Princess of Battenberg
(1863-1950)
Tragedy first stroke Victoria's family when she was ten years old. In May 1873, his second brother Friedrich had a ball fall from an open window to the stone terrace below. Friedrich had haemophilia, the blood disease transmitted by Queen Victoria to her descendants, and he died of brain haemorraghes. The Hessian family was persecuted by fatalness. In 1878, Victoria fell ill with diphteria. Suddenly she was followed by the rest of the family, except her sister Ella, who was sent away, and Princess Alice, who nursed the sick family. The youngest sister May ddn't survive and finally Princess Alice contracted the disease and die on December 14, 1878. Victoria, as the eldest sister, took her mother's place, supported from afar by her grandmother, Queen Victoria, with whom she mantained a wealthy correspondance for many years.
In 1883 Victoria became engaged to her cousin Prince Louis of Battenberg, who was a 28 year old handsome and tall lieutenant. Unliked him, she was in love for the first time. Louis wrote to he rfirend and shipmate Prince George (later King George V): "My dearest Georgeie, I have a great piece of news to tell you. Our mutual cousin Victoria has promised me to be my wife" (Hough).
Prince Luis was born in Graz, Austria on May 24, 1854.His father was Prince Alexandser of Hesse, brother of Grand Duke Louis III of Hesse, of Tsarina Marie Alexandrovna, wife of Alexander II, and of Prince Charles of Hesse, who was Victoria's grandfather. Prince Alexander had married morganatically to one of his sister's ladies in waiting, Princess Julia Theresa von hauke, who after the marriage was given the title of Princess of Battenberg. The couple's four sons would bear their mother's title. The eldest of them was Prince Louis. When he was eight, Prince Louis was taken by his parents to stay with Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle. As he gre up, he felt in love with England. When he met Queen Victoria' sailor son Prince Alfred, he asked him if it was possible for a foreign prince to enter in his navy. Prince Alfred and Queen Victoria agreed so young Prince Louis was prepared by a British tutor to enter the Royal Navy. As a sailor, Prince Louis had the opportunity to travel all around the world and to have many love affairs. He was friend and companion of the Prince of Wales, whose mistress Lily Langtry, Lois shared. He even had a daughter with her. Although he was German born, he became more English than English themselves. Finally, tired of so many mistresses, Louis decided for a suitable wife and he felt in love with his cousin Victoria.
Louis and Victoria got married on April 30, 1884 at Dramstadt. Queen Victoria attended her granddaughter's wedding, accompanied by her youngest daughter Beatrice, who felt in love and later married with one of Louis' younger brothers, Prince Henry of Battenberg. Louis and Victoria had four children: Alice born in 1885, Louise born in 1889, George born in 1892 and Louis born in 1900. The eldest daughter, Alice, was deaf due to thickened Eustachian tubes, which was inoperable. Victoria tought her to read the lips, and as she was unusually intelligent she learnt to lip-read in German, English, French amd Greek.
Louis and Victoria set their home in England. Victoria's personality was a mixture of English and German cultures; she had took the puritanism and severe self discipline of the Victorian court, the German emancipated liberalism and the Hessian appreciation of arts.. She admired English writers such as Dickens, and hated English food as well as the disconfort produced by winter in England. She admired English inventivness and parliamentary democracy.. She was always quiestioning everything; she was a natural leader and always want others to convert to her way of thinking.
In 1911, Prince Louis became Second Sea Lord of the British Royal Navy, and the following year, he replaced Sir Francis Bridgam as First Sea Lord. His German orighinis gained him several enemies but he was British of heart. he was widely supported by king George V and by the First Lord of Almiralty, Winston Churchill. Victoria's youngest son, Lord Mountbatten, would later recall about his father and Churchill: "They complemented each other so well -my father with his unsurpassed knowledge of the service of which Churchill was political leader and Churchill, he canny poltical animal, very debious, bursting with energy and determination, leraning as hard as he could" (Hough).
In 1914, after the assasiantion of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the Austrian government had sent a threatening ultimatum to Serbia; Germany was supporting Austria, and Russia was supporting Serbia.The war was about to begin. On July 27, the British Navy reserves were to be demobilized and sent back home: Without them the fleet would be weakened in case of German surprising attack. On Sunday July 26, being alone at the Almiralty, while the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and Churchill were abscent from London, Prince Louis, in spite of the alarming rumours of the upcomming crisis, decided to stop the demobilization of the reserves, ensuring the Navy's readiness for the war. Later on he was praised for his action.
The first three months of the war at sea were disastrous for England at the hands of the German battleships. Prince Louis was again victim of his German origins. he was accused to be a German spy. It was recalled he had visited his relative, Prince Henry of Prussia (the Kaiser's brother), Grand Admiral of the German Fleet, several times. Finally he was forced to resign. Her husband's dismissed from the Navy meant a great humilliatyion for Victoria, who wrote: "It is the penalty for serving a democracy".
In 1917, at the arising unpopularity if all that was German in England, King George V changed the Royal Family name from Saxe Coburg Gotha to Windsor. Prince Louis did the same, he anglicanized his surname to Mountbatten and he and Victoria became Marquis and Marchioness of Milford Heaven. In 1918 Victoria learned of the murders of her two Russian sisters, Ella and Alix at the hands of the Bolsheviks. In the fall of 1920, she found out that Ella's body was lying in Beijing. She arranged her sister's remains to be transfered to Jerusalem, to the Orthodox church of St. Mary Magdalene.
The following year, on September 11, prince Louis died of a heart attack following influenza, while being at the Naval and Military Club in Picadilly.
Victoria's eldest daughter Alice married in 1903 to Prince Andrew of Greece, son of King George I. She was the mother of four daughters: Margarita, Theodora, Cecilia and Sophie, who ere born between 1905 and 1914. Finally, in 1921 she gave birth to a son, Philip, who would eventually became Prince Consort of England and Duke of Edimburgh, by his marriage to Queen Elizabeth II. Princess Alice founded a religious order in Greece in 1936, just as her aunt Ella had done before in Russia. During World War II, Alice provided a safe refuge for a Jewish family named Cohen. When Athens became under Nazi occupation in 1943, the Rosenborg Committee, the branch of the Gestapo charged with arresting Jews and sending them to Auschwitz for extermination, began its work in the city.
Haimaki Cohen had housed the Greek Royal Family during a flood in 1913. George I had offered him a Greek decoration as a reward for his services, but Cohen modestly declined. The King told him that if ever he needed help from his family, he had but to ask. Haimaki died at the beggining of the war, leaving a widow, Rachel, and five children. Freddy, the oldest son, remembering the late King's offer, decided to seek out Alice. He first tried to reach her through a mutual acquaintance. Alice told the acquaintance that she could not take the risk, whilst secretly planning to contact the Cohens independently. On 15 October 1943, the family slipped into Prince George's house by a back door under cover of darkness. Alice told the staff that Mrs Cohen was a former Swiss governess to the children and was living in fear of Hitler. Three of the brothers escaped across the Aegean sea, reassured that the rest of their family were safe. On reaching the Turkish coast, they enlisted in the Greek Free Forces in Egypt. Sometimes the Germans became suspicious about Alice and from time to time she was interviewed by the Gestapo, but she made use of her deafness, feigning not to understand their questions until they left her alone.
Alice never spoke of hiding the Cohens. When Jacques Cohen, one of the sons, tried to thank her in Rome some years later, she said sharply that she had only done what she believed to be her duty. On 11 April 1993, a posthumous award to Alice as 'Righteous among the Nations' was approved by the Holocaust Memorial, Yad Vashem, in Jerusalem. The award recognised that 'during the Holocaust period in Europe' she had 'risked her life to save persecuted Jews'. The lengthy process of obtaining the medal had been initiated by Freddy Cohen. On 31 October 1994, Alice's two surviving children, The Duke of Edinburgh and Princess George of Hanover, went together to Jerusalem to receive the award on behalf of Alice.
Victoria's second daughter Louise,. became Queen of Sweden by marrying the widower King Gustaf Adolf VI, whose first wife had been another granddaughter of Queen Victoria, Princess Margaret of Connauught.
Victoria's eldest son George succeded his father as 2nd Marquis of Milford Heaven; he married Nadejda Torby, the morganatic daughter of Grand Duke Mikhail Mikhailovitch of Russia. They had a son, David, and a daughter, Tataina, who lived most of her life in a mental hospital. Victoria's youngest son Louis became Earl Mountabtten of Burma. He was Supreme Allied Commander South East Asia from 1943 to 1946. In 1947, while being Viceroy of India, he rcognized Indian independence from Britain. In 1955, he was named Firts Sea Lord, like his father had been. He married Edwina Ashley, who had inherited a fortune from her grandfather Sir Edward Cassel. They had two daughters, Patricia and Pamela. Lord Mountbatten was killed in 1979 in an explosion of a bom, placed in his fishing boat placed by the Irish Republican Army; with him died one of his twin grandsons, Nicholas, son of Patricia.
Victoria, Marchioness of Milford Heaven died without painon September 29 1950. Here are some recollections of her lasts years:
Queen Elizabeth II: "Her voice was very loud and rather gutural and she seemed masculine in many ways".
The Queen Mother: "What a great reader she was. She would read everything she could lay her hands on, and specially history. She was a ver concise person and she knew exactly what she wanted to say without any hesitation".
Princess Alice of Athlone: "Everyone who knew her liked her very much,but she was not the kind of person you loved greately". ( Hough)
Hough, Richard: Lord Mountbatten, a biography
Eilers, Marlene: Queen Victoria's Descendants
Mager, Hugo: Elizabeth, Grand Duchess of Russia
Vickers, Hugo: Alice, Princess Andrew of Greece
