Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine (5 April 1863 – 24 September 1950), later Princess Louis of Battenberg and then Victoria Mountbatten, Marchioness of Milford Haven, was the eldest daughter of Louis IV, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine, and Princess Alice of the United Kingdom.
Victoria was born at Windsor Castle in the presence of her namesake grandmother, Queen Victoria. She was raised in Germany and England. Her mother died while Victoria and her siblings were still young, placing her in an early position of responsibility within the family. Despite her father's disapproval, she married his morganatic first cousin, Prince Louis of Battenberg, an officer in the British Royal Navy. Victoria lived in various parts of Europe during her husband's naval career and through visits to her many royal relations. She was regarded by her family as liberal in outlook, straightforward, practical, and intelligent. The couple had four children: Alice, Louise, George, and Louis.
During World War I, Victoria and her husband abandoned their German titles and adopted the surname Mountbatten, an anglicised version of the German "Battenberg". Two of her sistersElisabeth and Alix, who had married into the Russian imperial familywere murdered during the Russian revolution. After World War II, her daughter Louise became queen consort of Sweden and her son Louis was appointed the last Viceroy of India. She was the maternal grandmother of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, consort of Queen Elizabeth II, and the paternal great-grandmother of King Charles III.
Early life
Victoria was born on Easter Sunday in 1863 at Windsor Castle, in the presence of her maternal grandmother, Queen Victoria. The eldest daughter of Princess Alice and Louis IV, Grand Duke of Hesse, she was baptised into the Lutheran faith in the Green Drawing Room at Windsor Castle on 27 April, and was held in the Queen's arms during the ceremony. Her godparents were Queen Victoria; Princess Mary Adelaide of Cambridge; Louis III, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine (represented by Prince Alexander of Hesse and by Rhine); the Prince of Wales; and Prince Heinrich of Hesse and by Rhine.Queen Victoria's Journals – Monday 27 April 1863
Victoria spent her early childhood in Bessungen, a suburb of Darmstadt, before the family moved to the New Palace in Darmstadt when she was three. She shared a room with her younger sister, Elisabeth, until they reached adulthood. Privately educated to a high standard, she remained an avid reader throughout her life.Hough, p. 30
During the Prussian invasion of Hesse in June 1866, Victoria and Elisabeth were sent to Britain to live with their grandmother until hostilities ended with the absorption of Hesse-Kassel and parts of Hesse-Darmstadt into Prussia.Hough, p. 29 During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, military hospitals were established in the palace grounds at Darmstadt, and Victoria assisted her mother in the soup kitchens. She later recalled the severe winter cold and an incident in which her arm was burned by hot soup.Hough, p. 34
In 1872, Victoria's eighteen-month-old brother, Friedrich, was diagnosed with haemophilia. The news shocked Europe's royal families; it had been two decades since Queen Victoria had given birth to her haemophiliac son, Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany, and Friedrich's diagnosis was the first clear indication that the disorder was hereditary within the royal family.Hough, p. 36 The following year, Friedrich fell from a window onto stone steps and died, marking the first of several tragedies to affect the Hesse family.
In early November 1878, Victoria contracted diphtheria. Elisabeth was quickly moved from their shared room and was the only member of the family to avoid infection. For several days, Victoria's mother nursed the sick, but she was unable to save her youngest daughter, Marie, who died in mid-November. Just as the remaining family members appeared to be recovering, Alice fell ill. She died on 14 December, the anniversary of the death of her father, Prince Albert.Hough, pp. 46–48 As the eldest child, Victoria assumed some of her mother's responsibilities, caring for her younger siblings and supporting her father. She later wrote, "My mother's death was an irreparable loss ... My childhood ended with her death, for I became the eldest and most responsible".Hough, p. 50
Marriage and family At family gatherings, Victoria had often met Prince Louis of Battenberg, her first cousin once removed and a member of a morganatic branch of the Hessian royal family. Louis had adopted British nationality and was serving as an officer in the Royal Navy. They met again in Darmstadt in the winter of 1882 and became engaged the following summer.Hough, p. 57
After a brief postponement because of the death of her maternal uncle, Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany,Hough, p. 114 Victoria married Louis on 30 April 1884 in Darmstadt. Her father disapproved of the match; in his view, Louishis own first cousinhad little money and would take Victoria abroad to live in Britain, depriving him of her company. Victoria, however, was independent‑minded and paid little heed to her father's objections. Remarkably, that same evening, her father secretly married his mistress, Countess Alexandrine von Hutten-Czapska, the former wife of Alexander von Kolemine, the Russian chargé d'affaires in Darmstadt. His marriage to a divorcee of unequal rank shocked Europe's royal houses, and diplomatic and family pressure forced him to seek an annulment.Hough, pp. 117–122
Over the next sixteen years, Victoria and Louis had four children:
NameBirthDeathMarriageAlice25 February 18855 December 1969Married 1903 Prince Andrew of Greece and DenmarkFive children, including Prince Philip, Duke of EdinburghLouise13 July 18897 March 1965Married 1923 King Gustaf VI Adolf of Sweden (his second marriage)One stillborn daughterGeorge6 November 18928 April 1938Married 1916 Countess Nadejda Mikhailovna de Torby (daughter of Grand Duke Michael Mikhailovich of Russia)Two childrenLouis25 June 190027 August 1979Married 1922 Hon. Edwina AshleyTwo children
The couple lived in a succession of houses in Chichester and Walton-on-Thames in England, and at Schloss Heiligenberg in Germany. When Louis was serving with the Mediterranean Fleet, Victoria spent several winters in Malta. In 1887, she contracted typhoid but, after being nursed through her illness by her husband, had recovered sufficiently by June to attend Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee celebrations in London.Hough, pp. 158–159 She had an interest in science, drew a detailed geological map of Malta, and took part in archaeological excavations both on the island and in Germany.Hough, p. 169 She kept meticulous leather‑bound volumes recording the books she read, which show a wide range of subjects, including socialist philosophy.Hough, pp. 213–214, 372 and 375
The family were present at Windsor for Queen Victoria's funeral service at St George's Chapel. Under the terms of the late Queen's will, Victoria received an increase of £2,000 in her annual income.
She personally educated her children and introduced them to new ideas and inventions.Hough, p. 177 She taught her younger son, Louis, until he was ten years old. He later said of her, in 1968, that she was "a walking encyclopedia. All through her life she stored up knowledge on all sorts of subjects, and she had the great gift of being able to make it all interesting when she taught it to me. She was completely methodical; we had time-tables for each subject, and I had to do preparation, and so forth. She taught me to enjoy working hard, and to be thorough. She was outspoken and open-minded to a degree quite unusual in members of the Royal Family. And she was also entirely free from prejudice about politics or colour and things of that kind."
In 1906, she flew in a Zeppelin airship and later flew in a biplane even though it was "not made to carry passengers, and we perched securely attached on a little stool holding on to the flyer's back".Victoria Milford Haven quoted in Hough, p. 215 Until 1914, Victoria regularly visited relatives abroad in both Germany and Russia, including her two sisters who had married into the Russian imperial family: Elisabeth, who had married Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, and Alix, who had married Emperor Nicholas II. Victoria was among the Empress's relatives who attempted to dissuade her from the influence of Rasputin.Hough, p. 264 At the outbreak of war between Germany and Britain in 1914, Victoria and her daughter, Louise, were in Russia in Yekaterinburg. Travelling by train and steamer, they reached St Petersburg and continued through Tornio to Stockholm, before sailing from Bergen, Norway, on "the last ship" back to Britain.Hough, p. 289
Later life and death
Louis was forced to resign from the navy at the start of the war when his German origins became an embarrassment, and the couple retired for the war years to Kent House on the Isle of Wight, which Victoria had been given by her aunt Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll.Hough, p. 274 Victoria blamed her husband's forced resignation on the Government "who few greatly respect or trust". She distrusted the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, because she thought him unreliablehe had once borrowed a book and failed to return it.Terraine, p. 10 Continued public hostility to Germany in the United Kingdom led King George V to renounce his German titles, and on 14 July 1917 Louis and Victoria renounced theirs, assuming an anglicised version of BattenbergMountbattenas their surname. Four months later Louis was re-ennobled by the King as Marquess of Milford Haven. During the war, Victoria's two sisters, Alix and Elisabeth, were murdered in the Russian revolution, and her brother, Ernest Louis, Grand Duke of Hesse, was deposed. On her last visit to Russia in 1914, Victoria had driven past Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg where Alix would be murdered.Hough, p. 288 In January 1921, after a long and complex journey, Elisabeth's body was interred in Jerusalem in Victoria's presence. Alix's body was not recovered during Victoria's lifetime.
Victoria's husband died in London in September 1921. After meeting her at the Naval and Military Club in Piccadilly, he complained of feeling unwell, and Victoria persuaded him to rest in a room they had booked in the club annexe. She called a doctor, who prescribed some medicine, and Victoria went out to fill the prescription at a nearby pharmacy. When she returned, Louis was dead.Hough, p. 333 Upon her widowhood, Victoria moved into a grace-and-favour residence at Apartment 7, Kensington Palace, and, in the words of her biographer "became a central matriarchal figure in the lives of Europe's surviving royalty".Hough, p. 338 In 1930, her eldest daughter, Alice, suffered a nervous breakdown and was diagnosed as schizophrenic.Vickers, pp. 200–205 In the following decade Victoria was largely responsible for her grandson Prince Philip's education and upbringing during his parents' separation and his mother's institutionalisation. Philip recalled, "I liked my grandmother very much and she was always helpful. She was very good with children ... she took the practical approach to them. She treated them in the right waythe right combination of the rational and the emotional."Prince Philip quoted in Hough, p. 354