption amount would have had to be raised.

In May 1803, the French/English war suspended the mortgage with the invasion of French troops in Bentheim. The military phases of the conflict soon gripped all of Europe. Due to a convention of 1804, the house of Bentheim-Steinfurt under count Ludwig obtained possession of the county again for a period of two years.

But Napoleon Bonaparte again deprived the count of his rights in 1806 and incorporated the county into the Great Duchy of Berg. The Grand Duchy of Berg Provincial administration of Bentheim and Steinfurt governed the land. In the inner organization of the county lands innovations now occurred that would have far reaching consequences.

When count Friedrich Karl came into his inheritance in 1746, the finances of the land were hopelessly in shambles; he decided to mortgage his territory. Negotiations with Prussia and the Dutch Republic, who as neighbors were interested in acquiring the county, disintegrated. In 1752, the count pledged his county to the king of England in whose capacity as Elector of Braunschweig-Lüneburg against the transfer of debts and a yearly amount in cash for 30 years with all sovereign and usage rights, except for the trade in stone. The Bentheim county, which up until then had been subordinate only to the Emperor, lost its independence.

The mortgage contract of May 22 1752 handed the county over to King George of Hannover "with all of its accessories ...". At the same time, the king pledged not to change anything in the makeup of the Bentheimer country - neither in religious nor in political aspects - but to keep everything in "status quo and according to local customs".

With the county, the king took over a political territory with an "estate constitution", whose statutes were the "Concordat" of 1680 between the respective counts and his status. The "Laudum Regium" of 1701 confirmed and completed this.

The king's proclamation of the acquisition of the county followed on May 24, 1753. For Hannover, this step meant a significant expansion of it's influence toward the west - across Osnabrück, Münster and Prussian territory to the Dutch border.

The "Royal British and Electoral Brunswick-Lüneburg government" began its administration of the mortgaged Bentheim county.

Grave artifacts lead one to conclude that a settlement existed at Vechteufer already three thousand years before Christ. In appointing the first Counts of Bentheim at the end of the 8th century, Charlemagne is considered the forefather of Bentheim county.

In the course of Christianization two dioceses controlled the region, Münster and Uetrecht. The region is documented as the dominion of the Bentheim counts since the 11th century. The earliest was a "Curtis" in Schüttorf, of the "Olde Hof". Bentheim has been a county since 1328, being previously a territory, and since 1486 through a feudal order of the Emperor, a free Imperial county.

In the year 1544, the Bentheim county was Evangelical Lutheran and became Evangelical Reformed in 1588. The religion of the reigning counts was also that of the county's inhabitants. During his reign, count Ernst Wilhelm converted back to the Catholic faith in 1668 because he became subjected to Bishop of Münster, Christoph Bernhard von Galen, from whom he could never free himself.

A Münster occupation of the noble castle residence meant that the county became entangled in the dispute between Münster and the Dutch provinces.

For decades, dynastic disputes followed between the sons born out of the morganatic marriage of count Ernst Wilhelm with the Dutch Gertrud van Zelst and the Steinfurt faction, thumping on the stipulations of the inheritance union of 1487. Not before 1701 and the signing of the Treaty of the Hague was the conflict able to be resolved.

The adherence to the so called "Laudum Regium" guaranteed the king of England, in his capacity as the "Stadtholder" of the Netherlands and the king of Prussia, to whom belonged the town of Lingen. The treaty insured the sons of count Ernst Wilhelms the right of succession and safeguarded the free practice of religion both to the Reformed as well as - with certain local limitations - to the Catholics.

In the year 1704, Bentheim county came under a custodianship, then in 1723 due to the inability of the counts to rule, an administration ordered by the emperor followed.