1.
Alexander Bassano
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Alexander Bassano was an English photographer who was a leading royal and high society portrait photographer in Victorian London. His most famous photo was the one of Earl Kitchener in the Lord Kitchener Wants You army recruitment poster during the First World War and he later anglicised his first name to Alexander. Bassano received early training with artists Augustus Egg and William Beverley. He opened his first studio in 1850 in Regent Street, the studio then moved to Piccadilly 1859-1863, to Pall Mall and then to 25 Old Bond Street in 1877. There was also a Bassano branch studio at 132 Kings Road and he had taken portraits of William Ewart Gladstone and even Queen Victoria. Bassanos head of Lord Kitchener formed the basis of the First World war recruiting poster Your Country Needs You, Bassano retired from work at the studio around 1903, when the premises were extensively refurbished and relaunched as Bassano Ltd, Royal Photographers. The studio moved once again in 1921, a move written about by the Ladys Pictorial at the time, the article described about a million negatives, all systematically numbered, which had to be moved from the cellars of the premises to the new location at 38 Dover Street. The company became Bassano and Vandyk in 1964, the following year it incorporated Elliott & Fry, a photographic partnership that had been running in Baker Street since 1863. In 1977, the company became Industrial Photographic, based at 35 Moreton Street, many glass plates from the Bassano Studios, including some by Alexander Bassano, are held in the National Portrait Gallery, London. The Museum of London holds a number of the fashion-related plates. The National Portrait Gallery held an exhibit of his work, Alexander Bassano, Victorian Photographer in 2013 and they had a son, Clement George Alexander, and two daughters, Adelaide Fanny Louise and Camilla Teresa. His sister Louisa Bassano was a singer and teacher
Alexander Bassano
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Self portrait,
c. 1890s
2.
Windsor Castle
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Windsor Castle is a royal residence at Windsor in the English county of Berkshire. It is notable for its association with the English and later British royal family. The original castle was built in the 11th century after the Norman invasion of England by William the Conqueror, since the time of Henry I, it has been used by the reigning monarch and is the longest-occupied palace in Europe. Inside the castle walls is the 15th-century St Georges Chapel, considered by the historian John Martin Robinson to be one of the achievements of English Perpendicular Gothic design. Gradually replaced with stone fortifications, the castle withstood a siege during the First Barons War at the start of the 13th century. Edwards core design lasted through the Tudor period, during which Henry VIII and Elizabeth I made increasing use of the castle as a royal court and centre for diplomatic entertainment. Windsor Castle survived the period of the English Civil War, when it was used as a military headquarters for Parliamentary forces. At the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, Charles II rebuilt much of Windsor Castle with the help of the architect Hugh May, Queen Victoria made a few minor changes to the castle, which became the centre for royal entertainment for much of her reign. Windsor Castle was used as a refuge for the family during the Luftwaffe bombing campaigns of the Second World War. It is a popular tourist attraction, a venue for hosting state visits, today, more than 500 people live and work in Windsor Castle, making it the largest inhabited castle in the world. Windsor Castle occupies 13 acres, and combines the features of a fortification, a palace, the present-day castle was created during a sequence of phased building projects, culminating in the reconstruction work after a fire in 1992. It is in essence a Georgian and Victorian design based on a medieval structure, since the 14th century, architecture at the castle has attempted to produce a contemporary reinterpretation of older fashions and traditions, repeatedly imitating outmoded or even antiquated styles. Although there has some criticism, the castles architecture and history lends it a place amongst the greatest European palaces. At the heart of Windsor Castle is the Middle Ward, a formed around the motte or artificial hill in the centre of the ward. The motte is 50 feet high and is made from chalk originally excavated from the surrounding ditch, the Round Tower is in reality far from cylindrical, due to the shape and structure of the motte beneath it. The western entrance to the Middle Ward is now open, the eastern exit from the ward is guarded by the Norman Gatehouse. Wyatville redesigned the exterior of the gatehouse, and the interior was later converted in the 19th century for residential use. The Upper Ward of Windsor Castle comprises a number of major buildings enclosed by the bailey wall
Windsor Castle
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Windsor Castle, viewed from the Long Walk
Windsor Castle
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The South Wing of the Upper Ward; the Official Entrance to the State Apartments is on the left
Windsor Castle
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The State Apartments in the Upper Ward; (l to r) Queen's Audience and Presence Chambers, the Official Entrance, St George's Hall; the Guest's Entrance
Windsor Castle
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The Crimson Drawing Room in 2007 following the
1992 fire and subsequent remodelling
3.
Windsor, Berkshire
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Windsor is a historic market town and unparished area in the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead in Berkshire, England. It is widely known as the site of Windsor Castle, one of the residences of the British Royal Family. The town is situated 23 miles west of Charing Cross, London,7 miles south east of Maidenhead and it is immediately south of the River Thames, which forms its boundary with its ancient twin town of Eton. Windlesora is first mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the name originates from old English Windles-ore or winch by the riverside. By the late 12th century the settlement at Windelsora was renamed Old Windsor, the early history of the site is unknown, although it was almost certainly settled some years before 1070 when William the Conqueror had a timber motte and bailey castle constructed. The focus of royal interest at that time was not the castle, however, from about the 8th century, high status people started to visit the site occasionally, and possibly this included royalty. From the 11th century the sites link with king Edward the Confessor is documented, after the Conquest of 1066 royal use of the site increased, probably because it offered good access to woodlands and opportunities for hunting – a sport which also practised military skills. Windsor Castle is noted in the Domesday Book under the entry for Clewer, although this might seem strange, it occurred because plans for the castle had changed since 1070, and more land had been acquired in Clewer on which to site a castle town. This plan was not actioned until the early 12th century, King Henry married his second wife at Windsor Castle in 1121, after the White Ship disaster. The settlement at Old Windsor largely transferred to New Windsor during the 12th century,1170, under Henry II, following the civil war of Stephens reign. At about the time, the present upper ward of the castle was rebuilt in stone. It had a merchant guild from the early 13th century and, under patronage, was made the chief town of the county in 1277. Somewhat unusually, this gave no new rights or privileges to Windsor. Windsors position as town of Berkshire was short-lived, however. Wallingford took over this position in the early 14th century, as a self-governing town Windsor enjoyed a number of freedoms unavailable to other towns, including the right to hold its own borough court, the right of membership and some financial independence. The town accounts of the 16th century survive in part, although most of the once substantial borough archive dating back to the 12th century was destroyed, probably in the late 17th century. New Windsor was a significant town in the Middle Ages. Its prosperity came from its association with the royal household
Windsor, Berkshire
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Windsor Bridge, Windsor and
Windsor Castle
Windsor, Berkshire
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Windsor Castle, viewed from the Long Walk
Windsor, Berkshire
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The Last Supper by Franz de Cleyn in the West Gallery of Windsor parish church of St John The Baptist.
Windsor, Berkshire
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The
Windsor Guildhall
4.
Kensington Palace
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Kensington Palace is a royal residence set in Kensington Gardens, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in London, England. Today, the State Rooms are open to the public and managed by the independent charity Historic Royal Palaces, the offices and private accommodation areas of the Palace remain the responsibility of the Royal Household and are maintained by the Royal Household Property Section. The palace also displays paintings and other objects from the Royal Collection. Kensington Palace was originally a two-storey Jacobean mansion built by Sir George Coppin in 1605 in the village of Kensington, the mansion was purchased in 1619 by Heneage Finch, 1st Earl of Nottingham and was then known as Nottingham House. In the summer of 1689, William and Mary bought Nottingham House from Secretary of State Daniel Finch and they then instructed Sir Christopher Wren, Surveyor of the Kings Works to begin an immediate expansion of the house. In order to time and money, Wren kept the structure intact and added a three-story pavilion at each of the four corners, providing more accommodation for the King and Queen. The Queen’s Apartments were in the north-west pavilion and the King’s in the south-east, Wren then re-oriented the house to face west, building north and south wings to flank the approach, made into a proper cour dhonneur that was entered through an archway surmounted by a clock tower. The palace was surrounded by straight cut solitary lawns, and formal gardens, laid out with paths and flower beds at right angles. Jamess Palace, which has not been the royal residence in London since the 17th century. William had constructed the South Front, to the design of Nicholas Hawksmoor, after William IIIs death, the palace became the residence of Queen Anne. These were primarily used by the Queen to give access between the apartments and gardens. Queen Annes most notable contribution to the palace were the gardens and she commissioned the Hawksmoor designed Orangery, modified by John Vanbrugh, that was built for her in 1704. The level of decoration of the interior, including carved detail by Grinling Gibbons, reflects its use, not just as a greenhouse. Also, a magnificent 30 acre baroque parterre, with sections of clipped scrolling designs punctuated by trees formally clipped into cones, was out by Henry Wise. Kensington Palace was also the setting of the argument between Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough and Queen Anne. The Duchess, who was known for being outspoken and manipulative, was jealous of the attention the Queen was giving to Abigail Masham, Queen Anne died at Kensington Palace on 1 August 1714. George I spent lavishly on new royal apartments, creating three new state known as the Privy Chamber, the Cupola Room and the Withdrawing Room. He hired the unknown William Kent in 1722 to decorate the state rooms, the Cupola Room was Kents first commission for the King
Kensington Palace
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Kensington Palace
Kensington Palace
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Kensington Palace south front with its
parterres, engraved by
Jan Kip, 1724.
Kensington Palace
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Kensington Palace Orangery
Kensington Palace
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The Cupola Room
5.
London
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London /ˈlʌndən/ is the capital and most populous city of England and the United Kingdom. Standing on the River Thames in the south east of the island of Great Britain and it was founded by the Romans, who named it Londinium. Londons ancient core, the City of London, largely retains its 1. 12-square-mile medieval boundaries. London is a global city in the arts, commerce, education, entertainment, fashion, finance, healthcare, media, professional services, research and development, tourism. It is crowned as the worlds largest financial centre and has the fifth- or sixth-largest metropolitan area GDP in the world, London is a world cultural capital. It is the worlds most-visited city as measured by international arrivals and has the worlds largest city airport system measured by passenger traffic, London is the worlds leading investment destination, hosting more international retailers and ultra high-net-worth individuals than any other city. Londons universities form the largest concentration of education institutes in Europe. In 2012, London became the first city to have hosted the modern Summer Olympic Games three times, London has a diverse range of people and cultures, and more than 300 languages are spoken in the region. Its estimated mid-2015 municipal population was 8,673,713, the largest of any city in the European Union, Londons urban area is the second most populous in the EU, after Paris, with 9,787,426 inhabitants at the 2011 census. The citys metropolitan area is the most populous in the EU with 13,879,757 inhabitants, the city-region therefore has a similar land area and population to that of the New York metropolitan area. London was the worlds most populous city from around 1831 to 1925, Other famous landmarks include Buckingham Palace, the London Eye, Piccadilly Circus, St Pauls Cathedral, Tower Bridge, Trafalgar Square, and The Shard. The London Underground is the oldest underground railway network in the world, the etymology of London is uncertain. It is an ancient name, found in sources from the 2nd century and it is recorded c.121 as Londinium, which points to Romano-British origin, and hand-written Roman tablets recovered in the city originating from AD 65/70-80 include the word Londinio. The earliest attempted explanation, now disregarded, is attributed to Geoffrey of Monmouth in Historia Regum Britanniae and this had it that the name originated from a supposed King Lud, who had allegedly taken over the city and named it Kaerlud. From 1898, it was accepted that the name was of Celtic origin and meant place belonging to a man called *Londinos. The ultimate difficulty lies in reconciling the Latin form Londinium with the modern Welsh Llundain, which should demand a form *lōndinion, from earlier *loundiniom. The possibility cannot be ruled out that the Welsh name was borrowed back in from English at a later date, and thus cannot be used as a basis from which to reconstruct the original name. Until 1889, the name London officially applied only to the City of London, two recent discoveries indicate probable very early settlements near the Thames in the London area
London
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Palace of Westminster,
Buckingham Palace and
Central London skyline
London
London
London
–
The name London may derive from the
River Thames
6.
Isle of Wight
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The Isle of Wight /ˈaɪl əv ˈwaɪt/ is a county and the largest and second-most populous island in England. It is located in the English Channel, about 4 miles off the coast of Hampshire, the island has resorts that have been holiday destinations since Victorian times, and is known for its mild climate, coastal scenery, and verdant landscape of fields, downland and chines. The island has been home to the poets Swinburne and Tennyson and to Queen Victoria and it has a maritime and industrial tradition including boat building, sail making, the manufacture of flying boats, the hovercraft, and Britains space rockets. The island hosts annual festivals including the Isle of Wight Festival. It has well-conserved wildlife and some of the richest cliffs and quarries for dinosaur fossils in Europe, the Isle was owned by a Norman family until 1293 and was earlier a kingdom in its own right. Rural for most of its history, its Victorian fashionability and the affordability of holidays led to significant urban development during the late 19th. The island was part of Hampshire until 1890 when it became its own administrative county, apart from a shared police force, there is now no administrative link with Hampshire, although a combined local authority with Portsmouth and Southampton is being considered. Until 1995 the island had a governor, the quickest public transport link to the mainland is the hovercraft from Ryde to Southsea, while three ferry and two catamaran services cross the Solent to Southampton, Lymington and Portsmouth. During the Ice Age, sea levels were lower and the Solent was part of a river flowing south east from current day Poole Harbour towards mid-Channel. As sea levels rose, the valley became flooded. The first inhabitants are assumed to have been hunter-gatherers migrating by land during the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age period, as the ice age began to recede. From the Neolithic era onwards, there are indications that the island had wide trading links, with a port at Bouldnor, evidence of Bronze Age tin trading, caesar reported that the Belgae took the Isle of Wight in about 85 BC and gave its name as Vectis. The Roman historian Suetonius mentions that the island was captured by the commander Vespasian, the Romans built no towns or roads on the island, but the remains of at least seven Roman villas have been found, indicating the prosperity of local agriculture. During the Dark Ages the island was settled by Jutes as the kingdom of Wihtwara under King Arwald. In 685 it was invaded by Caedwalla, who tried to replace the inhabitants with his own followers and it suffered especially from Viking raids, and was often used as a winter base by Viking raiders when they were unable to reach Normandy. Later, both Earl Tostig and his brother Harold Godwinson held manors on the island, the Norman Conquest of 1066 created the position of Lord of the Isle of Wight, the island being given by William the Conqueror to his kinsman William FitzOsbern. Carisbrooke Priory and the fort of Carisbrooke Castle were then founded, allegiance was sworn to FitzOsbern rather than the king, the Lordship was subsequently granted to the de Redvers family by Henry I, after his succession in 1100. For nearly 200 years the island was a semi-independent feudal fiefdom, the final private owner was the Countess Isabella de Fortibus, who, on her deathbed in 1293, was persuaded to sell it to Edward I
Isle of Wight
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An image of the Isle of Wight from the
ISS
Isle of Wight
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Carisbrooke Castle just outside of Carisbrooke
Isle of Wight
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Osborne House and its grounds are now open to the public
Isle of Wight
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Eugene Manet on the Isle of Wight, 1875 painting by
Berthe Morisot.
7.
Prince Louis of Battenberg
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Although born in Austria, and brought up in Italy and Germany, he enrolled in the United Kingdoms Royal Navy at the age of fourteen. However, Louis welcomed assignments that provided opportunities for him to acquire the skills of war, posts on royal yachts and tours arranged by the Queen and Edward actually impeded his progress, as his promotions were perceived as royal favours rather than deserved. After a naval career lasting more than forty years, in 1912 he was appointed First Sea Lord and he changed his name and relinquished his German titles, at the behest of King George V, in 1917. He married a granddaughter of Queen Victoria, and was the father of Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, consort of Queen Elizabeth II, is his grandson. Louis was born as Ludwig Alexander von Battenberg in Graz, Styria, shortly after Louiss birth, his father was stationed with the Austro-Hungarian Army of occupation in Northern Italy during the Second Italian War of Independence. Louiss early years were spent either in the north of Italy or at Prince Alexanders 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, among the visitors entertained at Heiligenberg were Prince Alexanders relations, the Russian imperial family, and his cousin, Prince Louis of Hesse. He was admitted by the Board of Admiralty without the production of a medical certificate and he was enlisted as a naval cadet aboard HMS Victory, Nelsons old flagship, then used as a permanently moored training ship. As part of the tour, Louis accompanied them on a visit to Egypt. As was traditional, the Khedive bestowed honours on the party, in April, he received the Osmanie from the Ottoman Sultan. Louis returned to Britain in May 1869, in June he joined HMS Royal Alfred, the flagship of the North America and West Indies Station, becoming a midshipman in October. In 1875, again at the invitation of the Prince of Wales, he joined HMS Serapis, Louis sketched some of the events of the tour and his drawings were published in the Illustrated London News. He was promoted to lieutenant on 15 May 1876, in addition to acting as the Dukes equerry, Louis continued his naval duties. He did not enjoy the position, as the Duke was rather touchy and Louiss cabin was infested with rats, the Sultan toured the Mediterranean from July 1876. In late February–early March 1878, Louis was still serving on the Sultan as it lay in the Bosphorus during the Russo-Turkish War. On 24 August 1880, Louis was posted to HMS Inconstant, the flagship of the Flying Squadron, which included HMS Bacchante on which Princes Albert Victor and George were serving. The ship sailed to South America, South Africa, Australia, Fiji, Japan, China, Hong Kong, Singapore, seven months after Louis left Britain on the voyage, actress Lillie Langtry allegedly bore him an illegitimate daughter, Jeanne Marie. Langtry was also a mistress of the Prince of Wales
Prince Louis of Battenberg
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Admiral of the Fleet The Most Honourable The Marquess of Milford Haven
GCB GCVO KCMG PC
Prince Louis of Battenberg
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Prince Louis photographed by Carl Backofen in Darmstadt, 1869
Prince Louis of Battenberg
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HMS Agincourt, c. 1878
Prince Louis of Battenberg
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HMS Dreadnought, c. 1894
8.
Princess Alice of Battenberg
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Princess Alice of Battenberg, later Princess Andrew of Greece and Denmark, was the mother of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, and mother-in-law of Queen Elizabeth II. A great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria, she grew up in Germany, England, after marrying Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark in 1903, she lived in Greece until the exile of most of the Greek royal family in 1917. In 1930, she was diagnosed with schizophrenia and committed to a sanatorium in Switzerland, thereafter, after her recovery, she devoted most of her remaining years to charity work in Greece. She stayed in Athens during the Second World War, sheltering Jewish refugees, for which she is recognized as Righteous Among the Nations by Israels Holocaust memorial institution, Yad Vashem. After the war, she stayed in Greece and founded an Orthodox nursing order of nuns known as the Christian Sisterhood of Martha and her remains were transferred to the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem in 1988. Alice was born in the Tapestry Room at Windsor Castle in Berkshire in the presence of her great-grandmother and she was the eldest child of Prince Louis of Battenberg and his wife Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine. Her mother was the eldest daughter of Princess Alice, Grand Duchess of Hesse and her father was the eldest son of Prince Alexander of Hesse and by Rhine through his morganatic marriage to Julia von Hauke, Princess of Battenberg. Her three younger siblings, Louise, George, and Louis, later became Queen of Sweden, 2nd Marquess of Milford Haven and she was christened Victoria Alice Elizabeth Julia Marie in Darmstadt on 25 April 1885. Alice spent her childhood between Darmstadt, London, Jugenheim, and Malta and her mother noticed that she was slow in learning to talk, and became concerned by her indistinct pronunciation. Eventually, she was diagnosed with congenital deafness after her grandmother identified the problem, with encouragement from her mother, Alice learned to both lip-read and speak in English and German. Educated privately, she studied French, and later, after her engagement and her early years were spent in the company of her royal relatives, and she was a bridesmaid at the marriage of George, Duke of York and Mary of Teck in 1893. A few weeks before her birthday she attended the funeral of Queen Victoria in St Georges Chapel, Windsor Castle. Princess Alice met and fell in love with Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark and they married in a civil ceremony on 6 October 1903 at Darmstadt. The following day, there were two religious marriage ceremonies, one Lutheran in the Evangelical Castle Church, and one Greek Orthodox in the Russian Chapel on the Mathildenhöhe and she adopted the style of her husband, becoming Princess Andrew. All of Prince and Princess Andrews children later had children of their own, after their marriage, Prince Andrew continued his career in the military and Princess Andrew became involved in charity work. In 1908, she visited Russia for the wedding of Grand Duchess Marie of Russia, while there, she talked with her aunt, Grand Duchess Elizabeth Fyodorovna, who was formulating plans for the foundation of a religious order of nurses. Princess Andrew attended the laying of the stone for her aunts new church. Later in the year, the Grand Duchess began giving away all her possessions in preparation for a spiritual life
Princess Alice of Battenberg
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Princess Alice of Battenberg
Princess Alice of Battenberg
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Alice with her first two children,
Margarita and
Theodora, c. 1910
Princess Alice of Battenberg
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Princess Andrew of Greece and Denmark by
Philip de László, 1907. Private collection of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.
Princess Alice of Battenberg
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Princess Andrew of Greece and Denmark by
Philip de László, 1922. Private collection of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.
9.
Louise Mountbatten
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Louise Alexandra Marie Irene Mountbatten became Queen consort of Sweden in 1950 and served as such until her death in 1965. Through her marriage, prior to her husbands accession as King Gustaf VI Adolf, Louise was Crown Princess of Sweden, Louise was born a Princess of Battenberg at Schloss Heiligenberg, Seeheim-Jugenheim, in the Grand Duchy of Hesse. He was then created the first Marquess of Milford Haven in the peerage of the United Kingdom, from 1917, therefore, his daughter was known as Lady Louise Mountbatten. Louise was a sister of Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, an aunt of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, Louise often visited her great-grandmother, Queen Victoria, on the Isle of Wight with her mother during her childhood. Louise and her sister were educated by governesses, except for a period at Texters girls school in Darmstadt. In 1914, Louise and her mother visited Russia, and were invited to a trip down the Volga with their Imperial relatives, during her visit, Louise noted the influence of Rasputin with concern. The trip was interrupted by the outbreak of World War I. They stayed in Sweden as guests of the Crown Princely couple at Drottningholm Palace and she was active at a French military hospital in Nevers, and then at a war hospital at Palaves outside Montpellier, from March 1915 until July 1917. She was commended for her work, and was awarded The British War- and Victory Medals. After the war, she was active in work for the children in the slums of Battersea in London. In 1909, Louise received a proposal from King Manuel II of Portugal, edward VII was in favour of the match, but Louise declined, as she wished to marry for love. In 1913, having been deposed in 1910, Manuel married Princess Augusta Victoria of Hohenzollern in exile, at the age of twenty, Louise became secretly engaged to Prince Christopher of Greece, but they were forced to give up their relationship for financial reasons. While living in more than 10 years later, he would wed the wealthy widow, Nancy Stewart Worthington Leeds. Shortly before World War I broke out, Louise fell in love with a man of whom her parents approved, later during the war, while she volunteered as a nurse in Nevers, she began a relationship with Alexander Stuart-Hill, a Scottish artist living in Paris. Anticipating that her parents would be disappointed in her choice, Louise kept their engagement a secret, eventually, she confided in her parents, who were initially understanding, and invited Stuart-Hill for visits at Kent House twice. In fact, her family, referring to him as Shakespeare because of his odd appearance, found him eccentric, lacking resources, the engaged couple agreed to postpone marriage until after the war. But in 1918 Louises father explained to her that Stuart-Hill was most likely homosexual, although as a young woman Louise had said that she would never marry a king or a widower, she accepted the proposal of a man destined to be both. Once the couples engagement was announced, there were discussions in the media about whether the bride-to-be was constitutionally eligible to become Swedens future queen
Louise Mountbatten
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Queen Louise presumably aged 51 in portrait of the 1940s
Louise Mountbatten
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Prince Louis and
Princess Victoria with their two eldest daughters,
Alice and Louise, in 1889.
Louise Mountbatten
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Princess Louise of Battenberg, painted in 1907 by
Philip de Laszlo.
Louise Mountbatten
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Lady Louise Mountbatten in 1920.
10.
George Mountbatten, 2nd Marquess of Milford Haven
–
His subsidiary titles included Viscount Alderney. He died aged 45 of bone cancer and was buried in Bray Cemetery, Bray. His siblings were Princess Alice, Queen Louise of Sweden and Louis Mountbatten and he married Countess Nadejda Mikhailovna de Torby on 15 November 1916 at the Russian Embassy, Welbeck Street, London. They lived at Lynden Manor at Holyport in Berkshire and had two children, Lady Tatiana Elizabeth Mountbatten David Michael Mountbatten, 3rd Marquess of Milford Haven. He was a mathematician, who could work out complicated gunnery problems in his head and read books on calculus casually on trains. Queen Elizabeth II said of him, He was one of the most intelligent and brilliant of people and he left artefacts including a collection of pornography to the British Museum. Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order,1932 Hough, Louis and Victoria, The Family History of the Mountbattens
George Mountbatten, 2nd Marquess of Milford Haven
–
The Most Honourable The Marquess of Milford Haven
GCVO
11.
Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma
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During the Second World War, he was Supreme Allied Commander, South East Asia Command. He was the last Viceroy of India and the first Governor-General of independent India, from 1954 until 1959 he was First Sea Lord, a position that had been held by his father, Prince Louis of Battenberg, some forty years earlier. Thereafter he served as Chief of the Defence Staff until 1965, during this period Mountbatten also served as Chairman of the NATO Military Committee for a year. He was the youngest child and the son of Prince Louis of Battenberg and his wife Princess Victoria of Hesse. His maternal grandparents were Louis IV, Grand Duke of Hesse, and Princess Alice of the United Kingdom and his paternal grandparents were Prince Alexander of Hesse and by Rhine and Julia, Princess of Battenberg. His siblings were Princess Andrew of Greece and Denmark, Queen Louise of Sweden, young Mountbattens nickname among family and friends was Dickie, although Richard was not among his given names. This was because his great-grandmother, Queen Victoria, had suggested the nickname of Nicky, but to avoid confusion with the many Nickys of the Russian Imperial Family, Nicky was changed to Dickie. Mountbatten was educated at home for the first 10 years of his life, he was sent to Lockers Park School in Hertfordshire and on to the Royal Naval College. His second son acquired the courtesy title Lord Louis Mountbatten and was known as Lord Louis until he was created a peer in 1946 and he paid a brief visit of ten days to the Western Front, in July 1918. He was appointed officer of the small warship HMS P.31 on 13 October 1918 and was promoted sub-lieutenant on 15 January 1919. HMS P.31 took part in the Peace River Pageant on 4 April 1919, Mountbatten attended Christs College, Cambridge for two terms, starting in October 1919, where he studied English literature in a programme that was specially designed for ex-servicemen. He was posted to the battlecruiser HMS Renown in March 1920 and accompanied Edward, Prince of Wales and he was promoted lieutenant on 15 April 1920. HMS Renown returned to Portsmouth on 11 October 1920, early in 1921 Royal Navy personnel were used for civil defence duties as serious industrial unrest seemed imminent. Mountbatten had to command a platoon of stokers, many of whom had never handled a rifle before and he transferred to the battlecruiser HMS Repulse in March 1921 and accompanied the Prince of Wales on a Royal tour of India and Japan. Edward and Mountbatten formed a friendship during the trip. Mountbatten survived the deep defence cuts known as the Geddes Axe and he was posted to the battleship HMS Revenge in the Mediterranean Fleet in January 1923. Promoted lieutenant-commander on 15 April 1928, he returned to the Signals School in July 1929 as Senior Wireless Instructor. He was appointed Fleet Wireless Officer to the Mediterranean Fleet in August 1931, in 1934, Mountbatten was appointed to his first command – the destroyer HMS Daring
Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma
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Admiral of the Fleet The Right Honourable The Earl Mountbatten of Burma
KG GCB OM GCSI GCIE GCVO DSO PC FRS
Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma
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Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine, Prince Louis of Battenberg and their four children Princess Alice, Princess Louise, Prince George and Prince Louis.
Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma
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Lord Mountbatten and officers on
HMS Kelvin 1940.
Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma
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Mountbatten, General Walter Short, Admiral Husband Kimmel in Hawaii 1941
12.
Dynasty
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A dynasty is a sequence of rulers from the same family, usually in the context of a feudal or monarchical system but sometimes also appearing in elective republics. The dynastic family or lineage may be known as a house, historians periodize the histories of many sovereign states, such as Ancient Egypt, the Carolingian Empire and Imperial China, using a framework of successive dynasties. As such, the dynasty may be used to delimit the era during which the family reigned and to describe events, trends. The word dynasty itself is often dropped from such adjectival references, until the 19th century, it was taken for granted that a legitimate function of a monarch was to aggrandize his dynasty, that is, to increase the territory, wealth, and power of his family members. The longest-surviving dynasty in the world is the Imperial House of Japan, dynasties throughout the world have traditionally been reckoned patrilineally, such as under the Frankish Salic law. Succession through a daughter when permitted was considered to establish a new dynasty in her husbands ruling house, however, some states in Africa, determined descent matrilineally, while rulers have at other times adopted the name of their mothers dynasty when coming into her inheritance. It is also extended to unrelated people such as poets of the same school or various rosters of a single sports team. The word dynasty derives via Latin dynastia from Greek dynastéia, where it referred to power, dominion and it was the abstract noun of dynástēs, the agent noun of dynamis, power or ability, from dýnamai, to be able. A ruler in a dynasty is referred to as a dynast. For example, following his abdication, Edward VIII of the United Kingdom ceased to be a member of the House of Windsor. A dynastic marriage is one that complies with monarchical house law restrictions, the marriage of Willem-Alexander, Prince of Orange, to Máxima Zorreguieta in 2002 was dynastic, for example, and their eldest child is expected to inherit the Dutch crown eventually. But the marriage of his younger brother Prince Friso to Mabel Wisse Smit in 2003 lacked government support, thus Friso forfeited his place in the order of succession, lost his title as a Prince of the Netherlands, and left his children without dynastic rights. In historical and monarchist references to formerly reigning families, a dynast is a member who would have had succession rights, were the monarchys rules still in force. Even since abolition of the Austrian monarchy, Max and his descendants have not been considered the rightful pretenders by Austrian monarchists, nor have they claimed that position. The term dynast is sometimes used only to refer to descendants of a realms monarchs. The term can therefore describe overlapping but distinct sets of people, yet he is not a male-line member of the royal family, and is therefore not a dynast of the House of Windsor. Thus, in 1999 he requested and obtained permission from Elizabeth II to marry the Roman Catholic Princess Caroline of Monaco. Yet a clause of the English Act of Settlement 1701 remained in effect at that time and that exclusion, too, ceased to apply on 26 March 2015, with retroactive effect for those who had been dynasts prior to triggering it by marriage to a Catholic
Dynasty
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Charles I of England and his son, the future
James II
13.
House of Hesse-Darmstadt
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The Landgraviate of Hesse-Darmstadt was a State of the Holy Roman Empire, ruled by a younger branch of the House of Hesse. It was formed in 1567 following the division of the Landgraviate of Hesse between the four sons of Landgrave Philip I, the residence of the landgraves was in Darmstadt, hence the name. As a result of the Napoleonic Wars, the landgraviate was elevated to the Grand Duchy of Hesse following the Empires dissolution in 1806. His eldest brother William IV received the Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel, while the second son Louis IV obtained Hesse-Marburg, the Hesse-Rheinfels line became extinct on Philips death in 1583. Because the University of Marburg had become Calvinist under the rule of Landgrave Maurice of Hesse-Kassel, the inheritance conflict was continued in the broader contest of the Thirty Years War, in which Hesse-Kassel sided with the Protestant estates and Hesse-Darmstadt sided with the Habsburg emperor. The Hesse-Homburg and Hesse-Rotenburg estates seceded from the opponents in 1622 and 1627, the conflict was finally settled on the eve of the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, more than eighty years after the division of the estates. Large parts of the disputed Upper Hesse territory including Marburg fell to the elder Kassel line, while Hesse-Darmstadt retained Giessen, in 1736, the Landgraves of Hesse-Darmstadt inherited the estates of the extinct Counts of Hanau-Lichtenberg, again contested by their Kassel cousins. Hesse-Darmstadt gained a deal of territory by the secularizations and mediatizations authorized by the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss of 1803. List of rulers of Hesse Piotr Napierała, Hesja-Darmstadt w XVIII stuleciu, wielcy władcy małego państwa, Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, Poznań2009. ISBN 978-83-232-2007-7 Map of Hesse in 1789 - Northern Part Map of Hesse in 1789 - Southern Part
House of Hesse-Darmstadt
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Coat of arms (1736)
14.
Louis IV, Grand Duke of Hesse
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Louis IV, was the Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine, reigning from 13 June 1877 until his death. Through his own and his childrens marriages he was connected to the British Royal Family, to the Imperial House of Russia and to other reigning dynasties of Europe. On 1 July 1862, Louis married Princess Alice, the child of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom. On the day of the wedding, the Queen issued a warrant granting her new son-in-law the style of Royal Highness in the United Kingdom. The Queen also subsequently made Prince Louis a knight of the Order of the Garter, becoming parents in less than a year following their marriage, the young royal couple found themselves strapped financially to maintain the lifestyle expected of their rank. In March 1877, Louis became heir presumptive to the Hessian throne when his father died and, from then on, he reigned and raised his five surviving children alone. In the 1870-71 Franco-Prussian War, Louis led the Hessian contingent of the armies of the North German Confederation, on 13 June 1877, he succeeded his uncle as Grand Duke of Hesse, taking the name Ludwig IV. His second wife received the title Countess von Romrod, but the couple, facing objections from the Grand Dukes in-laws, separated within a week and the marriage was annulled within three months. Grand Duke Ludwig IV died on 13 March 1892 of a stroke in the New Palace in Darmstadt and was succeeded by his son and his remains are buried at Rosenhöhe, the mausoleum for the Grand Ducal House outside of Darmstadt. On his accession as Grand Duke on 13 June 1877 he also styled as His Royal Highness in Hesse. United Kingdom, Knight of the Order of the Garter
Louis IV, Grand Duke of Hesse
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Ludwig IV, 1878
Louis IV, Grand Duke of Hesse
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The Equestrian statue of Ludwig IV on the Friedensplace in Darmstadt
Louis IV, Grand Duke of Hesse
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Princess Victoria
Louis IV, Grand Duke of Hesse
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Princess Elisabeth
15.
Princess Alice of the United Kingdom
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Princess Alice of the United Kingdom was the third child and second daughter of Queen Victoria and Albert, Prince Consort. Alice was the first of Queen Victorias nine children to die, Alice spent her early childhood in the company of her parents and siblings, travelling between the British royal residences. Her education was devised by Alberts close friend and adviser, Baron Stockmar, when her father, Prince Albert, was diagnosed with typhoid fever in December 1861, Alice nursed him until his death on 14 December that year. Following his death, Queen Victoria entered a period of intense mourning, on 1 July 1862, while the court was still at the height of mourning, Alice married the minor German Prince Louis of Hesse, heir to the Grand Duchy of Hesse. The ceremony—conducted privately and with unrelieved gloom at Osborne House—was described by the Queen as more of a funeral than a wedding, the Princesss life in Darmstadt was unhappy as a result of impoverishment, family tragedy, and worsening relations with her husband and mother. Alice was a patron of womens causes and showed an interest in nursing. When Hesse became involved in the Austro-Prussian War, Darmstadt filled with the injured, one of her organisations, the Princess Alice Womens Guild, took over much of the day-to-day running of the states military hospitals. As a result of activity, Queen Victoria became concerned about Alices directness about medical and, in particular, gynaecological. In 1871, she wrote to Alices younger sister, Princess Louise, be very silent and cautious about your interior. In 1877, Alice became Grand Duchess upon the accession of her husband, in the latter months of 1878, diphtheria infected the Hessian court. Alice nursed her family for over a month before falling ill herself, another daughter, Elisabeth, who had married Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich of Russia, was, like the tsaritsa and her family, killed by the Bolsheviks in 1918. Alice was born on 25 April 1843 at Buckingham Palace in London and she was the second daughter and third child of Queen Victoria, and her husband Albert, Prince Consort. She was christened Alice Maud Mary in the chapel at Buckingham Palace by The Archbishop of Canterbury, William Howley. She was named Alice to honour Victorias first Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, Maud, the Anglo-Saxon name for Matilda, was chosen in honour of one of Alices godparents, Princess Sophia Matilda of Gloucester, a niece of King George III. Mary was chosen because Alice was born on the day as her maternal great-aunt. Her gender was greeted with mixed feelings from the public, and even the Privy Council sent a message to Albert expressing its congratulation, Alices birth prompted her parents to find a larger family home. Buckingham Palace was not equipped with the apartments that Victorias growing family needed. Therefore, in 1844, Victoria and Albert purchased Osborne House on the Isle of Wight as a holiday home
Princess Alice of the United Kingdom
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Princess Alice in 1875
Princess Alice of the United Kingdom
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Alice (right) and her sister
Victoria in the 1850s
Princess Alice of the United Kingdom
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A portrait of Louis of Hesse, 1860
Princess Alice of the United Kingdom
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Princess Alice in 1861
16.
Louis IV, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine
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Louis IV, was the Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine, reigning from 13 June 1877 until his death. Through his own and his childrens marriages he was connected to the British Royal Family, to the Imperial House of Russia and to other reigning dynasties of Europe. On 1 July 1862, Louis married Princess Alice, the child of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom. On the day of the wedding, the Queen issued a warrant granting her new son-in-law the style of Royal Highness in the United Kingdom. The Queen also subsequently made Prince Louis a knight of the Order of the Garter, becoming parents in less than a year following their marriage, the young royal couple found themselves strapped financially to maintain the lifestyle expected of their rank. In March 1877, Louis became heir presumptive to the Hessian throne when his father died and, from then on, he reigned and raised his five surviving children alone. In the 1870-71 Franco-Prussian War, Louis led the Hessian contingent of the armies of the North German Confederation, on 13 June 1877, he succeeded his uncle as Grand Duke of Hesse, taking the name Ludwig IV. His second wife received the title Countess von Romrod, but the couple, facing objections from the Grand Dukes in-laws, separated within a week and the marriage was annulled within three months. Grand Duke Ludwig IV died on 13 March 1892 of a stroke in the New Palace in Darmstadt and was succeeded by his son and his remains are buried at Rosenhöhe, the mausoleum for the Grand Ducal House outside of Darmstadt. On his accession as Grand Duke on 13 June 1877 he also styled as His Royal Highness in Hesse. United Kingdom, Knight of the Order of the Garter
Louis IV, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine
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Ludwig IV, 1878
Louis IV, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine
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The Equestrian statue of Ludwig IV on the Friedensplace in Darmstadt
Louis IV, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine
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Princess Victoria
Louis IV, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine
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Princess Elisabeth
17.
Queen Victoria
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Victoria was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death. From 1 May 1876, she adopted the title of Empress of India. Victoria was the daughter of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, both the Duke of Kent and King George III died in 1820, and Victoria was raised under close supervision by her German-born mother Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld. She inherited the throne aged 18, after her fathers three brothers had all died, leaving no surviving legitimate children. The United Kingdom was already a constitutional monarchy, in which the sovereign held relatively little direct political power. Privately, Victoria attempted to influence government policy and ministerial appointments, publicly, Victoria married her first cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, in 1840. Their nine children married into royal and noble families across the continent, tying them together, after Alberts death in 1861, Victoria plunged into deep mourning and avoided public appearances. As a result of her seclusion, republicanism temporarily gained strength and her Golden and Diamond Jubilees were times of public celebration. Her reign of 63 years and seven months is known as the Victorian era and it was a period of industrial, cultural, political, scientific, and military change within the United Kingdom, and was marked by a great expansion of the British Empire. She was the last British monarch of the House of Hanover and her son and successor, Edward VII, belonged to the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, the line of his father. Victorias father was Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, until 1817, Edwards niece, Princess Charlotte of Wales, was the only legitimate grandchild of George III. Her death in 1817 precipitated a crisis that brought pressure on the Duke of Kent. In 1818 he married Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, a widowed German princess with two children—Carl and Feodora —by her first marriage to the Prince of Leiningen and her brother Leopold was Princess Charlottes widower. The Duke and Duchess of Kents only child, Victoria, was born at 4.15 a. m. on 24 May 1819 at Kensington Palace in London. Victoria was christened privately by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Charles Manners-Sutton, on 24 June 1819 in the Cupola Room at Kensington Palace and she was baptised Alexandrina, after one of her godparents, Emperor Alexander I of Russia, and Victoria, after her mother. Additional names proposed by her parents—Georgina, Charlotte, and Augusta—were dropped on the instructions of the Dukes eldest brother, George, the Duke of Clarence and the Duke of Kent married on the same day in 1818, but both of Clarences daughters died as infants. Victorias father died in January 1820, when Victoria was less than a year old, a week later her grandfather died and was succeeded by his eldest son, George IV. The Duke of York died in 1827, when George IV died in 1830, he was succeeded by his next surviving brother, William IV, and Victoria became heir presumptive
Queen Victoria
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Victoria wearing her
small diamond crown Photograph by
Alexander Bassano, 1882
Queen Victoria
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Victoria, aged four Painting by
Stephen Poyntz Denning, 1823
Queen Victoria
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Victoria with her spaniel Dash, 1833 Painting by
George Hayter
Queen Victoria
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Self-portrait, 1835
18.
Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha
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Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha was the husband of Queen Victoria. He was born in the Saxon duchy of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld to a family connected to many of Europes ruling monarchs, at the age of 20, he married his first cousin, Queen Victoria, they had nine children. He was heavily involved with the organisation of the Great Exhibition of 1851, the Queen came to depend more and more on his support and guidance. Albert died at the young age of 42, plunging the Queen into deep mourning for the rest of her life. Upon Queen Victorias death in 1901, their eldest son succeeded as Edward VII, Albert was born at Schloss Rosenau, near Coburg, Germany, the second son of Ernest III, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, and his first wife, Louise of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg. Alberts future wife, Victoria, was earlier in the same year with the assistance of the same midwife. Albert was baptised into the Lutheran Evangelical Church on 19 September 1819 in the Marble Hall at Schloss Rosenau with water taken from the local river, in 1825, Alberts great-uncle, Frederick IV, Duke of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg, died. His death led to a realignment of Saxon duchies the following year and Alberts father became the first reigning duke of Saxe-Coburg, Albert and his elder brother, Ernest, spent their youth in a close companionship marred by their parents turbulent marriage and eventual separation and divorce. After their mother was exiled from court in 1824, she married her lover, Alexander von Hanstein, Count of Polzig and she presumably never saw her children again, and died of cancer at the age of 30 in 1831. The brothers were educated privately at home by Christoph Florschütz and later studied in Brussels, like many other German princes, Albert attended the University of Bonn, where he studied law, political economics, philosophy and the history of art. He played music and excelled at sport, especially fencing and riding and his tutors at Bonn included the philosopher Fichte and the poet Schlegel. By 1836, the idea of marriage between Albert and his cousin, Victoria, had arisen in the mind of their ambitious uncle Leopold, at this time, Victoria was the heiress presumptive to the British throne. Her father, Edward Augustus, Duke of Kent, the son of King George III, had died when she was a baby. Her mother the Duchess of Kent, was the sister of both Alberts father—the Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha—and King Leopold. Leopold arranged for his sister, Victorias mother, to invite the Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, William IV, however, disapproved of any match with the Coburgs, and instead favoured the suit of Prince Alexander, second son of the Prince of Orange. Victoria was well aware of the matrimonial plans and critically appraised a parade of eligible princes. Alexander, on the hand, she described as very plain. Victoria wrote to her uncle Leopold to thank him for the prospect of great happiness you have contributed to give me and he possesses every quality that could be desired to render me perfectly happy
Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha
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Portrait by
Winterhalter, 1859
Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha
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Albert (left) with his elder brother
Ernest and mother
Louise, shortly before her exile from court
Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha
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Portrait by
John Partridge, 1840
Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha
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Bookplate showing the
coat of arms of Albert, Prince Consort
19.
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
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The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was established as a sovereign state on 1 January 1801 by the Acts of Union 1800, which merged the kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland. The growing desire for an Irish Republic led to the Irish War of Independence, Northern Ireland remained part of the United Kingdom, and the state was consequently renamed the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Britain financed the European coalition that defeated France in 1815 in the Napoleonic Wars, the British Empire thereby became the foremost world power for the next century. The Crimean War with Russia and the Boer wars were relatively small operations in a largely peaceful century, rapid industrialisation that began in the decades prior to the states formation continued up until the mid-19th century. A devastating famine, exacerbated by government inaction in the century, led to demographic collapse in much of Ireland. It was an era of economic modernization and growth of industry, trade and finance. Outward migration was heavy to the colonies and to the United States. Britain also built up a large British Empire in Africa and Asia, India, by far the most important possession, saw a short-lived revolt in 1857. In foreign policy Britain favoured free trade, which enabled its financiers and merchants to operate successfully in many otherwise independent countries, as in South America. Britain formed no permanent military alliances until the early 20th century, when it began to cooperate with Japan, France and Russia, and moved closer to the United States. A brief period of limited independence for Ireland came to an end following the Irish Rebellion of 1798, the British governments fear of an independent Ireland siding against them with the French resulted in the decision to unite the two countries. This was brought about by legislation in the parliaments of both kingdoms and came into effect on 1 January 1801, however, King George III was bitterly opposed to any such Emancipation and succeeded in defeating his governments attempts to introduce it. When the Treaty of Amiens ended the war, Britain agreed to return most of the territories it had seized, in May 1803, war was declared again. In 1806, Napoleon issued the series of Berlin Decrees, which brought into effect the Continental System and this policy aimed to eliminate the threat from the British by closing French-controlled territory to foreign trade. Frances population and agricultural capacity far outstripped that of the British Isles, Napoleon expected that cutting Britain off from the European mainland would end its economic hegemony. The Spanish uprising in 1808 at last permitted Britain to gain a foothold on the Continent, after Napoleons surrender and exile to the island of Elba, peace appeared to have returned. The Allies united and the armies of Wellington and Blucher defeated Napoleon once, simultaneous with the Napoleonic Wars, trade disputes, arming hostile Indians and British impressment of American sailors led to the War of 1812 with the United States. The war was little noticed in Britain, which could devote few resources to the conflict until the fall of Napoleon in 1814, American frigates inflicted a series of defeats on the Royal Navy, which was short on manpower due to the conflict in Europe
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
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The British
HMS Sandwich fires into the French
flagship Bucentaure (completely dismasted) during
Trafalgar. The Bucentaure also fights
HMS Victory (behind her) and
HMS Temeraire (left side of the picture). In fact, HMS Sandwich never fought at Trafalgar, it's a mistake by
Auguste Mayer, the painter.
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
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Flag
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
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Signing of the
Treaty of Ghent (1814), by A. Forestier c. 1915
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
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The Duke of Wellington
20.
Royal Navy
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The Royal Navy is the United Kingdoms naval warfare force. Although warships were used by the English kings from the medieval period. The modern Royal Navy traces its origins to the early 16th century, from the middle decades of the 17th century and through the 18th century, the Royal Navy vied with the Dutch Navy and later with the French Navy for maritime supremacy. From the mid 18th century it was the worlds most powerful navy until surpassed by the United States Navy during the Second World War. The Royal Navy played a key part in establishing the British Empire as the world power during the 19th. Due to this historical prominence, it is common, even among non-Britons, following World War I, the Royal Navy was significantly reduced in size, although at the onset of the Second World War it was still the worlds largest. By the end of the war, however, the United States Navy had emerged as the worlds largest, during the Cold War, the Royal Navy transformed into a primarily anti-submarine force, hunting for Soviet submarines, mostly active in the GIUK gap. The Royal Navy is part of Her Majestys Naval Service, which includes the Royal Marines. The professional head of the Naval Service is the First Sea Lord, the Defence Council delegates management of the Naval Service to the Admiralty Board, chaired by the Secretary of State for Defence. The strength of the fleet of the Kingdom of England was an important element in the power in the 10th century. English naval power declined as a result of the Norman conquest. Medieval fleets, in England as elsewhere, were almost entirely composed of merchant ships enlisted into service in time of war. Englands naval organisation was haphazard and the mobilisation of fleets when war broke out was slow, early in the war French plans for an invasion of England failed when Edward III of England destroyed the French fleet in the Battle of Sluys in 1340. Major fighting was confined to French soil and Englands naval capabilities sufficed to transport armies and supplies safely to their continental destinations. Such raids halted finally only with the occupation of northern France by Henry V. Henry VII deserves a large share of credit in the establishment of a standing navy and he embarked on a program of building ships larger than heretofore. He also invested in dockyards, and commissioned the oldest surviving dry dock in 1495 at Portsmouth, a standing Navy Royal, with its own secretariat, dockyards and a permanent core of purpose-built warships, emerged during the reign of Henry VIII. Under Elizabeth I England became involved in a war with Spain, the new regimes introduction of Navigation Acts, providing that all merchant shipping to and from England or her colonies should be carried out by English ships, led to war with the Dutch Republic. In the early stages of this First Anglo-Dutch War, the superiority of the large, heavily armed English ships was offset by superior Dutch tactical organisation and the fighting was inconclusive
Royal Navy
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Royal Navy
Royal Navy
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The
Battle of Sluys as depicted in
Froissart's Chronicles; late 14th century
Royal Navy
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A late 16th century painting of the
Spanish Armada in battle with English warships
Royal Navy
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The Dutch
Raid on the Medway in 1667 during the Second Anglo–Dutch War
21.
World War I
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World War I, also known as the First World War, the Great War, or the War to End All Wars, was a global war originating in Europe that lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918. More than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, were mobilised in one of the largest wars in history and it was one of the deadliest conflicts in history, and paved the way for major political changes, including revolutions in many of the nations involved. The war drew in all the worlds great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances, the Allies versus the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary. These alliances were reorganised and expanded as more nations entered the war, Italy, Japan, the trigger for the war was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, by Yugoslav nationalist Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. This set off a crisis when Austria-Hungary delivered an ultimatum to the Kingdom of Serbia. Within weeks, the powers were at war and the conflict soon spread around the world. On 25 July Russia began mobilisation and on 28 July, the Austro-Hungarians declared war on Serbia, Germany presented an ultimatum to Russia to demobilise, and when this was refused, declared war on Russia on 1 August. Germany then invaded neutral Belgium and Luxembourg before moving towards France, after the German march on Paris was halted, what became known as the Western Front settled into a battle of attrition, with a trench line that changed little until 1917. On the Eastern Front, the Russian army was successful against the Austro-Hungarians, in November 1914, the Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers, opening fronts in the Caucasus, Mesopotamia and the Sinai. In 1915, Italy joined the Allies and Bulgaria joined the Central Powers, Romania joined the Allies in 1916, after a stunning German offensive along the Western Front in the spring of 1918, the Allies rallied and drove back the Germans in a series of successful offensives. By the end of the war or soon after, the German Empire, Russian Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire, national borders were redrawn, with several independent nations restored or created, and Germanys colonies were parceled out among the victors. During the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, the Big Four imposed their terms in a series of treaties, the League of Nations was formed with the aim of preventing any repetition of such a conflict. This effort failed, and economic depression, renewed nationalism, weakened successor states, and feelings of humiliation eventually contributed to World War II. From the time of its start until the approach of World War II, at the time, it was also sometimes called the war to end war or the war to end all wars due to its then-unparalleled scale and devastation. In Canada, Macleans magazine in October 1914 wrote, Some wars name themselves, during the interwar period, the war was most often called the World War and the Great War in English-speaking countries. Will become the first world war in the sense of the word. These began in 1815, with the Holy Alliance between Prussia, Russia, and Austria, when Germany was united in 1871, Prussia became part of the new German nation. Soon after, in October 1873, German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck negotiated the League of the Three Emperors between the monarchs of Austria-Hungary, Russia and Germany
World War I
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Clockwise from the top: The aftermath of shelling during the
Battle of the Somme,
Mark V tanks cross the
Hindenburg Line,
HMS Irresistible sinks after hitting a
mine in the
Dardanelles, a British
Vickers machine gun crew wears
gas masks during the Battle of the Somme,
Albatros D.III fighters of
Jagdstaffel 11
World War I
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Sarajevo citizens reading a poster with the proclamation of the
Austrian annexation in 1908.
World War I
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This picture is usually associated with the arrest of
Gavrilo Princip, although some believe it depicts Ferdinand Behr, a bystander.
World War I
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Serbian Army
Blériot XI "Oluj", 1915.
22.
Mountbatten
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The Mountbatten family is a European dynasty originating as a branch of the German princely Battenberg family. The name was adopted during World War I by family members residing in the United Kingdom due to rising anti-German sentiment amongst the British public, the name is an Anglicisation of the German Battenberg, a small town in Hesse. The title of count of Battenberg, later prince of Battenberg, was granted to a branch of the House of Hesse-Darmstadt, itself a cadet branch of the House of Hesse. The family now includes the Marquesses of Carisbrooke and Milford Haven, Lady Louise Mountbatten became Queen Consort of Sweden, after having married Gustaf VI Adolf of Sweden. The Mountbatten family are a branch of the German house of Battenberg, the Battenberg family was a morganatic branch of the House of Hesse-Darmstadt, rulers of the Grand Duchy of Hesse in Germany. Julia was elevated in her title to Princess of Battenberg with the style Serene Highness in 1858, two of Alexander and Julias sons, Prince Henry of Battenberg and Prince Louis of Battenberg, became associated with the British Royal Family. Prince Henry married The Princess Beatrice, the youngest daughter of Queen Victoria, Prince Louis married Victorias granddaughter, Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine, and became the First Sea Lord of the Royal Navy. Their cousin, George V compensated the princes with British peerages, Prince Louis became the 1st Marquess of Milford Haven, while Prince Alexander, Prince Henrys eldest son, became the 1st Marquess of Carisbrooke. The marquessate of Milford Haven was created in 1917 for Prince Louis of Battenberg, the former First Sea Lord, and he was at the same time made Earl of Medina and Viscount Alderney, also in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. Louis Mountbatten, 1st Marquess of Milford Haven m, Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine Princess Alice of Battenberg m. Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark Princess Margarita of Greece and Denmark m, gottfried, Prince of Hohenlohe-Langenburg Princess Theodora of Greece and Denmark m. Berthold, Margrave of Baden Princess Cecilie of Greece and Denmark m, georg Donatus, Hereditary Grand Duke of Hesse Princess Sophie of Greece and Denmark m. Prince George William of Hanover Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark, Gustaf VI Adolf of Sweden George Mountbatten, 2nd Marquess of Milford Haven m. Countess Nadejda Mikhailovna de Torby Lady Tatiana Mountbatten David Mountbatten, 3rd Marquess of Milford Haven m, janet Mercedes Bryce George Mountbatten, 4th Marquess of Milford Haven m. Clare Steel Lady Tatiana Mountbatten Henry Mountbatten, Earl of Medina Lord Ivar Mountbatten m, penelope Anne Vere Thompson div.2011 Ella Mountbatten Alexandra Mountbatten Louise Mountbatten Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma m. Edwina Ashley Patricia Knatchbull, 2nd Countess Mountbatten of Burma m, John Knatchbull, 7th Baron Brabourne Lady Pamela Hicks m. On his accession in 1950 as Gustaf VI Adolf of Sweden, the letters patent creating the title specified the following special remainder to his daughters. Both of these titles, in the Peerage of the United Kingdom, have the special remainder as the Earldom
Mountbatten
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Louis Alexander Mountbatten, 1st Marquess of Milford Haven
Mountbatten
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Coat of arms of the main House of Battenberg later Mountbatten
Mountbatten
–
Louis Mountbatten, the 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma
Mountbatten
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Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh
23.
Alexandra Feodorovna (Alix of Hesse)
–
Alexandra Feodorovna was Empress of Russia as the spouse of Nicholas II, the last ruler of the Russian Empire. Originally known as Alix of Hesse and by Rhine, she was a granddaughter of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, Alexandra was the last Tsarina of Russia and one of the most famous royal carriers of the haemophilia disease that descended from Queen Victoria. During his absence in the First World War in 1915-1917 she was treated by her spouse as Regent of the Empire. Alix was baptized on 1 July 1872 according to the rites of the Lutheran Church and given the names of her mother and each of her mothers four sisters, some of which were transliterated into German. Her godparents were the Prince and Princess of Wales, the Tsesarevich and Tsesarevna of Russia, Princess Beatrice of the United Kingdom, The Duchess of Cambridge, and Princess Anna of Prussia. Alixs hemophiliac older brother Prince Friedrich of Hesse and by Rhine died in May 1873 after a fall when Alix was barely a year old. In November 1878, diphtheria swept through the Grand Ducal House of Hesse, Alix, Elisabeth, Alixs older sister, had been sent to visit her paternal grandmother, and thus escaped the outbreak. Alixs mother Alice tended to the children herself, rather than abandon them to doctors, Alice herself soon fell ill and died on the 17th anniversary of her fathers death,14 December 1878, when Alix was only six years old. Alix, Victoria, Irene, and Ernst survived the epidemic, Alix and her surviving siblings grew close to their British cousins, spending holidays with Queen Victoria. With her sister Princess Irene, Alix was a bridesmaid at the 1885 wedding of her godmother and maternal aunt and she was also present at her grandmothers Golden Jubilee celebrations in 1887. Alix was married late for her rank in her era, having rejected a proposal from her cousin Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale in 1890. Though Queen Victoria had intended for Alix to be Britains future queen, she relented, Nicholas and Alix had first met in 1884 at the wedding of Nicholass Uncle Sergei to Alixs sister Elisabeth in St. Petersburg. When Alix returned to Russia in 1889, they fell in love, Nicholas wrote in his diary, It is my dream to one day marry Alix H. I have loved her for a time, but more deeply and strongly since 1889 when she spent six weeks in Petersburg. For a long time, I have resisted my feeling that my dearest dream will come true, initially Nicholass father, Tsar Alexander III, refused the prospect of marriage. Alexander III and his wife, both vehemently anti-German, had no intention of permitting a match with Princess Alix and the tsesarevich, fortunately for Nicholas, Hélène also resisted, as she was Roman Catholic and her father refused to allow her to convert to Russian Orthodoxy. After appealing to the Pope, who refused to consider the marriage. The tsar, despite his anti-German sentiments, then sent emissaries to Princess Margaret of Prussia, sister of German Emperor Wilhelm II, as long as he was well, Alexander III ignored his sons demands, only relenting when his health began to fail in 1894
Alexandra Feodorovna (Alix of Hesse)
–
Alexandra Fyodorovna, c. 1908
Alexandra Feodorovna (Alix of Hesse)
–
Princess Alix of Hesse, lower right, with her grandmother Queen Victoria and her four older siblings in mourning after the deaths of her mother and sister. January 1879
Alexandra Feodorovna (Alix of Hesse)
–
Tsar Nicholas, in hussar uniform, and Princess Alix of Hesse. Engagement photograph, 1894
Alexandra Feodorovna (Alix of Hesse)
–
Portrait by
Laurits Tuxen of the wedding of
Tsar Nicholas II and the Princess Alix of Hesse-Darmstadt, which took place at the Chapel of the Winter Palace, St Petersburg, on 14/26 November 1894.
24.
House of Romanov
–
The Romanovs achieved prominence as boyars of the Grand Duchy of Moscow, later the Tsardom of Russia. In 1613, following years of interregnum, the zemsky sobor offered the Russian crown to Mikhail Romanov and he acceded to the throne as Michael I, becoming the first Tsar of Russia from the House of Romanov. His grandson Peter I established the Russian Empire and transformed the country into a continental power through a series of wars, the direct male line of the Romanovs came to an end when Elizabeth of Russia died in 1762. After an era of crisis, the House of Holstein-Gottorp, a cadet branch of the House of Oldenburg which reigned in Denmark, ascended the throne in 1762 with Peter III. All rulers from the middle of the 18th century to the revolution of 1917 were descended from that branch, though officially known as the House of Romanov, these descendants of the Romanov and Oldenburg dynasties are sometimes referred to as Holstein-Gottorp-Romanov. In early 1917 the Romanov dynasty had 65 members,18 of whom were killed by the Bolsheviks, the remaining 47 members went into exile abroad. In 1924, Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich, the senior, surviving male-line descendant of Alexander II of Russia by primogeniture, since 1991, the succession to the former Russian throne has been in dispute, largely due to disagreements over the validity of dynasts marriages. Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna of Russia claims to hold the title of empress in pretense with her child, George Mikhailovich. There is also a rival non-Romanov claim put forth by Prince Karl Emich of the House of Leiningen supported by the Monarchist Party, according to the Almanach de Gotha, the name of Russias ruling dynasty from the time of Peter III was Holstein-Gottorp-Romanov. However, the name Romanov and House of Romanov were often used in references to the Russian imperial family. The coat of arms of the Romanov boyars was included in legislation on the imperial dynasty, after the February Revolution all members of the imperial family were given the surname Romanov by special decree of the Provisional Government of Russia. Their earliest common ancestor is one Andrei Kobyla, attested around 1347 as a boyar in the service of Semyon I of Moscow, later generations assigned to Kobyla an illustrious pedigree. An 18th-century genealogy claimed that he was the son of the Prussian prince Glanda Kambila, indeed, one of the leaders of the Old Prussian rebellion of 1260–1274 against the Teutonic order was named Glande. His actual origin may have been less spectacular, not only is Kobyla Russian for mare, some of his relatives also had as nicknames the terms for horses and other domestic animals, thus suggesting descent from one of the royal equerries. One of Kobylas sons, Feodor, a member of the boyar Duma of Dmitri Donskoi, was nicknamed Koshka and his descendants took the surname Koshkin, then changed it to Zakharin, which family later split into two branches, Zakharin-Yakovlev and Zakharin-Yuriev. During the reign of Ivan the Terrible, the family became known as Yakovlev. The family fortunes soared when Romans daughter, Anastasia Zakharyina, married Ivan IV, since her husband had assumed the title of tsar, which literally means Caesar, on 16 January 1547, she was crowned the very first tsaritsa of Russia. Her mysterious death in 1560 changed Ivans character for the worse, suspecting the boyars of having poisoned his beloved, Tsar Ivan started a reign of terror against them
House of Romanov
–
A 16th-century residence of the Yuryev-Zakharyin boyars in
Zaryadye, near
the Kremlin.
House of Romanov
–
House of Romanov House of Holstein-Gottorp-Romanov
House of Romanov
–
A crowd at the
Ipatiev Monastery imploring Mikhail Romanov's mother to let him go to Moscow and become their tsar (
Illumination from a book dated 1673).
House of Romanov
–
Peter the Great (1672-1725)
25.
Shooting of the Romanov family
–
The Tsar and his family were killed by Bolshevik troops led by Yakov Yurovsky under the orders of the Ural Regional Soviet. Their bodies were mutilated, burned and buried in a field called Porosenkov Log in the Koptyaki forest. The emergence of Romanov impostors drew media attention away from Soviet Russia, the burial site was discovered in 1979 by an amateur sleuth, but the remains were not made public until 1989, during the glasnost period. The identity of the remains was confirmed by forensic and DNA investigation, a second, smaller grave containing the remains of two Romanov children missing from the larger grave was discovered by amateur archeologists in 2007. However, their remains are kept in a state repository pending further DNA tests, in 2008, after considerable and protracted legal wrangling, the Russian Prosecutor Generals office rehabilitated the Romanov family as victims of political repressions. A criminal case was opened by the government in 1993. This is supported by a passage in Leon Trotskys diary, Lenin had close control over the Romanovs although he ensured his name was not associated with their fate in any official documents. President Boris Yeltsin described the killings as one of the most shameful pages in Russian history, on 22 March 1917, Nicholas, no longer a monarch and addressed with contempt by the sentries as Nicholas Romanov, was reunited with his family at the Alexander Palace in Tsarskoe Selo. He was placed under house arrest with his family by the Provisional Government, surrounded by guards, in August 1917, Alexander Kerenskys provisional government evacuated the Romanovs to Tobolsk, allegedly to protect them from the rising tide of revolution. There they lived in the governors mansion in considerable comfort. After the Bolsheviks came to power in October 1917, the conditions of their imprisonment grew stricter, Nicholas was forbidden to wear epaulettes, and the sentries scrawled lewd drawings on the fence to offend his daughters. On 1 March 1918, the family was placed on soldiers rations, as the Bolsheviks gathered strength, the government in April moved Nicholas, Alexandra, and their daughter Maria to Yekaterinburg under the direction of Vasily Yakovlev. Alexei, who had severe haemophilia, was too ill to accompany his parents and remained with his sisters Olga, Tatiana, the family was imprisoned with a few remaining retainers in Yekaterinburgs Ipatiev House, which was designated The House of Special Purpose. The imperial family was kept in isolation at the Ipatiev House and was subjected to numerous rigorous inspections. They were strictly forbidden to any language other than Russian. They were not permitted access to their luggage which was stored in an outhouse in the interior courtyard and their brownie cameras and photographic equipment were confiscated. The servants were ordered to address the Romanovs only by their names, the house was surrounded by a 4 metre high double palisade that obscured the streets from the house. The initial fence enclosed the garden along Voznesensky Lane, on 5 June a second palisade was erected, higher and longer than the first, which completely enclosed the property
Shooting of the Romanov family
–
The Romanovs. From left to right:
Olga,
Maria,
Nicholas II,
Alexandra,
Anastasia,
Alexei, and
Tatiana. Pictured at
Livadia Palace in 1913
Shooting of the Romanov family
–
From left to right: Grand Duchesses Maria, Olga, Anastasia and Tatiana Nikolaevna of Russia in captivity at
Tsarskoe Selo in the spring of 1917. One of the last known photographs of Tsar Nicholas II's daughters.
Shooting of the Romanov family
–
The
Church on the Blood, built on the spot of Ipatyev House
26.
Communism
–
Communism includes a variety of schools of thought, which broadly include Marxism, anarchism, and the political ideologies grouped around both. The primary element which will enable this transformation, according to analysis, is the social ownership of the means of production. Likewise, some communists defend both theory and practice, while others argue that historical practice diverged from communist principles to a greater or lesser degree, according to Richard Pipes, the idea of a classless, egalitarian society first emerged in Ancient Greece. At one time or another, various small communist communities existed, in the medieval Christian church, for example, some monastic communities and religious orders shared their land and their other property. Communist thought has also traced back to the works of the 16th-century English writer Thomas More. In his treatise Utopia, More portrayed a society based on ownership of property. In the 17th century, communist thought surfaced again in England, criticism of the idea of private property continued into the Age of Enlightenment of the 18th century, through such thinkers as Jean Jacques Rousseau in France. Later, following the upheaval of the French Revolution, communism emerged as a political doctrine, in the early 19th century, Various social reformers founded communities based on common ownership. But unlike many previous communist communities, they replaced the emphasis with a rational. Notable among them were Robert Owen, who founded New Harmony in Indiana, in its modern form, communism grew out of the socialist movement in 19th-century Europe. As the Industrial Revolution advanced, socialist critics blamed capitalism for the misery of the new class of urban factory workers who labored under often-hazardous conditions. Foremost among these critics were Marx and his associate Friedrich Engels, in 1848, Marx and Engels offered a new definition of communism and popularized the term in their famous pamphlet The Communist Manifesto. The 1917 October Revolution in Russia set the conditions for the rise to power of Lenins Bolsheviks. The revolution transferred power to the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, in which the Bolsheviks had a majority, the event generated a great deal of practical and theoretical debate within the Marxist movement. Marx predicted that socialism and communism would be built upon foundations laid by the most advanced capitalist development, Russia, however, was one of the poorest countries in Europe with an enormous, largely illiterate peasantry and a minority of industrial workers. Marx had explicitly stated that Russia might be able to skip the stage of bourgeois rule, the moderate Mensheviks opposed Lenins Bolshevik plan for socialist revolution before capitalism was more fully developed. The Great Purge of 1937–1938 was Stalins attempt to destroy any possible opposition within the Communist Party and its leading role in the Second World War saw the emergence of the Soviet Union as a superpower, with strong influence over Eastern Europe and parts of Asia. The European and Japanese empires were shattered and Communist parties played a role in many independence movements
Communism
–
Vladimir Lenin after his return to
Petrograd
Communism
Communism
–
USSR postage stamp depicting the states ruled by self-proclaimed communist parties, launching the first artificial satellite,
Sputnik 1
Communism
–
A demonstration of the
Communist Party of the Russian Federation, Moscow, December 2011
27.
Russian Revolution
–
The Russian Revolution was a pair of revolutions in Russia in 1917, which dismantled the Tsarist autocracy and led to the eventual rise of the Soviet Union. The Russian Empire collapsed with the abdication of Emperor Nicholas II, in the second revolution that October, the Provisional Government was removed and replaced with a communist state. The February Revolution was a revolution focused around Petrograd, then capital of Russia, in the chaos, members of the Imperial parliament assumed control of the country, forming the Russian Provisional Government. The army leadership felt they did not have the means to suppress the revolution, the February Revolution took place in the context of heavy military setbacks during the First World War, which left much of the Russian Army in a state of mutiny. During this chaotic period there were frequent mutinies, protests and many strikes, when the Provisional Government chose to continue fighting the war with Germany, the Bolsheviks and other socialist factions campaigned for stopping the conflict. The Bolsheviks turned workers militias under their control into the Red Guards over which they exerted substantial control, the Bolsheviks appointed themselves as leaders of various government ministries and seized control of the countryside, establishing the Cheka to quash dissent. To end Russia’s participation in the First World War, the Bolshevik leaders signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany in March 1918, soon after, civil war erupted among the Reds, the Whites, the independence movements and the non-Bolshevik socialists. It continued for years, during which the Bolsheviks defeated both the Whites and all rival socialists. In this way, the Revolution paved the way for the creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1922, the Russian Revolution of 1905 was said to be a major factor to the February Revolutions of 1917. The events of Bloody Sunday triggered a line of protests, a council of workers called the St. Petersburg Soviet was created in all this chaos, and the beginning of a communist political protest had begun. World War I prompted a Russian outcry directed at Tsar Nicholas II and it was another major factor contributing to the retaliation of the Russian Communists against their royal opponents. However, the problems were merely administrative, and not industrial as Germany was producing great amounts of munitions whilst constantly fighting on two major battlefronts, the war also developed a weariness in the city, owing to a lack of food in response to the disruption of agriculture. Food scarcity had become a problem in Russia, but the cause of this did not lie in any failure of the harvests. As a result, they tended to hoard their grain and to revert to subsistence farming, thus the cities were constantly short of food. At the same time rising prices led to demands for wages in the factories. The outcome of all this, however, was a criticism of the government rather than any war-weariness. The original fever of excitement, which had caused the name of St. Heavy losses during the war also strengthened thoughts that Tsar Nicholas II was unfit to rule, the Liberals were now better placed to voice their complaints, since they were participating more fully through a variety of voluntary organizations
Russian Revolution
–
Bolshevik forces marching on
Red Square
Russian Revolution
–
Soldiers blocking
Narva Gate on
Bloody Sunday
Russian Revolution
–
Russian soldiers marching in Petrograd in February 1917
Russian Revolution
–
The Petrograd Soviet Assembly meeting in 1917
28.
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh
–
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh is the husband of Queen Elizabeth II. A member of the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, Philip was born into the Greek and he was born in Greece, but his family was exiled from the country when he was an infant. After being educated in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, he joined the Royal Navy in 1939, from July 1939, he began corresponding with the 13-year-old Princess Elizabeth, whom he had first met in 1934. During the Second World War he served with the Mediterranean and Pacific fleets, after the war, Philip was granted permission by King George VI to marry Elizabeth. After an engagement of five months, he married Elizabeth on 20 November 1947, just before the wedding, he was created Duke of Edinburgh. Philip left active service when Elizabeth became Queen in 1952. He was formally made a Prince of the United Kingdom in 1957, Philip has four children with Elizabeth, Prince Charles, Princess Anne, Prince Andrew, and Prince Edward. He has eight grandchildren and five great-grandchildren, a keen sports enthusiast, Philip helped develop the equestrian event of carriage driving. He is a patron of over 800 organisations and serves as chairman of the Duke of Edinburghs Award scheme for people aged 14 to 24 and he is the longest-serving consort of a reigning British monarch and the oldest-ever male member of the British royal family. Philips four elder sisters were Margarita, Theodora, Cecilie, and he was baptised into the Greek Orthodox Church. His godparents were Queen Olga of Greece and the Mayor of Corfu, shortly after Philips birth, his maternal grandfather, Prince Louis of Battenberg, then known as Louis Mountbatten, Marquess of Milford Haven, died in London. Louis was a naturalised British citizen, who, after a career in the Royal Navy, had renounced his German titles and adopted the surname Mountbatten during the First World War. After visiting London for the memorial, Philip and his mother returned to Greece where Prince Andrew had remained behind to command an army division embroiled in the Greco-Turkish War, the war went badly for Greece and the Turks made large gains. On 22 September 1922, Philips uncle, King Constantine I, was forced to abdicate, the commander of the army, General Georgios Hatzianestis, and five senior politicians were executed. Prince Andrews life was believed to be in danger, and Alice was under surveillance, in December, a revolutionary court banished Prince Andrew from Greece for life. The British naval vessel HMS Calypso evacuated Prince Andrews family, with Philip carried to safety in a cot made from a fruit box. Philips family went to France, where settled in the Paris suburb of Saint-Cloud in a house lent to them by his wealthy aunt, Princess George of Greece. Because Philip left Greece as a baby, he not have a strong grasp of Greek
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh
–
Prince Philip in March 2015
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh
–
Mon Repos, the birthplace of Philip
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh
–
Philip studied at
Gordonstoun school, Scotland.
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh
–
Philip served aboard
HMS Valiant in the
Battle of the Mediterranean.
29.
Queen Elizabeth II
–
Elizabeth II has been Queen of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand since 6 February 1952. Elizabeth was born in London as the eldest child of the Duke and Duchess of York, later King George VI and Queen Elizabeth and her father acceded to the throne on the abdication of his brother Edward VIII in 1936, from which time she was the heir presumptive. She began to undertake duties during the Second World War. Elizabeths many historic visits and meetings include a visit to the Republic of Ireland. She has seen major changes, such as devolution in the United Kingdom, Canadian patriation. She has reigned through various wars and conflicts involving many of her realms and she is the worlds oldest reigning monarch as well as Britains longest-lived. In October 2016, she became the longest currently reigning monarch, in 2017 she became the first British monarch to commemorate a Sapphire Jubilee. Elizabeth has occasionally faced republican sentiments and press criticism of the family, however, support for the monarchy remains high. Elizabeth was born at 02,40 on 21 April 1926, during the reign of her paternal grandfather and her father, Prince Albert, Duke of York, was the second son of the King. Her mother, Elizabeth, Duchess of York, was the youngest daughter of Scottish aristocrat Claude Bowes-Lyon, 14th Earl of Strathmore and she was delivered by Caesarean section at her maternal grandfathers London house,17 Bruton Street, Mayfair. Elizabeths only sibling, Princess Margaret, was born in 1930, the two princesses were educated at home under the supervision of their mother and their governess, Marion Crawford, who was casually known as Crawfie. Lessons concentrated on history, language, literature and music, Crawford published a biography of Elizabeth and Margarets childhood years entitled The Little Princesses in 1950, much to the dismay of the royal family. The book describes Elizabeths love of horses and dogs, her orderliness, others echoed such observations, Winston Churchill described Elizabeth when she was two as a character. She has an air of authority and reflectiveness astonishing in an infant and her cousin Margaret Rhodes described her as a jolly little girl, but fundamentally sensible and well-behaved. During her grandfathers reign, Elizabeth was third in the line of succession to the throne, behind her uncle Edward, Prince of Wales, and her father, the Duke of York. Although her birth generated public interest, she was not expected to become queen, many people believed that he would marry and have children of his own. When her grandfather died in 1936 and her uncle succeeded as Edward VIII, she became second-in-line to the throne, later that year, Edward abdicated, after his proposed marriage to divorced socialite Wallis Simpson provoked a constitutional crisis. Consequently, Elizabeths father became king, and she became heir presumptive, if her parents had had a later son, she would have lost her position as first-in-line, as her brother would have been heir apparent and above her in the line of succession
Queen Elizabeth II
–
The Queen in March 2015
Queen Elizabeth II
–
Princess Elizabeth aged 3, April 1929
Queen Elizabeth II
–
Princess Elizabeth aged 7, painted by
Philip de László, 1933
Queen Elizabeth II
–
Elizabeth in
Auxiliary Territorial Service uniform, April 1945
30.
Princess Irene of Hesse and by Rhine
–
Princess Irene of Hesse and by Rhine was the third child and third daughter of Princess Alice of the United Kingdom and Louis IV, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine. Her maternal grandparents were Queen Victoria and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and her paternal grandparents were Prince Charles of Hesse and by Rhine and Princess Elizabeth of Prussia. She was the wife of Prince Henry of Prussia, a brother of Wilhelm II, German Emperor. The SS Prinzessin Irene, a liner of the North German Lloyd was named after her, like her younger sister, the empress, Irene was a carrier of the hemophilia gene, and Irene would lose her sisters Alix and Elisabeth in Russia to the Bolsheviks. She received her first name, which was taken from the Greek word for peace, Alice considered Irene an unattractive child and once wrote to her sister Victoria that Irene was not pretty. Though not as pretty as her sister Elizabeth, Irene did have a pleasant, Princess Alice brought up her daughters simply. An English nanny presided over the nursery and the children ate plain meals of rice puddings and baked apples and her daughters were taught how to do housework, such as baking cakes, making their own beds, laying fires and sweeping and dusting their rooms. Princess Alice also emphasized the need to give to the poor and often took her daughters on visits to hospitals, in the months following the toddlers death, Alice frequently took her children to his grave to pray and was melancholy on anniversaries associated with him. In the autumn of 1878 Irene, her siblings and her father became ill with diphtheria and her younger sister Princess Marie, nicknamed May, died of the disease. Her mother, exhausted from nursing the children, also became infected, knowing she was in danger of dying, Princess Alice dictated her will, including instructions about how to bring up her daughters and how to run the household. She died of diphtheria on 14 December 1878, following Alices death, Queen Victoria resolved to act as a mother to her Hessian grandchildren. With her sister Alix, Irene was a bridesmaid at the 1885 wedding of their maternal aunt, as their mothers were sisters, Irene and Henry were first cousins. Their marriage displeased Queen Victoria because she had not been told about the courtship until they had decided to marry. Heinrichs mother, Victoria, Empress Victoria, was fond of Irene, however, Empress Victoria was shocked because Irene did not wear a shawl or scarf to disguise her pregnancy when she was pregnant with her first son, the haemophiliac Prince Waldemar, in 1889. Empress Victoria, who was fascinated by politics and current events, also couldnt understand why Heinrich, however, the couple were happily married and they were known as The Very Amiables by their relatives because of their pleasant natures. Their descendants also include two grandchildren, two great-grandchildren and six great-great grandchildren, Irene transmitted the haemophilia gene to her eldest and youngest sons, Waldemar and Heinrich. Waldemars health worried her from early childhood and she was later devastated when the youngest child, four-year-old Heinrich, died after he fell and bumped his head in February 1904. Six months after little Heinrichs death, Irene became an aunt to Tsarevich Alexei of Russia, son of her youngest sister, Tsarina Alexandra, who also had hemophilia
Princess Irene of Hesse and by Rhine
–
Princess Irene of Hesse and by Rhine during her youth
Princess Irene of Hesse and by Rhine
–
Princesses Irene, Victoria, Elisabeth and Alix of Hesse in 1885.
Princess Irene of Hesse and by Rhine
–
Princess Irene of Hesse and by Rhine, far left, with her grandmother
Queen Victoria and, from left to right, her sister
Elizabeth, brother
Ernst-Ludwig, sister
Victoria and, kneeling, her sister
Alix in February 1879, two months after the death of her mother.
Princess Irene of Hesse and by Rhine
–
Princess Irene of Prussia ca. 1902.
31.
Easter Sunday
–
It is the culmination of the Passion of Jesus, preceded by Lent, a forty-day period of fasting, prayer, and penance. In Western Christianity, Eastertide, or the Easter Season, begins on Easter Sunday and lasts seven weeks, ending with the coming of the fiftieth day, Pentecost Sunday. In Eastern Christianity, the season of Pascha begins on Pascha and ends with the coming of the fortieth day, the Feast of the Ascension. The First Council of Nicaea established two rules, independence of the Jewish calendar and worldwide uniformity, which were the rules for Easter explicitly laid down by the council. No details for the computation were specified, these were worked out in practice and it has come to be the first Sunday after the ecclesiastical full moon that occurs on or soonest after 21 March, but calculations vary. Easter is linked to the Jewish Passover by much of its symbolism, in many languages, the words for Easter and Passover are identical or very similar. Easter customs vary across the Christian world, and include services, exclaiming the Paschal greeting, clipping the church. The Easter lily, a symbol of the resurrection, traditionally decorates the area of churches on this day. Additional customs that have associated with Easter and are observed by both Christians and some non-Christians include egg hunting, the Easter Bunny, and Easter parades. There are also various traditional Easter foods that vary regionally, however, it is possible that Bede was only speculating about the origin of the term since there is no firm evidence that such a goddess actually existed. In Greek and Latin, the Christian celebration was, and still is, called Πάσχα, Pascha, the word originally denoted the Jewish festival known in English as Passover, commemorating the Jewish Exodus from slavery in Egypt. In most of the non-English speaking world, the feast is known by names derived from Greek, Pascha is also a name by which Jesus himself is remembered in the Orthodox Church, especially in connection with his resurrection and with the season of its celebration. The New Testament states that the resurrection of Jesus, which Easter celebrates, is a foundation of the Christian faith, the resurrection established Jesus as the powerful Son of God and is cited as proof that God will judge the world in righteousness. For those who trust in Jesus death and resurrection, death is swallowed up in victory, any person who chooses to follow Jesus receives a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Through faith in the working of God those who follow Jesus are spiritually resurrected with him so that they may walk in a new way of life and receive eternal salvation. Easter is linked to the Passover and Exodus from Egypt recorded in the Old Testament through the Last Supper, sufferings and crucifixion of Jesus that preceded the resurrection. According to the New Testament, Jesus gave the Passover meal a new meaning, as in the room during the Last Supper he prepared himself. He identified the matzah and cup of wine as his soon to be sacrificed
Easter Sunday
–
Icon of the Resurrection, with Christ, having kicked down the gates of Hades and pulling Adam and Eve out of the tombs. Christ is flanked by saints, and Satan, depicted as an old man, is bound and chained. (See
Resurrection of Jesus in Christian art.)
Easter Sunday
–
One of the earliest known depictions of the
crucifixion and
resurrection of Jesus (
Rabbula Gospel illuminated manuscript, 6th century)
Easter Sunday
–
The
Last Supper celebrated by Jesus and his disciples. The early Christians too would have celebrated this meal to commemorate Jesus' death and subsequent resurrection.
Easter Sunday
–
A stained glass window depicting the
Passover Lamb, a concept integral to the foundation of Easter
32.
Lutheranism
–
Lutheranism is a major branch of Protestant Christianity which identifies with the theology of Martin Luther, a German friar, ecclesiastical reformer and theologian. Luthers efforts to reform the theology and practice of the Catholic Church launched the Protestant Reformation in the German-speaking territories of the Holy Roman Empire. Lutheranism advocates a doctrine of justification by grace alone through faith alone on the basis of Scripture alone and this is in contrast to the belief of the Catholic Church, defined at the Council of Trent, concerning authority coming from both the Scriptures and Tradition. In addition, Lutheranism accepts the teachings of the first seven ecumenical councils of the undivided Christian Church, unlike Calvinism, Lutherans retain many of the liturgical practices and sacramental teachings of the pre-Reformation Church, with a particular emphasis on the Eucharist, or Lords Supper. Lutheran theology differs from Reformed theology in Christology, the purpose of Gods Law, the grace, the concept of perseverance of the saints. Today, Lutheranism is one of the largest denominations of Protestantism, with approximately 80 million adherents, it constitutes the third most common Protestant denomination after historically Pentecostal denominations and Anglicanism. The Lutheran World Federation, the largest communion of Lutheran churches, Other Lutheran organizations include the International Lutheran Council and the Confessional Evangelical Lutheran Conference, as well as independent churches. The name Lutheran originated as a term used against Luther by German Scholastic theologian Dr. Johann Maier von Eck during the Leipzig Debate in July 1519. Eck and other Catholics followed the practice of naming a heresy after its leader. Martin Luther always disliked the term Lutheran, preferring the term Evangelical, which was derived from euangelion, the followers of John Calvin, Huldrych Zwingli, and other theologians linked to the Reformed tradition also began to use that term. To distinguish the two groups, others began to refer to the two groups as Evangelical Lutheran and Evangelical Reformed. As time passed by, the word Evangelical was dropped, Lutherans themselves began to use the term Lutheran in the middle of the 16th century, in order to distinguish themselves from other groups such as the Philippists and Calvinists. In 1597, theologians in Wittenberg defined the title Lutheran as referring to the true church, Lutheranism has its roots in the work of Martin Luther, who sought to reform the Western Church to what he considered a more biblical foundation. Lutheranism spread through all of Scandinavia during the 16th century, as the monarch of Denmark–Norway, through Baltic-German and Swedish rule, Lutheranism also spread into Estonia and Latvia. Since 1520, regular Lutheran services have been held in Copenhagen, under the reign of Frederick I, Denmark-Norway remained officially Catholic. Although Frederick initially pledged to persecute Lutherans, he adopted a policy of protecting Lutheran preachers and reformers. During Fredericks reign, Lutheranism made significant inroads in Denmark, at an open meeting in Copenhagen attended by the king in 1536, the people shouted, We will stand by the holy Gospel, and do not want such bishops anymore. Fredericks son Christian was openly Lutheran, which prevented his election to the throne upon his fathers death, however, following his victory in the civil war that followed, in 1537 he became Christian III and advanced the Reformation in Denmark-Norway
Lutheranism
–
Martin Luther initiated the
Protestant Reformation in 1517.
Lutheranism
–
Lutheran Rose Cross, in the middle we can see
Luther's seal.
Lutheranism
–
Title page of the Swedish
Gustav Vasa Bible, translated by the Petri brothers, along with
Laurentius Andreae
Lutheranism
–
The
University of Jena around 1600. Jena was the center of Gnesio-Lutheran activity during the controversies leading up to the Formula of Concord.
33.
Bessungen
–
Bessungen is a district in the South of the city of Darmstadt in Hesse, Germany. Until 1888 Bessungen was a separate municipality, Bessungen is known as the oldest part of Darmstadt, and was first mentioned in writings in 1002. It was probably founded earlier, in about the 5th Century by the Alemanni, there are foothills of the Middle Odenwald in the southeast of the district. The Saubachgraben forms the boundary of the district. East of the street is the Darmstadt Ostwald and fields. West of the district are homes and heading North to the Darmstadt city center is terrain flat, old preserved village homes and peasant courtyard are near to high-rise development of 19th and 20th Century. The Bessunger church is at the center of the Bessungen district, with the old village buildings, on the Heidelberg Road and the Moosbergstraße road one finds the stately homes of the early days. Also in the Bessungen district is the old Darmstadt cemetery, the Campus Lichtwiese of Technischen Universität Darmstadt, South of Bessungen district is the Heidelberg road go to Eberstadt. The Orangerie and the Mosersche garden are highlights of Bessungen district, archaeological finds indicate that Bessungen was settled in the 4th or 5th Century. Bessungen means for the people of Bezzo, Bezzo is a word form of “Bernhard”. Bernhard was probably an Alemannic nobility, whose allegiance settled the village of Bessungen, as Bessungen was at the crossroads of Roman roads in medieval times. The Bessunger Church was founded in 1002, on the date of 10 June 1002 is the first written mention Bessungens. In this document of Henry II, Holy Roman Emperor, at that time with the royal court Gerau, wrote about Bessungens, the Bishopric of Bamberg, in 1479 the city officially became known as Bessungen, by inheritance. The Thirty Year War was hard on Bessungen, in January 1635, the city was burned down by French troops almost completely. Only a few houses remained standing, the surviving inhabitants fled behind the walls of the Darmstadt, where many of them died of the plague. By the end of the war in 1648 only about 30 people were left in Bessungen, by the beginning of the 18th Century Bessungen has fully recovered. Due to population grow in 1875 Darmstadt and Bessungen grew together to be one city, grand Duchy of Hesse opened a headquarters center in Darmstadt and Bessungen experienced a growth in population again. On 1 April 1888 Bessungen was incorporated after negotiations with Darmstadt, during World War II Bessungen was largely spared from mass damage
Bessungen
–
Coat of arms
Bessungen
–
Bessunger Church founed in 1002
Bessungen
–
Orangerie in Darmstadt – southern façade.
34.
Darmstadt
–
Darmstadt is a city in the state of Hesse in Germany, located in the southern part of the Rhine-Main-Area. Darmstadt has a population around 150,000, the Darmstadt Larger Urban Zone has 430,993 inhabitants. Darmstadt holds the official title City of Science as it is a centre of scientific institutions, universities. The existence of the elements were also confirmed at GSI Centre for Heavy Ion Research, nihonium, flerovium, moscovium, livermorium. Darmstadt is also the seat of the worlds oldest pharmaceutical company, Merck, Darmstadt was formerly the capital of a sovereign country, the Grand Duchy of Hesse and its successor, the Peoples State of Hesse, a federal state of Germany. As the capital of an increasingly prosperous duchy, the city gained some international prominence, in the 20th century, industry, as well as large science and electronics sectors became increasingly important, and are still a major part of the citys economy. It is also home to the football club SV Darmstadt 98, Darmstadt, Indiana was named after Darmstadt and for the former Royal Family. The name Darmstadt first appears towards the end of the 11th century, the origins of the name are unknown. Dar-mund in Middle Low German is translated as Boggy Headlands, even locals often believe, incorrectly, that the name derives from the Darmbach. In fact, the received its current name much later, after the city. Darmstadt was chartered as a city by the Holy Roman Emperor Ludwig the Bavarian in 1330, the city, then called Darmstait, became a secondary residence for the counts, with a small castle established at the site of the current, much larger edifice. When the house of Katzenelnbogen became extinct in 1479, the city was passed to the Landgraviate of Hesse, the city grew in population during the 19th century from little over 10,000 to 72,000 inhabitants. A polytechnical school, which became a Technical University now known as TU Darmstadt, was established in 1877. In the beginning of the 20th century, Darmstadt was an important centre for the art movement of Jugendstil, annual architectural competitions led to the building of many architectural treasures of this period. Also during this period, in 1912 the chemist Anton Kollisch, working for the pharmaceutical company Merck, Darmstadts municipal area was extended in 1937 to include the neighbouring localities of Arheilgen and Eberstadt, and in 1938 the city was separated administratively from the surrounding district. Darmstadt was the first city in Germany to force Jewish shops to close in early 1933, the shops were only closed for one day, for endangering communal order and tranquility. In 1942, over 3,000 Jews from Darmstadt were first forced into a camp located in the Liebigschule. Darmstadt was first bombed on 30 July 1940, and 34 other air raids would follow before the wars end, the old city centre was largely destroyed in a British bombing raid on 11 September 1944
Darmstadt
–
Central Darmstadt
Darmstadt
Darmstadt
–
Landmark of Darmstadt: "Hochzeitsturm" ("Wedding Tower"), built 1908 in
Jugendstil architecture.
Darmstadt
–
Darmstadt in 1626.
35.
Kingdom of Prussia
–
It was the driving force behind the unification of Germany in 1871 and was the leading state of the German Empire until its dissolution in 1918. Although it took its name from the region called Prussia, it was based in the Margraviate of Brandenburg, the kings of Prussia were from the House of Hohenzollern. Prussia was a power from the time it became a kingdom, through its predecessor, Brandenburg-Prussia. Prussia continued its rise to power under the guidance of Frederick II, more known as Frederick the Great. After the might of Prussia was revealed it was considered as a power among the German states. Throughout the next hundred years Prussia went on to win many battles and it was because of its power that Prussia continuously tried to unify all the German states under its rule. Attempts at creation of a federation remained unsuccessful and the German Confederation collapsed in 1866 when war ensued between its two most powerful states, Prussia and Austria. The North German Confederation which lasted from 1867–1871, created a union between the Prussian-aligned states while Austria and most of Southern Germany remained independent. The North German Confederation was seen as more of an alliance of military strength in the aftermath of the Austro-Prussian War, the German Empire lasted from 1871–1918 with the successful unification of all the German states under Prussian hegemony. This was due to the defeat of Napoleon III in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, in 1871, Germany unified into a single country, minus Austria and Switzerland, with Prussia the dominant power. Prussia is considered the predecessor of the unified German Reich. The Kingdom left a significant cultural legacy, today notably promoted by the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, in 1415 a Hohenzollern Burgrave came from the south to the March of Brandenburg and took control of the area as elector. In 1417 the Hohenzollern was made an elector of the Holy Roman Empire, after the Polish wars, the newly established Baltic towns of the German states including Prussia, suffered many economic setbacks. Many of the Prussian towns could not even afford to attend political meetings outside of Prussia, the towns were poverty stricken, with even the largest town, Danzig, having to borrow money from elsewhere to pay for trade. Poverty in these towns was partly caused by Prussias neighbors, who had established and developed such a monopoly on trading that these new towns simply could not compete and these issues led to feuds, wars, trade competition and invasions. However, the fall of these gave rise to the nobility, separated the east and the west. It was clear in 1440 how different Brandenburg was from the other German territories, not only did it face partition from within but also the threat of its neighbors. It prevented the issue of partition by enacting the Dispositio Achillea which instilled the principle of primogeniture to both the Brandenburg and Franconian territories, the second issue was solved through expansion
Kingdom of Prussia
–
Prussian territorial acquisitions in the 18th century
Kingdom of Prussia
–
Flag
Kingdom of Prussia
–
Prussia (orange) and its territories lost after the
War of the Fourth Coalition (other colours).
Kingdom of Prussia
–
Prussian King's Crown (
Hohenzollern Castle Collection)
36.
Austro-Prussian War
–
This conflict also paralleled the Third Independence War of Italian unification. It saw the abolition of the German Confederation and its replacement by a North German Confederation that excluded Austria. The war also resulted in the Italian annexation of the Austrian province of Venetia, for centuries, Central Europe was split into a few large states and hundreds of tiny entities, each maintaining its independence with the assistance of outside powers, particularly France. After 1815, the German states were again reorganized into a loose confederation. When Austria brought the dispute before the German Diet and also decided to convene the Diet of Holstein, when the German Diet responded by voting for a partial mobilization against Prussia, Bismarck claimed that the German Confederation was ended. Crown Prince Frederick was the member of the Prussian Crown Council to uphold the rights of the Duke of Augustenberg. Although he supported unification and the restoration of the medieval empire, the ultimate aim of most German nationalists was the gathering of all Germans under one state. Two ideas of national unity eventually came to the fore – once including, US newspaper The New York Times summarized its views of German nationalism shortly after the outbreak of the war, There is, in political geography, no Germany proper to speak of. There are Kingdoms and Grand Duchies, and Duchies and Principalities, inhabited by Germans, yet there is a natural undercurrent tending to a national feeling and toward a union of the Germans into one great nation, ruled by one common head as a national unit. Bismarck maintained that he orchestrated the conflict in order to bring about the North German Confederation, the Franco-Prussian War, taylor thinks Bismarck manipulated events into the most beneficial solution possible for Prussia. On 22 February 1866, Count Karolyi, Austrian ambassador in Berlin, sent a dispatch to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, possible evidence can be found in Bismarcks orchestration of the Austrian alliance during the Second Schleswig War against Denmark, which can be seen as his diplomatic masterstroke. It was in the Prussian interest to gain an alliance with Austria to defeat Denmark and settle the issue of the duchies of Schleswig, the alliance can be regarded as an aid to Prussian expansion, rather than a provocation of war against Austria. Many historians believe that Bismarck was simply a Prussian expansionist, rather than a German nationalist and it was at the Gastein Convention that the Austrian alliance was set up to lure Austria into war. The timing of the declaration was perfect, because all other European powers were bound by alliances that forbade them from entering the conflict. Britain had no stake economically or politically in war between Prussia and Austria, the details of the discussion are unknown but many historians think Bismarck was guaranteed French neutrality in the event of a war. Italy was already allied with Prussia, which meant that Austria would be fighting both with no major allies of its own, Bismarck was aware of his numerical superiority but still he was not prepared to advise it immediately even though he gave a favourable account of the international situation. When the Prussian victory became clear, France attempted to extract concessions in the Palatinate. Naturally I was not doubtful of the answer for a second, I answered him, Good, then its war
Austro-Prussian War
–
Battle of Königgrätz, by
Georg Bleibtreu. Oil on canvas, 1869.
Austro-Prussian War
–
Memorial to Battery of the Dead at Chlum commemorates one of heaviest fights during
Battle of Königgrätz (July 3, 1866)
Austro-Prussian War
–
Battle of Königgrätz:
Prince Friedrich Karl is cheered on by his Prussian troops.
Austro-Prussian War
–
Dreyse needle gun
37.
Electorate of Hesse
–
The Electorate of Hesse was a state elevated by Napoleon in 1803 from the Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel. When the Holy Roman Empire was abolished in 1806, the Prince-Elector of Hesse chose to remain an Elector, in 1807, with the Treaties of Tilsit the area was annexed to the Kingdom of Westphalia, but in 1814 the Congress of Vienna restored the electorate. The state—last of its kind—consisted of several detached territories to the north of Frankfurt which survived until 1866 with the name of an electorate within the German Confederation and it comprised a total land area of 3,699 square miles, and its population in 1864 was 745,063. The Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel originated in 1567 with the division of the Landgraviate of Hesse between the heirs of Philip I of Hesse after his death. Philips eldest son, William IV, received Hesse-Kassel, which comprised half the area of the Landgraviate of Hesse, including the capital. The reign of the Landgrave William IX was an important epoch in the history of Hesse-Kassel, ascending the throne in 1785, he took part in the War of the First Coalition against French First Republic a few years later, but in 1795 the Peace of Basel was signed. In 1806 William I signed a treaty of neutrality with Napoleon Bonaparte, Hesse-Kassel was then incorporated to the Kingdom of Westphalia under the rule of Jérôme Bonaparte. After the Battle of Leipzig in 1813 the French were driven out of Hesse-Kassel and this treaty, so far as the territories were concerned, was implemented by the Great Powers at the Congress of Vienna. They refused, however, the Electors request to be recognized as King of the Chatti, William therefore retained the now empty title of prince-elector, with the predicate of Royal Highness. Everything was set back to its condition on 1 November 1806, even the officials had to descend to their rank. William I died on 27 February 1821, and was succeeded by his son William II, under him the constitutional crisis in Kassel came to a head. The July Revolution in Paris gave the signal for disturbances, William II was forced to summon the Estates, the Elector now retired to Hanau, appointed his son Frederick William regent, and took no further part in public affairs. Frederick William, without his fathers coarseness, had a share of his arbitrary. Constitutional restrictions were intolerable to him, and the consequent friction with the Diet was aggravated when in 1832 Hans Hassenpflug was placed at the head of the administration. After the breakdown of the Frankfurt National Parliament, Frederick William joined the Prussian Northern Union, but as Austria recovered strength, the Electors policy changed. On 2 September the Diet was dissolved, the taxes were continued by Electoral ordinance, and it was at once clear, however, that the Elector could not depend on his officers or troops, who remained faithful to their oath to the constitution. Hassenpflug persuaded the Elector to leave Kassel secretly with him, and on 15 October appealed for aid to the federal diet. On 1 November an Austrian and Bavarian force marched into the Electorate, War seemed imminent, Prussian troops also entered the country, and shots were exchanged between the outposts
Electorate of Hesse
–
Flag
38.
Grand Duchy of Hesse
–
Hesse lost its independence when it joined the German Empire in 1871. Before 1866, its northern neighbour was its former sister Landgraviate, since 1803 an Electorate, of Hesse-Kassel – for this reason, Hesse-Darmstadt was a member of Napoleons Confederation of the Rhine during the Napoleonic Wars. Rapidly expanding during the mediatizations, Hesse-Darmstadt became an amalgamation of smaller German states, the legal patchwork of the state culminated in a decree issued on 1 October 1806 by Louis I. The old territorial estates were abolished, which altered Hesse-Darmstadt from a mosaic of patrimonial fragments into a centralized, during the Congress of Vienna it was forced to cede the Duchy of Westphalia, which Hesse-Darmstadt had received in 1803, to the Kingdom of Prussia. However, Hesse-Darmstadt received some territory on the bank of the Rhine. The Grand Duchy changed its name to the Grand Duchy of Hesse, in 1867, the northern half of the Grand Duchy became a part of the North German Confederation, while the half of the Grand Duchy south of the Main remained outside. In 1871, it became a constituent state of the German Empire, the last Grand Duke, Ernst Ludwig, was forced from his throne at the end of World War I, and the state was renamed the Peoples State of Hesse. After World War II, the majority of the state combined with Frankfurt am Main, the Waldeck area, excluded were the Montabaur district from Hessen-Nassau and that part of Hessen-Darmstadt on the left bank of the Rhine, which became part of the Rhineland-Palatinate state. Wimpfen—an exclave of Hessen-Darmstadt—became part of Baden-Württemberg, in the district of Sinsheim, after a plebiscite on 29 April 1951, Bad Wimpfen was transferred from Sinsheim district to Heilbronn District. This change to Heilbronn was carried out on 1 May 1952, the Grand Duchy of Hesse was divided into three provinces, Starkenburg, Right bank of the Rhine, south of the Main. Rhenish Hesse, Left bank of the Rhine, territory gained from the Congress of Vienna, upper Hesse, North of the Main, separated from Starkenburg by the Free City of Frankfurt. List of rulers of Hesse Line of succession to the former Hessian throne Hessenlager Constitution of Hesse Das Großherzogtum Hessen 1806–1918 Großherzogtum Hessen 1910
Grand Duchy of Hesse
–
Residenzschloss (city palace) of the Grand Dukes in Darmstadt
Grand Duchy of Hesse
–
Flag
39.
Franco-Prussian War
–
The conflict was caused by Prussian ambitions to extend German unification and French fears of the shift in the European balance of power that would result if the Prussians succeeded. On 16 July 1870, the French parliament voted to declare war on the German Kingdom of Prussia, the German coalition mobilised its troops much more quickly than the French and rapidly invaded northeastern France. The German forces were superior in numbers, had training and leadership and made more effective use of modern technology, particularly railroads. The German states proclaimed their union as the German Empire under the Prussian king Wilhelm I, the Treaty of Frankfurt of 10 May 1871 gave Germany most of Alsace and some parts of Lorraine, which became the Imperial territory of Alsace-Lorraine. French determination to regain Alsace-Lorraine and fear of another Franco-German war, along with British apprehension about the balance of power, the causes of the Franco-Prussian War are deeply rooted in the events surrounding the unification of Germany. In the aftermath of the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, Prussia had annexed numerous territories and this new power destabilized the European balance of power established by the Congress of Vienna in 1815 after the Napoleonic Wars. France was strongly opposed to any further alliance of German states, in Prussia, some officials considered a war against France both inevitable and necessary to arouse German nationalism in those states that would allow the unification of a great German empire. Bismarck also knew that France should be the aggressor in the conflict to bring the southern German states to side with Prussia, many Germans also viewed the French as the traditional destabilizer of Europe, and sought to weaken France to prevent further breaches of the peace. The immediate cause of the war resided in the candidacy of Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, France feared encirclement by an alliance between Prussia and Spain. The Hohenzollern princes candidacy was withdrawn under French diplomatic pressure, releasing the Ems Dispatch to the public, Bismarck made it sound as if the king had treated the French envoy in a demeaning fashion, which inflamed public opinion in France. They also argue that he wanted a war to resolve growing domestic political problems, other historians, notably French historian Pierre Milza, dispute this. According to Milza, the Emperor had no need for a war to increase his popularity, the Ems telegram had exactly the effect on French public opinion that Bismarck had intended. This text produced the effect of a red flag on the Gallic bull, gramont, the French foreign minister, declared that he felt he had just received a slap. Napoleons new prime minister, Emile Ollivier, declared that France had done all that it could humanly and honorably do to prevent the war, a crowd of 15–20,000 people, carrying flags and patriotic banners, marched through the streets of Paris, demanding war. On 19 July 1870 a declaration of war was sent to the Prussian government, the southern German states immediately sided with Prussia. The French Army consisted in peacetime of approximately 400,000 soldiers, some of them were veterans of previous French campaigns in the Crimean War, Algeria, the Franco-Austrian War in Italy, and in the Mexican campaign. Under Marshal Adolphe Niel, urgent reforms were made, universal conscription and a shorter period of service gave increased numbers of reservists, who would swell the army to a planned strength of 800,000 on mobilisation. Those who for any reason were not conscripted were to be enrolled in the Garde Mobile, however, the Franco-Prussian War broke out before these reforms could be completely implemented
Franco-Prussian War
–
Clockwise from top left: Prussian infantry at the
Battle of Spicheren;
Jeanniot 's 1886 La ligne de feu (
Battle of Mars-La-Tour);
Werner 's depiction of the
capitulation of Sedan;
Neuville 's 1873 Les dernières cartouches (
Battle of Bazeilles).
Franco-Prussian War
–
A French
mitrailleuse in the
Bundeswehr Military History Museum
Franco-Prussian War
–
French reservists responding to the call.
Franco-Prussian War
–
Map of German and French armies near their common border on 31 July 1870
40.
Prince Friedrich of Hesse and by Rhine
–
Prince Friedrich of Hesse and by Rhine was the haemophiliac second son of Louis IV, Grand Duke of Hesse, and Princess Alice of the United Kingdom, one of the daughters of Queen Victoria. He was also a maternal great-uncle of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh through his eldest sister Princess Victoria of Hesse, Friedrich, called Frittie in the family, was a cheerful and lively child despite his illness. Leopold was added as one of his names in honor of his mothers brother, Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany. His haemophilia was first diagnosed in February 1873, a few months before his death, bandages could not stanch the flow of blood. In late May 1873, Friedrich and his older brother Ernst were playing together in their mothers bedroom, Ernst ran to another room, which was set at right angles to Alices bedroom and peered through the window at his younger brother. Alice ran to get Ernst away from the window, when she was out of the room, Friedrich climbed onto a chair next to an open window in his mothers bedroom to get a closer look at his brother. The chair tipped over and Friedrich tumbled through the window, falling twenty feet to the balustrade below, Friedrich survived the fall and might have lived had he not been a haemophiliac. He died hours later of a brain hemorrhage, following Friedrichs death, his distraught mother often prayed at his grave and marked anniversaries of small events in his life. His brother Ernst told his mother he wanted all of the family to die together, two of Friedrichs sisters, Irene and Alix, also had haemophiliac sons
Prince Friedrich of Hesse and by Rhine
–
Prince Friedrich, ca. 1872.
41.
Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany
–
Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany, KG, KT, GCSI, GCMG, GCStJ was the eighth child and youngest son of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. Leopold was later created Duke of Albany, Earl of Clarence and he had haemophilia, which led to his death at the age of 30. Leopold was born on 7 April 1853 at Buckingham Palace, London, during labour, Queen Victoria chose to use chloroform and thus sanctioned the use of anesthesia in childbirth, recently developed by Professor James Young Simpson. The chloroform was administered by Dr. John Snow, as a son of the British sovereign, the newborn was styled His Royal Highness The Prince Leopold at birth. His parents named him Leopold after his grand-uncle, King Leopold I of Belgium and he was baptised in the Private Chapel of Buckingham Palace on 28 June 1853 by the Archbishop of Canterbury, John Bird Sumner. Leopold inherited the disease haemophilia from his mother, Queen Victoria, there was speculation during his life that Leopold also suffered mildly from epilepsy, like his grand-nephew Prince John of the United Kingdom. Martineau, was considered to be a man of a very thoughtful mind, high aims. In 1872, Prince Leopold entered Christ Church, Oxford, where he studied a variety of subjects, on coming of age in 1874, he had been made a privy councillor and granted an annuity of £15,000. He left the university with a doctorate in civil law in 1876. In 1880, he toured Canada and the United States with his sister, Princess Louise, whose husband John Campbell and he was a prominent patron of chess, and the London 1883 chess tournament was held under his patronage. Leopold was the son, and through him her relations with the Government of the day were usually kept up. Later he pursued vice-regal appointments in Canada and the Colony of Victoria, a portrait of Prince Leopold in military uniform is held in the Royal Collection. The Seaforth Highlanders paraded at Prince Leopolds funeral, a recorded by William McGonagall in his poem The Death of Prince Leopold. Prince Leopold was an active Freemason, being initiated in the Apollo University Lodge, Oxford and he served as Master of the Lodge from 1876-1877, and was later the Provincial Grand Master for Oxfordshire, still holding that office at the time of his death. Prince Leopold was created Duke of Albany, Earl of Clarence, Prince Leopold, stifled by the desire of his mother, Queen Victoria, to keep him at home, saw marriage as his only hope of independence. Due to his haemophilia, he had difficulty finding a wife, heiress Daisy Maynard was one of the women he considered as a possible bride. It has been suggested that he considered marrying her, though others suggest that he preferred her sister Edith, Leopold also considered his second cousin Princess Frederica of Hanover for a bride, they instead became lifelong friends and confidantes. Other aristocratic women he pursued included Victoria of Baden, Princess Elisabeth of Hesse-Kassel, after rejection from these women, Victoria stepped in to bar what she saw as unsuitable possibilities
Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany
–
Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany
Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany
–
Princess Alice of Albany
Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany
–
Prince Charles Edward, Duke of Albany
42.
Albert, Prince Consort
–
Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha was the husband of Queen Victoria. He was born in the Saxon duchy of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld to a family connected to many of Europes ruling monarchs, at the age of 20, he married his first cousin, Queen Victoria, they had nine children. He was heavily involved with the organisation of the Great Exhibition of 1851, the Queen came to depend more and more on his support and guidance. Albert died at the young age of 42, plunging the Queen into deep mourning for the rest of her life. Upon Queen Victorias death in 1901, their eldest son succeeded as Edward VII, Albert was born at Schloss Rosenau, near Coburg, Germany, the second son of Ernest III, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, and his first wife, Louise of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg. Alberts future wife, Victoria, was earlier in the same year with the assistance of the same midwife. Albert was baptised into the Lutheran Evangelical Church on 19 September 1819 in the Marble Hall at Schloss Rosenau with water taken from the local river, in 1825, Alberts great-uncle, Frederick IV, Duke of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg, died. His death led to a realignment of Saxon duchies the following year and Alberts father became the first reigning duke of Saxe-Coburg, Albert and his elder brother, Ernest, spent their youth in a close companionship marred by their parents turbulent marriage and eventual separation and divorce. After their mother was exiled from court in 1824, she married her lover, Alexander von Hanstein, Count of Polzig and she presumably never saw her children again, and died of cancer at the age of 30 in 1831. The brothers were educated privately at home by Christoph Florschütz and later studied in Brussels, like many other German princes, Albert attended the University of Bonn, where he studied law, political economics, philosophy and the history of art. He played music and excelled at sport, especially fencing and riding and his tutors at Bonn included the philosopher Fichte and the poet Schlegel. By 1836, the idea of marriage between Albert and his cousin, Victoria, had arisen in the mind of their ambitious uncle Leopold, at this time, Victoria was the heiress presumptive to the British throne. Her father, Edward Augustus, Duke of Kent, the son of King George III, had died when she was a baby. Her mother the Duchess of Kent, was the sister of both Alberts father—the Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha—and King Leopold. Leopold arranged for his sister, Victorias mother, to invite the Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, William IV, however, disapproved of any match with the Coburgs, and instead favoured the suit of Prince Alexander, second son of the Prince of Orange. Victoria was well aware of the matrimonial plans and critically appraised a parade of eligible princes. Alexander, on the hand, she described as very plain. Victoria wrote to her uncle Leopold to thank him for the prospect of great happiness you have contributed to give me and he possesses every quality that could be desired to render me perfectly happy
Albert, Prince Consort
–
Portrait by
Winterhalter, 1859
Albert, Prince Consort
–
Albert (left) with his elder brother
Ernest and mother
Louise, shortly before her exile from court
Albert, Prince Consort
–
Portrait by
John Partridge, 1840
Albert, Prince Consort
–
Bookplate showing the
coat of arms of Albert, Prince Consort
43.
Cousin
–
A cousin is a relative with whom a person shares one or more common ancestors. In the general sense, cousins are two or more away from any common ancestor, thus distinguishing a cousin from an ancestor, descendant, sibling, aunt, uncle, niece. However, in common parlance, cousins typically refers to first cousins as the children of ones uncles, systems of degrees and removals are used in the English-speaking world to describe the exact relationship between two cousins and the ancestor they have in common. The ordinals in the terms first cousins, second cousins, third cousins, the number of G words used to describe this ancestor will determine how close the relationship is. For example, having great-great-grandparents in common would be third cousins, when the cousins are not the same generation, they are described as removed. In this case, the number of generations to the common ancestor is used to determine the degree. Note that the ages of the cousins are irrelevant to the definition of the cousin relationship, the following is a list of less common cousin terms. A cousin chart, or table of consanguinity, is helpful in identifying the degree of relationship between two people using their most recent common ancestor as the reference point. Cousinship between two people can be described in degrees and removals by determining how close, generationally. Another visual chart used in determining the relationship between two people who share a common ancestor is based upon a rhombus shape, usually referred to as a canon law relationship chart. The chart is used by placing the common progenitor in the top space in the diamond-shaped chart, then follow the line down the outside edge of the chart for each of the two people until their respective relationship to the common ancestor is reached. Upon determining that place along the opposing outside edge for each person, the information contained in the common intersection defines the relationship. Then, following the spaces inward, they would intersect in the brother diamond
Cousin
–
Canon Law Relationship Chart. See an
example of how to use chart.
44.
Morganatic marriage
–
Now rare, it is also known as a left-handed marriage because in the wedding ceremony the groom held his brides hand with his left hand instead of his right. Generally, this is a marriage between a man of birth and a woman of lesser status. Usually, neither the bride nor any children of the marriage have a claim on the succession rights, titles, precedence. The children are considered legitimate for all purposes and the prohibition against bigamy applies. In some countries, a woman could marry a man of lower rank morganatically. e, the Latin term, applied to a Germanic custom, was adopted from a Germanic term, *morgangeba. Morgen is the German word for morning, while the Latin word is matutinus, the bride received property from the bridegrooms clan. It was intended to ensure her livelihood in widowhood, and it was to be separate as the wifes discrete possession. e. King Erik XIV of Sweden married the servant Karin Månsdotter morganatically in 1567, and later secondly, ludwig Wilhelm, Duke in Bavaria and Henriette Mendel. She was created Baroness von Wallersee, and their daughter, Marie Louise, victor Emmanuel II of Italy in 1869 married morganatically his principal mistress Rosa Teresa Vercellana Guerrieri. Popularly known in Piedmontese as Bela Rosin, she was born a commoner, late in his life, the widowed ex-king Fernando II of Portugal married the opera singer Elise Hensler, who was created Countess von Edla. Royal women who married morganatically, Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma contracted a second marriage with a mediatized count after the death of her first husband. Queen Maria Christina of Bourbon-Two Sicilies, regent of Spain after her husbands death while their daughter and she married one of her guards in a secret marriage. Princess Stéphanie of Belgium, the widow of Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria, in 1917, Emperor Charles I of Austria, conferred upon Lónyay a non-dynastic title of prince. Succession to the Danish throne followed the specifications of the Lex Regia until the Danish Act of Succession was passed in 1953, prominent morganatic marriages include the 1615 marriage of King Christian IV of Denmark to noblewoman Kirsten Munk. Kirsten was titled Countess of Schleswig-Holstein and bore the King 12 children, King Frederick VII married the ballerina Louise Rasmussen, who was raised to the rank of Countess Danner in 1850. There were no children of this marriage, when Christian IX of Denmarks brother, Prince Julius of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg married Elisabeth von Ziegesar in 1883, the king granted her the title Countess af Røst. They were granted the prefix of Prince and their descendants bear the title Count af Rosenborg in the Danish nobility. Neither of the children of Queen Margrethe II has married a person of royal birth or of the titled aristocracy
Morganatic marriage
–
Tsar Alexander II. photo by
Sergei Lvovich Levitsky 1881. (The Di Rocco Wieler Private Collection, Toronto, Canada)
Morganatic marriage
–
Princess Catherine Dolgorukova photo by
Sergei Lvovich Levitsky and
Rafail Sergeevich Levitsky 1880. (The Di Rocco Wieler Private Collection, Toronto, Canada)
45.
Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark
–
Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark of the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, was the seventh child and fourth son of King George I of Greece and Olga Constantinovna of Russia. He was a grandson of Christian IX of Denmark and father of Prince Philip and he began military training at an early age, and was commissioned as an officer in the Greek army. His command positions were substantive appointments rather than honorary, and he saw service in the Balkan Wars, in 1913, his father was assassinated and Andrews elder brother, Constantine, became king. Dissatisfaction with his brothers neutrality policy during World War I led to his brothers abdication and most of the royal family, including Andrew, was exiled. On their return a few later, Andrew saw service in the Greco-Turkish War, but the war went badly for Greece. He was exiled for a time in 1922, and spent most of the rest of his life in France. By 1930, he was estranged from his wife, Princess Alice of Battenberg and his only son, Prince Philip, served in the British navy during World War II, while all four of his daughters were married to Germans, three of whom had Nazi connections. Separated from his wife and son by the effects of the war and he had seen neither of them since 1939. Prince Andrew was born at the Old Royal Palace in Athens on February 2,1882 and he was taught English by his caretakers as he grew up, but in conversations with his parents he refused to speak anything but Greek. He also spoke German, Danish, Russian, and French and he attended cadet school and staff college at Athens, and was given additional private tuition in military subjects by Panagiotis Danglis. Despite his short-sightedness, Andrew joined the army as a officer in May 1901. In 1902, Prince Andrew met Princess Alice of Battenberg at the coronation of her grand-uncle and his aunts husband, King Edward VII, Princess Alice was a daughter of Prince Louis of Battenberg and Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine. They fell in love, and the year, on 6 October 1903. The following day two religious wedding services were performed, one Lutheran in the Evangelical Castle Church, and another Greek Orthodox in the Russian Chapel on the Mathildenhöhe, Prince and Princess Andrew had five children, all of whom later had children of their own. In 1909, the situation in Greece led to a coup détat, as the Athens government refused to support the Cretan parliament. A group of dissatisfied officers formed a Greek nationalist Military League that eventually led to Prince Andrews resignation from the army and the rise to power of Eleftherios Venizelos. A few years later, at the outbreak of the Balkan Wars in 1912, Andrew was reinstated in the army as a lieutenant colonel in the 3rd Cavalry Regiment, and placed in command of a field hospital. During the war, his father was assassinated and Andrew inherited a villa on the island of Corfu, in 1914, Andrew held honorary military posts in both the German and Russian empires, as well as Prussian, Russian, Danish and Italian knighthoods
Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark
–
Portrait by
Philip de László, 1913
Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark
–
Prince Andrew (left), with his older brothers, the
Crown Prince Constantine and
Prince Nicholas
46.
Gustaf VI Adolf of Sweden
–
Gustaf VI Adolf was King of Sweden from 29 October 1950 until his death. He was the eldest son of King Gustaf V and his wife, Victoria of Baden, Gustaf VI Adolf was a lifelong amateur archeologist particularly interested in Ancient Italian cultures. He was born at the Royal Palace in Stockholm and at birth created Duke of Skåne, a patrilineal member of the Bernadotte family, he was also a descendant of the House of Vasa through maternal lines. Through his mother, Victoria, he was a descendant of Gustav IV Adolf of Sweden of the deposed House of Holstein-Gottorp, Gustaf Adolf became Crown Prince of Sweden on 8 December 1907, at the death of his grandfather, King Oscar II. In 1938 he was elected a member of the Virginia Society of the Cincinnati. On 29 October 1950, Crown Prince Gustaf Adolf became king at age 67 upon the death of his father and he was at the time the worlds oldest heir apparent to a monarchy. His personal motto was Plikten framför allt, Duty before all, during Gustaf VI Adolfs reign, work was underway on a new Instrument of Government to replace the 1809 constitution and produce reforms consistent with the times. Among the reforms sought by some Swedes was the replacement of the monarchy or at least some moderation of the old constitutions provision that The King alone shall govern the realm. Gustaf VI Adolfs personal qualities made him popular among the Swedish people and, in turn, Gustaf VI Adolfs expertise and interest in a wide range of fields made him respected, as did his informal and modest nature and his purposeful avoidance of pomp. While the monarchy had been de facto subordinate to the Riksdag and ministers since 1917, even these nominal powers were removed when Swedens constitutional reform became complete in 1975, thus making Gustaf Adolf the last monarch to wield even nominal political power. He was succeeded on the throne by his 27-year-old grandson Carl XVI Gustaf and he died the day before the election of 1973, which is suggested to have swayed it in support of the incumbent Social Democratic government. In a break with tradition, he was not buried in Riddarholmskyrkan in Stockholm and he was the last surviving son of Gustaf V. The Kings reputation as a professional amateur professor was widely known, nationally and internationally, Gustaf VI Adolf was a devoted archaeologist, and was admitted to the British Academy for his work in botany in 1958. Gustaf VI Adolf participated in expeditions in China, Greece, Korea and Italy. Gustaf VI Adolf had a private library consisting of 80000 volumes. He had an interest in specialist literature on Chinese art and East Asian history, throughout his life, King Gustaf VI Adolf was particularly interested in the history of civilization, and he participated in several archaeological expeditions. His other great area of interest was botany, concentrating in flowers and he was considered an expert on the Rhododendron flower. At Sofiero Castle he created one of the very finest Rhododendron collections, like his son, Prince Bertil, Gustaf VI Adolf maintained wide, lifelong interests in sports
Gustaf VI Adolf of Sweden
–
King Gustaf Adolf in 1962
Gustaf VI Adolf of Sweden
–
Gustaf Adolf photographed with his younger brother
Prince Vilhelm in 1885.
Gustaf VI Adolf of Sweden
–
Gustaf Adolf as Crown Prince and Duke of Scania
Gustaf VI Adolf of Sweden
–
Crown Prince Gustaf Adolf meets some English footballers (c. 1910–1915).
47.
Nadejda Mountbatten, Marchioness of Milford Haven
–
Nadejda Mikhailovna Mountbatten, Marchioness of Milford Haven was the second daughter of Grand Duke Michael Mikhailovich of Russia and his morganatic wife Countess Sophie von Merenberg. She was a sister of Countess Anastasia de Torby. Her paternal grandparents were Grand Duke Michael Nicolaievich of Russia and Princess Cecily of Baden, Michael was the seventh and last child of Nicholas I of Russia and Charlotte of Prussia. Her mother was a granddaughter of Aleksandr Pushkin, who in turn was a great-grandson of Peter the Greats African protégé, nicknamed Nada, she married Prince George of Battenberg, later the 2nd Marquess of Milford Haven, in London, England, on 15 November 1916. They had two children, Lady Tatiana Elizabeth Mountbatten, who died unmarried, david Michael Mountbatten, 3rd Marquess of Milford Haven, father of the present Marquess. Lady Milford Haven also appeared as a witness at the trial, before leaving for the United States to testify, Lady Milford Haven publicly denounced the maids testimony as a set of malicious, terrible lies. Lady Milford Haven died in Cannes, France, in 1963
Nadejda Mountbatten, Marchioness of Milford Haven
–
Nadejda de Torby, c. 1914
Nadejda Mountbatten, Marchioness of Milford Haven
–
From left to right: Nadja Michailovna, Michael Michailowitsch, Anastasia Michailovna and their father Michail Michailowitsch Romanow
48.
Edwina Mountbatten, Countess Mountbatten of Burma
–
She was born in 1901, the elder daughter of Wilfred William Ashley, later 1st Baron Mount Temple, who was a Conservative Member of Parliament. Edwina Ashley was patrilineally descended from the Earls of Shaftesbury who had ranked as baronets since 1622. From this cadet branch, the Ashley-Cooper peers would inherit the estates of Broadlands and Classiebawn Castle in Sligo, ashleys mother was Amalia Mary Maud Cassel, daughter of the international magnate Sir Ernest Joseph Cassel, friend and private financier to the future King Edward VII. Cassel was one of the richest and most powerful men in Europe and he lost his beloved wife, for whom he had converted from Judaism to Roman Catholicism. He also lost his child, Amalia. He was then to leave the bulk of his vast fortune to Edwina and her grandfather, Sir Ernest, solved the domestic dilemma by inviting her to live with him and, eventually, to act as hostess at his London residence, Brook House. Later, his other mansions, Moulton Paddocks and Branksome Dene, by the time Lord Louis Mountbatten first met Edwina in 1920, she was a leading member of London society. Her maternal grandfather died in 1921, leaving her £2 million, later, she would inherit the country seat of Broadlands, Hampshire, from her father, Wilfred William Ashley, 1st Baron Mount Temple. She and Mountbatten married on 18 July 1922 at St. Margarets Church, the reception was held in Brook House after which the couple rode a Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost to the brides familys country house. Edwina was known to be wildly promiscuous throughout the marriage, doing little to hide such indiscretions from her husband and he became aware of her numerous lovers, accepted them and even developed friendships with some of them - making them part of the family. Louis Mountbatten eventually gained a long-time French mistress and the couple settled into a type of ménage à quatre, edwinas affair with Prime Minister Nehru of India both during and after their post WWII service has been widely documented. The Mountbattens had two daughters, Patricia and Pamela, in her memoir daughter Pamela describes Edwina as a detached, rarely seen mother who preferred travelling the world with her current lover to mothering her children. At the outbreak of the Second World War, Lady Mountbatten acquired a new purpose in life and devoted her considerable intelligence, in 1941, Mountbattens visited the United States, where she thanked efforts to raise funds for the British Red Cross and St John’s Ambulance Brigade. In 1942, she was appointed Superintendent-in-Chief of the St John’s Ambulance Brigade serving extensively with Brigade, in 1945, she assisted in the repatriation of prisoners of war in the South East Asia. She was awarded a CBE in 1943 and made a Dame Commander of the Royal Victorian Order in 1946 and she also received the American Red Cross Medal. She is especially remembered for her service in the period of India. Lord and Lady Mountbatten served as the last Viceroy and Vicereine of pre-Partition India, after Partition, Lord Mountbatten remained briefly as the first of the two Governors-General of India. In 1950 the link with the monarchy was severed and Indias governor general was replaced with a non-executive president, Lady Mountbatten, in all accounts of the violent disruption that followed the Partition of India, is universally praised for her heroic efforts in relieving the misery
Edwina Mountbatten, Countess Mountbatten of Burma
–
Edwina and her husband, early 1920s
Edwina Mountbatten, Countess Mountbatten of Burma
–
Mountbattens with Muhammad Ali Jinnah, founder and first Governor General of Pakistan
Edwina Mountbatten, Countess Mountbatten of Burma
–
Lady Mountbatten at Police Hospital, Delhi
Edwina Mountbatten, Countess Mountbatten of Burma
–
Lady Mountbatten speaking on behalf of the
Red Cross at the
Central Bandstand, Herne Bay, Kent, England around 1939
49.
Ernest Louis, Grand Duke of Hesse
–
Ernest Louis Charles Albert William was the last Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine from 1892 until 1918. Ernest Louis was the son of Louis IV, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine and his wife Princess Alice of the United Kingdom, daughter of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg. He was given the name Louis after his father, and was a brother of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, wife of Tsar Nicholas II. Ernest Louiss early life was shrouded with death, when he was five, his brother Prince Friedrich died. The two boys had been playing a game when the boy, who suffered from haemophilia. When I die, you must die too, and all the others, why cant we all die together. I dont want to die alone, like Frittie, he told his nurse. To his mother he said, I dreamt that I was dead and was gone up to Heaven, in 1878, an epidemic of diphtheria swept through Darmstadt. All the children and their father fell ill, Princess Alice cared for her sick husband and children, but on 16 November, the youngest of them, Princess Marie, died. Alice kept the news from her family for weeks, until Ernest Louis. When his mother revealed Maries death, Ernest Louis was overcome with grief, in comforting her grieving son, Alice kissed him, and within a week, she fell ill and soon died, on December 14th, the anniversary of her own fathers death. Due to the homosexuality of Ernest Louis, the marriage was not a happy one. They had two children, a daughter, Elisabeth, born on March 11,1895, who died of fever on November 16,1903 at age eight. Efforts to rekindle the marriage failed, and so when Queen Victoria died in January 1901 her significant opposition to the end of the marriage was removed. The couple had become estranged and were divorced 21 December 1901 on grounds of mutual antipathy by a special verdict of the Supreme Court of Hesse. Louis, Prince of Hesse and by Rhine, who married the Hon. Margaret Geddes daughter of Lord Geddes, Louis adopted Moritz, Landgrave of Hesse as his heir, thereby uniting the two lines of the Hesse family. In addition to his marriage, Ernest Louis maintained a friendship with the bisexual Karl August Lingner. When Lingner died of cancer he bequeathed Schloss Tarasp in Switzerland to Ernest Louis
Ernest Louis, Grand Duke of Hesse
–
Ernest Louis
Ernest Louis, Grand Duke of Hesse
–
Ernest with his grandmother Queen Victoria and sisters Victoria, Elizabeth, Irene and Alix two months after the deaths of his mother and younger sister. All are wearing
mourning clothes.
Ernest Louis, Grand Duke of Hesse
–
Ernest was still devastated by the memory of his daughter's death thirty years later. "My little Elisabeth," he wrote in his memoirs, "was the sunshine of my life."
50.
Princess Victoria Melita of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha
–
She was a granddaughter of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha as well as of Emperor Alexander II of Russia and Princess Marie of Hesse and by Rhine. Born a British princess, Victoria spent her life in England. In 1889 the family moved to Coburg, where Victorias father became the duke in 1893. Instead, bowing to pressure, Victoria married in 1894 a paternal first cousin, Ernest Louis, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine, following the wishes of their shared grandmother. Victoria scandalized the royal families of Europe when she divorced her husband in 1901, the couples only child, Princess Elisabeth of Hesse and by Rhine, died of typhoid fever in 1903. Victoria married Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich in 1905 and they wed without the formal approval of Britains King Edward VII, required by the Royal Marriages Act 1772, and in defiance of Tsar Nicholas II. In retaliation, the Tsar stripped Kirill of his offices and honours and they had two daughters and settled in Paris before being allowed to visit Russia in 1909. In 1910 they moved to Russia, where Nicholas recognized her as Grand Duchess Victoria Feodorovna, after the fall of the Russian monarchy in 1917, they escaped to Finland where she gave birth to her only son. In exile they lived for years among her relatives in Germany. In 1926, Kirill proclaimed himself emperor in exile and Victoria supported her husbands claims, Victoria died after suffering a stroke while visiting her daughter Maria in Amorbach. Victoria was born on 25 November 1876 in San Anton Palace in Attard, Malta, hence her second name, Melita. Her father, who was stationed on the island as an officer in the Royal Navy, was Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh and her mother was Grand Duchess Marie Alexandrovna, the only surviving daughter of Alexander II of Russia and Marie of Hesse. As a grandchild of the British monarch, she was styled Her Royal Highness Princess Victoria of Edinburgh, within her family, she was always known as Ducky. At the time of her birth, she was 10th in the line of succession to the British throne, the princess was christened on 1 January 1877 at San Antonio Palace by a Royal Navy chaplain. Her godparents included her paternal grandmother Queen Victoria, who was represented by a proxy, after the Duke’s service in Malta was over they returned to England where the family lived for the next few years. They divided their time between Eastwell Park, their home in Kent, and Clarence House, their residence in London facing Buckingham Palace. Eastwell, an estate of 2,500 acres near Ashford, with its forest. In January 1886, shortly after Princess Victoria turned nine, the family left England when her father was appointed commander-in-chief of the Mediterranean naval squadron, for the next three years, the family lived at the San Anton Palace in Malta, Victorias birthplace
Princess Victoria Melita of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha
–
Grand Duchess Victoria Feodorovna.
Princess Victoria Melita of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha
–
The Duchess of Edinburgh with her children. From left to right:
Princess Alexandra,
Grand Duchess Maria,
Princess Beatrice,
Princess Marie,
Prince Alfred and Princess Victoria Melita
Princess Victoria Melita of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha
–
The Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha with his family. From left to right: Princess Beatrice, Alfred Duke of Saxe-Coburg Gotha, Duchess Marie,
Dowager Duchess Alexandrine, Princess Victoria, Princess Alexandra and Princess Marie at
Rosenau.
Princess Victoria Melita of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha
–
Victoria Melita and Ernst Ludwig at their marriage in 1894
.svg)
