Difference between revisions of "Louis Alexander Mountbatten, First Marquess of Milford Haven"

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Admiral of the Fleet Louis Alexander Mountbatten, First Marquess of Milford Haven (formerly His Serene Highness Prince Louis of Battenberg), G.C.B., G.C.V.O., K.C.M.G., P.C., Royal Navy (24 May, 1854 – 11 September, 1921) was an officer of the Royal Navy.

Life & Career

Mountbatten the eldest son of Prince Alexander of Hesse (a younger son of Louis II, Grand Duke of Hesse-Darmstadt) by his wife, Countess Julia Theresa von Haucke, was born at Gratz, Austria, 24 May, 1854. The friendship between his mother and Princess Alice, daughter of Queen Victoria and consort of Prince Frederick of Hesse (afterwards Grand Duke Louis IV), led to Prince Louis settling in this country as a boy; and, having become naturalized as a British subject, he entered the royal navy as a cadet in 1868. In 1869 he was rated midshipman, and joined the Royal Alfred, flagship of Vice-Admiral (Sir) Edward Fanshawe on the North America and West Indies station. When the Admiralty took over the Serapis in 1874 for the visit of the Prince of Wales to India, Prince Louis, then sub-lieutenant, was selected to serve as one of the complement of officers. He already gave promise of distinction. His sympathies were entirely British, and Queen Victoria watched his career with almost motherly interest. His abilities as a linguist proved of no slight advantage to him in later life. At the conclusion of the Indian tour he was promoted to lieutenant, and served in the Inconstant during the Egyptian War, taking part in the bombardment of Alexandria (11 July 1882). He subsequently landed with the naval brigade, in command of a Gatling gun battery, for the occupation of Alexandria. After a period of service in the royal yacht, he was promoted to commander in 1885.

At this period the defence policy of this country was undergoing a gradual readjustment in accordance with the theories of what became known as "the blue-water school", and Prince Louis was selected by the Admiralty to act as naval adviser to the inspector-general of fortifications, with a view to co-ordinating naval and military ideas. He took up this appointment in 1892, having been promoted captain in the preceding year, and held it until October 1894. In February 1894 he was chosen to act as joint secretary of the naval and military committee on defence, which afterwards was developed into the committee of imperial defence. During these years he applied himself seriously to the study of the defence problem in its naval and military aspects. On 28 June, 1899 Battenberg handed command of the Majestic over to Captain George Le C. Egerton.^[1] In June, 1899, he was made Assistant Director of Naval Intelligence.^[2] He was appointed a Personal Naval Aide-de-Camp to King Edward VII on 25 February, 1901.^[3] On 10 September, Battenberg commissioned the battleship Implacable at Devonport for service in the Mediterranean Squadron.^[4] During the illness and subsequent death of the Second-in-Command of the fleet, Rear-Admiral Burges Watson, Battenberg was appointed Commodore, Second Class on 24 September, 1902 until a successor arrived.^[5] The Captain of H.M.S. Juno, David Beatty, wrote to his wife:

Our Admiral has gone sick and so we have been placed under the command of Prince Louis of Battenberg who is one of the Captains out here, in fact the senior one and supposed to be the most capable man. He is awfully nice, but frightfully pompous and heavy in hand, but I think otherwise he is alright.^[6]

Director of Naval Intelligence

Battenberg returned to the Admiralty in 1902 as Director of Naval Intelligence. He was appointed Director only after the sudden death of the successor designate, Rear-Admiral Burges Watson, and the disqualification of the alternative, Captain Henry May.^[7] He succeeded Rear-Admiral Custance on 15 November, 1902.^[8]

On 11 October, 1903, Battenberg wrote to Cyprian Bridge, the Commander-in-Chief on the China Station, "My work seems to grow steadily — the D.N.I. is requisitioned by every department, even outside the Admiralty & not much of my waking life is devoted to other matters."^[9]

Referring to a naval staff, Battenberg wrote, "The machinery, in the shape of the (miscalled) Intelligence Department, is there; it requires enlarging and strengthening and above all it requires someone at its head of sufficient power and influence."^[10]

On 30 May, 1904 Battenberg was unanimously elected an Elder Brother of the Corporation of Trinity House.^[11] In June he was appointed Chairman of the Council of the Royal United Services Institution in succession to General Lord Methuen.^[12]

On 1 July Battenberg was promoted to the rank of Rear-Admiral.^[13]

Rear-Admiral

Battenberg joined King Edward at Marienbad in August where the sovereign was taking the cure. The King sent Prince Louis, as his Personal Aide-de-Camp^[14] to be present as his representative at the christening of the Tsar's son on 24 August, 1894 in the Peterhof Palace.^[15] On the 26th, he and Prince Henry of Prussia of the Imperial German Navy lunched with Grand Duke Vladimir, before being seen off on their respective journeys home at the train station by the Tsar, all the Grand Dukes and the Ambassadors of Germany and Britain.^[16] During his visit to Russia, Battenberg had been ordered, in his own words:

1. To present a letter to the Emperor which combined a request to give me an opportunity of speaking with His Majesty on the relations between the two countries. 2. To arrange for a meeting with Count Lamsdorff [Minister for Foreign Affairs] to whom I was to give a personal message from the King to the effect that His Majesty felt every confidence in the Count's sincere desire to help restoring the friendly relations between England and Russia.^[17]

Second Sea Lord

The First Sea Lord, Sir Francis Bridgeman, later conceded in a letter of 13 November, 1914, that Battenberg used "well chosen language" and could "write voluminously", but damned his understanding as "superficial" and believed him "utterly deficient in technical knowledge."^[18]

First Sea Lord

Battenberg wrote to Churchill, "I think I may truthfully say that at this moment no-one has any clear idea how the Commander-in-Chief, whereever he maybe in the line, is to effectively command such a fleet."^[19]

Mr. Winston Churchill had become First lord in that year, and he selected Prince Louis as first sea lord a year later on the retirement of Sir Francis Bridgeman. This selection was probably unwise on grounds of political expediency, in view of the circumstances of Prince Louis's birth, and of the threatening situation which was developing abroad. Battenberg was confirmed in the rank of Admiral on 13 July, 1912, vice Atkinson-Willes.^[20]

In July 1914 a test mobilization of the naval reserves was carried out, and the ships were due to disperse, after carrying out exercises in the English Channel, at the moment when relations between this country and Germany had become strained. Owing to the illness of his wife, Mr. Churchill was absent from the Admiralty during the critical week-end (25–27 July) when it had to be decided whether the fleet should be dispersed and the reserve ships demobilized, in accordance with the plans already made, or whether preliminary steps should be taken to place the squadrons at their various war stations. This decision rested with the first sea lord. After a telephone conversation with the first lord at Cromer, Prince Louis, sent a telegram to Sir George Callaghan:

No ships of First Fleet or Flotillas are to leave Portland until further orders. Acknowledge.

Churchill later acknowledged in a letter to Battenberg of 19 October that, "The first step which secured the timely concentration of the Fleet was taken by you."^[21] War had not then been declared, but the prevision of the first sea lord ensured that when it became inevitable the navy should be in a state of readiness. Political events moved rapidly. At four o'clock on the morning of 3 August the mobilization of the navy had been completed. The prompt initiative which Prince Louis had exhibited in this emergency did not shield him from attack in subsequent months on account of his ‘German origin’. On 29 October, as the final act of patriotism in his long and distinguished naval career, he resigned his position as first sea lord. He lived to see the complete triumph of the naval weapon which he had helped to forge, dying on 11 September 1921 in his chambers at Half Moon Street, Piccadilly, at the age of sixty-seven.

Upon the issue of his resignation, Milford Haven's Naval Assistant, Captain Tufton Beamish, later wrote to Sir Richard Webb:

In my years of really intimate work with P.L., and in all the time since 1914, I cannot say that I have had a particle of proof that any officer in the Service deliberately intrigued against him on the grounds of birth or nationality.

I am confident that P.L. was not hounded out by our senior officers, and I feel it is due to them that they should be acquitted of so mean an attitude.

I received (as P.L.'s assistant in 1914) many anonymous letters, mostly trivial, but 'straws': he received many himself and mentioned them to me.

For years before 1914 he realized and stated to me that if war came his position would be made very hard if not untenable, and that two peaks were for him unattainable; first—and the most desired—C.-in-C. in War, and second First Sea Lord. Never by hint of any kind did he let one think that our Service would prevent his cherished hopes maturing.

The cause of P.L.'s resignation was public hysteria and outcry directed at political leaders and fostered by the Press (a non-existent power in any previous war of importance) with its limitiess devices for propaganda.^[22]

With the coming of peace, tribute was paid to the services which he had rendered the country, by his promotion to the rank of admiral of the fleet. In July 1917, by the request of the King, Prince Louis relinquished the style and title of serene highness and prince, assumed for himself and his descendants the surname of Mountbatten, and was raised to the peerage of the United Kingdom as Marquess of Milford Haven, Earl of Medina, and Viscount Alderney. He left two sons and two daughters, and was succeeded in the marquessate by his elder son, George Louis, Earl of Medina.

Prince Louis, who was of a commanding presence and possessed great charm of manner, looked the beau-ideal of the British naval officer, and took throughout his life a keen interest in British naval history. He was particularly interested in the Navy Records Society and was the first president of the Society of Nautical Research. He was also associated with Admiral Sir Percy Scott in the invention of the cone signalling apparatus, and introduced into the service an instrument to enable the complicated calculations, which are necessary before certain tactical manœuvres can be carried out, to be resolved mechanically.

A portrait of Prince Louis is included in Sir A. S. Cope's picture ‘Some Sea Officers of the Great War’, painted in 1921, which is in the National Portrait Gallery.

Wealth at death: £6533 17s. 1d.: Probate; 31 October, 1921.

Ancestors

Footnotes

Bibliography

Papers

Service Records