Founder of the House of Mountbatten.

Louis Alexander Mountbatten, 1st Marquess of Milford Haven, formerly Prince Louis Alexander of Battenberg, was a British naval officer and German prince related by marriage to the British royal family.

Although born in Austria, and brought up in Italy and Germany, Louis enrolled in the British Royal Navy at the age of fourteen. Queen Victoria and her son the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII) occasionally intervened in his career: the Queen thought that there was "a belief that the Admiralty are afraid of promoting Officers who are Princes on account of the radical attacks of low papers and scurrilous ones". However, Louis welcomed assignments that provided opportunities for him to acquire skills and to demonstrate to his superiors that he was serious about his naval career. Posts on royal yachts and tours arranged by Queen Victoria and the Prince of Wales impeded his progress, as his promotions were perceived as undeserved royal favours.

After a naval career lasting more than forty years, in 1912 Louis was appointed First Sea Lord, the professional head of the British naval service. With the First World War looming, he took steps to ready the British fleet for combat, but his background as a German prince forced his retirement once the war began, when anti-German sentiment was running high. He changed his name and relinquished his German titles, at the behest of King George V, in 1917. The King made Louis Marquess of Milford Haven.

Louis married Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine, a granddaughter of Queen Victoria. They had four children: Alice, Louise, George, and Louis. Louise later became Queen of Sweden, while the younger Louis served as First Sea Lord, like his father, from 1954 to 1959. The Marquess and Marchioness of Milford Haven were the maternal grandparents of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.

Early life

Louis was born in Graz, Styria, on 24 May 1854, the eldest son of Prince Alexander of Hesse and by Rhine by his morganatic marriage to Countess Julia von Hauke. Because of his morganatic parentage, Louis did not inherit his father's rank in the Grand Duchy of Hesse; and, from birth, his style of Illustrious Highness and title of Count of Battenberg instead derived from the rank given to his mother at the time of her marriage. On 26 December 1858, he automatically became His Serene Highness Prince Louis of Battenberg when his mother was elevated to Princess of Battenberg with the style of Serene Highness, by decree of her husband's brother, Louis III, Grand Duke of Hesse.

Shortly after Louis's birth, his father was stationed with the Austro-Hungarian Army in Northern Italy during the Second Italian War of Independence. Louis's early years were spent either in the north of Italy or at Prince Alexander's two houses in Hesse, the castle of Heiligenberg in Jugenheim, and the Alexander Palace in Darmstadt. Because his mother spoke French to him and he had an English governess, he grew up trilingual.

Among the visitors entertained at Heiligenberg were Battenberg's relations, the Russian imperial family and his cousin, Prince Louis of Hesse. Influenced by his cousin's wife, Princess Alice, a daughter of Queen Victoria, and by Prince Alfred, another of Queen Victoria's children, Battenberg became a naturalised British subject and joined the Royal Navy on 3 October 1868 at age fourteen. He was admitted by the Board of Admiralty without the production of a medical certificate, which was contrary to the usual regulation. He had been found medically unfit "on account of small, flat chest, slight lateral curvature of the spine and defective vision", but was allowed to join so as not to disappoint the Queen. He was entered as a naval cadet aboard HMS Victory, Nelson's old flagship, then used as a permanently moored receiving ship.

In January of the following year, the Prince and Princess of Wales cruised the Mediterranean and Black Seas in the frigate HMS Ariadne; and the Prince of Wales requested that Louis be appointed to the vessel, before his training was complete. As part of the same tour, Louis accompanied them on a visit to Egypt, where they visited the construction site of the Suez Canal. As was traditional, the Khedive, Isma'il Pasha, bestowed honours on the party, with Louis receiving the Order of the Medjidie (4th Class); in April, he received the Order of Osmanieh (4th Class) from Ottoman Sultan Abdulaziz.

Marriage and family

In September 1883, Queen Victoria appointed him to her yacht, HMY Victoria and Albert (1855). On 30 April 1884 at Darmstadt in the presence of the Queen, Prince Louis married her granddaughter, Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine. His wife was the eldest daughter of Queen Victoria's second daughter Princess Alice and Louis IV, Grand Duke of Hesse. Through the Hesse family, Prince and Princess Louis of Battenberg were first cousins once removed. They had known each other since childhood, and invariably spoke English to each other. As wedding presents Louis received the British Order of the Bath and the Star and Chain of the Hessian Order of Louis.

Adoption of the surname Mountbatten

During the war, persistent rumours that the British royal family must be pro-German, given their dynastic origins and many German relatives, prompted the King to abandon his subsidiary German dynastic titles and adopt an English surname. At the behest of the King, Louis relinquished the title Prince of Battenberg in the Grand Duchy of Hesse, along with the style of Serene Highness, on 14 July 1917. At the same time, Louis anglicised his family name, changing it from "Battenberg" to "Mountbatten", having considered but rejected "Battenhill" as an alternative. On 7 November, the King created him Marquess of Milford Haven, Earl of Medina, and Viscount Alderney in the peerage of the United Kingdom. He was offered a dukedom by George V, but declined as he could not afford the lavish lifestyle expected of a duke.

The King's British relatives in the Teck, Schleswig-Holstein, and Gleichen families underwent similar changes. Louis's wife ceased to use her own title of Princess of Hesse and became known as the Marchioness of Milford Haven. His three younger children ceased to use their princely titles and assumed courtesy titles as children of a British marquess; his eldest daughter, Princess Alice, had married into the Greek Royal Family in 1903, and never had occasion to use the surname Mountbatten. However, her only son, Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark, adopted the name when he became a British subject in 1947.

While the transition in names and titles was being effected, Louis spent some time at the home of his eldest son, George. After anglicising his surname to Mountbatten and becoming Marquess of Milford Haven, Louis wrote in his son's guestbook, "Arrived Prince Hyde, Departed Lord Jekyll".

Final years and death

During the war, two of Lord Milford Haven's sisters-in-law (Empress Alexandra Feodorovna and Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna) were killed by the Bolsheviks in Russia. Eventually, in January 1921, after a long and convoluted journey, the body of Grand Duchess Elizabeth Fyodorovna was interred in Jerusalem in the presence of Milford Haven and his wife.

In 1919, the Milford Havens had to give up their home, Kent House, for financial reasons. He sold his collection of naval medals. All of his financial investments in Russia were seized by the Bolsheviks and his German property became valueless with the collapse of the mark. He sold Heiligenberg Castle, which he had inherited from his father, in 1920.

Milford Haven was appointed Military Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath (GCB), to add to the Civil one he already held, in recognition of his service to the Royal Navy in the 1921 New Year Honours, and was specially promoted by Order in Council to the rank of Admiral of the Fleet on the Retired List, dated 19 August. A few days later he joined HMS Repulse, the ship on which his son Louis was serving, for a week at the invitation of the captain Dudley Pound. It was his last voyage; he died at 42 Half Moon Street, Piccadilly, London in the annexe of the Naval and Military Club on 11 September 1921 of heart failure following influenza, aged 67. After a funeral service at Westminster Abbey, his remains were buried at St. Mildred's Church, Whippingham, on the Isle of Wight.

Milford Haven's estate comprised £6,535 in England and 734,613 marks in Darmstadt. His elder son, George Mountbatten, who had received the courtesy title Earl of Medina, succeeded him as 2nd Marquess of Milford Haven. Louis's younger son, styled Lord Louis Mountbatten after 1917, served in the Royal Navy, became First Sea Lord like his father, was the last Viceroy of India, and was created Earl Mountbatten of Burma in 1947.