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Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma
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Admiral of the Fleet Louis Francis Albert Victor Nicholas Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, KG, GCB, OM, GCSI, GCIE, GCVO, DSO, PC (25 June 1900 – 27 August 1979) was a British admiral and statesman and an uncle of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. He was the last Viceroy of the British Indian Empire (1947) and the first Governor-General of independent India (1947–48). From 1954 until 1959 he was the First Sea Lord, a position that had been held by his father, Prince Louis of Battenberg, some forty years earlier.
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Admiral of the Fleet Louis Francis Albert Victor Nicholas Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, KG, GCB, OM, GCSI, GCIE, GCVO, DSO, PC (25 June 1900 – 27 August 1979) was a British admiral and statesman and an uncle of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. He was the last Viceroy of the British Indian Empire (1947) and the first Governor-General of independent India (1947–48). From 1954 until 1959 he was the First Sea Lord, a position that had been held by his father, Prince Louis of Battenberg, some forty years earlier. Mountbatten was assassinated by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), who planted a bomb in his boat at Mullaghmore, County Sligo in the Republic of Ireland.
Ancestry
Mountbatten was born in Frogmore House, Windsor, in England, as His Serene Highness Prince Louis of Battenberg, although his German styles and titles were dropped in 1917. He was the youngest child and the second son of Prince Louis of Battenberg and his wife Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine. His maternal grandparents were Ludwig IV, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine and Princess Alice of the United Kingdom, who was a daughter of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. His paternal grandparents were Prince Alexander of Hesse and Princess Julia of Battenberg. His paternal grandparents' marriage was morganatic, because his grandmother was not of royal lineage; as a result, he and his father were styled "Serene Highness" rather than "Royal Highness," were not eligible to be titled Princes of Hesse and were given the less desirable Battenberg title. His siblings were Princess Andrew of Greece (mother of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh), Queen Louise of Sweden, and George Mountbatten, 2nd Marquess of Milford Haven.
His father was First Sea Lord at the outbreak of the First World War, but the prevailing extreme anti-German feelings obliged him to resign. In 1917, when the Royal Family stopped using their German names and titles, Prince Louis of Battenberg became Louis Mountbatten, and was created Marquess of Milford Haven. His second son acquired the courtesy style Lord Louis Mountbatten and was known as Lord Louis informally until his death notwithstanding his being granted a viscountcy in recognition of his wartime service in the Far East and an earldom for his role in the transition of India from British dependency to sovereign state. In childhood he visited the Imperial Court of Russia at St Petersburg and became intimate with the doomed Russian Imperial Family; in later life he was called upon authoritatively to rebut claims by pretenders to be the supposedly surviving Grand Duchess Anastasia. As a young man he had romantic feelings towards Anastasia's sister, the Grand Duchess Maria, and until the end of his own life he kept her photograph at his bedside.
After his nephew's change of name and engagement to the future Queen, he is alleged to have referred to the United Kingdom's dynasty as the future "House of Mountbatten", whereupon the Dowager Queen Mary reportedly refused to have anything to do with "that Battenberg nonsense", and the name of the Royal house remains Windsor by subsequent Royal decree — this can, however, be changed on the Monarch's wishes. After the marriage of Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, it was decreed that their non-royal descendants were to bear the (maiden) surname "Mountbatten-Windsor".
Career
Early career
After Lockers Park Prep School, and Naval Cadet School, Mountbatten served in the Royal Navy during World War I. He accompanied Edward, Prince of Wales on a 1922 royal tour of India (where Edwina Ashley met him and he proposed marriage, which was accepted), and consolidated a firm friendship with the Prince. His relations with Edward cooled substantially during the latter's 1936 reign as Edward VIII and during the Abdication Crisis. Mountbatten's loyalties between the wider Royal Family and the throne, on the one hand, and the then-King, on the other, were tested. Mountbatten came down firmly on the side of Prince Albert, the Duke of York, who was to assume the throne as George VI in his brother's place. Mountbatten also attended Christ's College, Cambridge.
Second World War
In the Second World War he commanded the 5th Destroyer Flotilla. His ship, the destroyer HMS Kelly, was famous for many daring exploits. In early May 1940, Mountbatten led a British convoy in through the fog to evacuate the Allied forces participating in the Namsos Campaign. In 1940 he invented the Mountbatten Pink naval camouflage pigment. His ship was sunk in May 1941 during the Crete Campaign.
In August 1941 Mountbatten was appointed captain of HMS Illustrious which lay in Norfolk, Virginia for repairs following action at Malta in the Mediterranean in January. During this period of relative inactivity he paid a flying visit to Pearl Harbor, where he was not impressed with the poor state of readiness and a general lack of co-operation between the US Navy and US Army, including the absence of a joint HQ.
Mountbatten was a favourite of Winston Churchill (although after 1948 Churchill never spoke to him again since he was famously annoyed with Mountbatten's later role in the independence of India and Pakistan), and on 27 October 1941 Mountbatten replaced Roger Keyes as Chief of Combined Operations. He personally pushed through the disastrous Dieppe Raid of 19 August 1942 (which certain elements of the Allied military, notably Field Marshal Montgomery, felt was ill-conceived from the start). The raid on Dieppe was widely considered to be a disaster, with casualties (including those wounded and/or taken prisoner) numbering in the thousands, the great majority of them Canadians. Historian Brian Loring Villa concluded that Mountbatten conducted the raid without authority, but that his intention to do so was known to several of his superiors, who took no action to stop him.
Mountbatten claimed that the lessons learned from the Dieppe Raid were necessary for planning the Normandy invasion on D-Day nearly two years later. However, military historians such as former Royal Marine Julian Thompson have written that these lessons should not have needed a debacle such as Dieppe to be recognised.
As a result, Mountbatten became a controversial figure in Canada, with the Royal Canadian Legion distancing itself from him during his visits there during his later career; his relations with Canadian veterans "remained frosty". Nevertheless, a Royal Canadian Sea Cadet corps (RCSCC #134 Admiral Mountbatten in Sudbury, Ontario) was named after him in 1946.
In late 1942, Mountbatten proposed Project Habakkuk to Churchill; the Pykrete supercarrier project was never completed. In October 1943, Churchill appointed Mountbatten the Supreme Allied Commander South East Asia Theatre. Characteristically he set up an elaborate headquarters in the Royal Palace at Kandy, Sri Lanka, although the American generals proved unimpressed. His less practical ideas were sidelined by an experienced planning staff led by Lt-Col. James Allason, though some, such as a proposal to launch an amphibious assault near Rangoon, got as far as Churchill before being quashed. He would hold the post until the South East Asia Command (SEAC) was disbanded in 1946.
During his time as Supreme Allied Commander of the Southeast Asia Theatre, his command oversaw the recapture of Burma from the Japanese by General William Slim. Here, he worked closely with esteemed American general Albert Coady Wedemeyer. His diplomatic handling of General "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell -- his deputy and also the officer commanding the American China Burma India Theatre -- and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, leader of the Chinese Nationalist forces, was as gifted as that of General Eisenhower with General Montgomery and Winston Churchill. A personal high point was the reception of the Japanese surrender in Singapore when British troops returned to the island to receive the formal surrender of Japanese forces in the region led by General Itagaki Seishiro on 12 September 1945, codenamed Operation Tiderace.
The Last Viceroy
His experience in the region and in particular his perceived Labour sympathies at that time led to Clement Attlee appointing him Viceroy of India after the war. In his position as Viceroy, Mountbatten oversaw the granting of independence to the Partitioned India as India and Pakistan (In subsequent years, pre-Independence India has often been referred to as "British India." Prior to Partition and Independence, "British India" referred to those parts of India which were directly administered by the British, as opposed to those portions of pre-Independence India which were under the control of the Indian princes.)
He developed a strong relationship with the Indian princes who were said to have considerable confidence in him, and on the basis of his relationship with the British monarchy persuaded most of them to accede to the new states of India and Pakistan. This was vitally important in the lead-up to Indian independence, though ultimately post-Independence India and Pakistan abolished their prerogatives.
With his strong friendship with Jawaharlal Nehru and amicable relations with Mahatma Gandhi, but an inability to work his famous charm on Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Mountbatten quickly gave up hope of salvaging a unified independent India, becoming resigned to Partition into a post-Independence Pakistan and India. After Independence (midnight of 14 August/15 August 1947, celebrated on the 14th in Pakistan and the 15th in India) he remained in New Delhi for ten months, serving as the first of independent India's two governors general until June 1948 (the monarchy being abolished in 1950 and the office of governor general of India replaced with a non-executive presidency.) Notwithstanding extremely effective self-promotion during his lifetime as to his own part in Indian independence — notably in the television series "The Life and Times of Admiral of the Fleet Lord Mountbatten of Burma", produced by his son-in-law Lord Brabourne, and Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins's rather sensationalised Freedom at Midnight (as to which he was the main informant) — his record is seen as mixed; one view is that he hastened the independence process unduly, foreseeing vast disruption and loss of life and not wanting this to occur on the British watch, but thereby actually causing it to occur, especially during the partition of the Punjab, but also to a lesser extent, in Bengal.
John Kenneth Galbraith, the Canadian-American Harvard University economist, who advised governments of India during the 1950s, became an intimate of Nehru and served as the American ambassador from 1961–63, was a particularly harsh critic of Mountbatten in this regard. The horrific casualties of the partition of the Punjab are luridly described in Collins' and LaPierre's Freedom at Midnight and more latterly in Bapsi Sidhwa's novel Ice Candy Man (published in the USA as Cracking India), made into the film Earth. In all renderings of the appalling carnage that followed the Partition, Lady Mountbatten is universally praised for her heroic efforts in relieving the misery and to this day she remains a heroine of the Partition period in India.
Career after India and Pakistan
After India, Mountbatten served in the Mediterranean Fleet and as a staff officer in the Admiralty. He took great personal pride and pleasure in serving as First Sea Lord and later as Chief of the Defence Staff for six years (1959–65), which he also took as reparation for the slur on his father who had been forced to resign as First Sea Lord in 1914 after being falsely accused of pro-German sympathy.
It is claimed that in 1967 Mountbatten attended a private meeting with press baron and MI5 agent Cecil King, and the Government's chief scientific adviser, Solly Zuckerman. King wanted to stage a coup against the then crisis-stricken Labour Government of Harold Wilson, and urged Mountbatten to become the leader of a Government of national salvation. Mountbatten apparently considered the idea of heading the coup, but Zuckerman pointed out that it was treason, and the idea came to nothing because of Mountbatten's reluctance to act. Claims of an MI5 plot against Wilson have been investigated a number of times and no credible evidence discovered.
Mountbatten was appointed the first Lord Lieutenant of the Isle of Wight following that county's creation in 1974. He kept the position until his death.
Mountbatten took great pride in enhancing intercultural understanding and in 1984, with his eldest daughter as the patron, the was developed to allow young adults the opportunity to enhance their intercultural appreciation and experience by spending time abroad.
From 1967 until 1978, Mountbatten became president of the United World Colleges Organisation, then represented by a single college: that of Atlantic College in South Wales. Mountbatten supported the United World Colleges and encouraged heads of state, politicians and personalities throughout the world to share his interest. Under Mountbatten's presidency and personal involvement, the United World College of South East Asia was established in Singapore in 1971, followed by the UWC of the Pacific (now known as Pearson College) in Victoria, Canada in 1974. In 1978, Lord Mountbatten of Burma passed the Presidency to his great-nephew, HRH The Prince of Wales.
Personal life
Marriage
Mountbatten's nickname among family and friends was "Dickie," notable in that "Richard" was not among his given names. This was because his great-grandmother, Queen Victoria, suggested the nickname of "Nicky", however it got mixed up with the many Nickys of the Russian Imperial Family so they changed it to Dickie. Mountbatten was married on 18 July 1922 to Edwina Cynthia Annette Ashley, daughter of Wilfred William Ashley, later 1st Baron Mount Temple, himself a grandson of the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury. She was the favourite granddaughter of the Edwardian magnate Sir Ernest Cassel and the principal heir to his fortune. There followed a glamorous honeymoon tour of European courts and America which famously included a visit with Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin in Hollywood, Chaplin creating a widely seen home movie "Nice and Easy", featuring the talents of Fairbanks, Pickford, Chaplin and the Mountbattens. They had two daughters: Patricia Mountbatten, 2nd Countess Mountbatten of Burma (born on 14 February 1924), and Lady Pamela Carmen Louise (Hicks) (born on 19 April 1929).
Lady Mountbatten died at age 58 on 21 February 1960, in Jesselton (modern Kota Kinabalu), North Borneo (modern Malaysian state of Sabah); as documented in the official biography by Philip Ziegler, the marriage had been stormy throughout, with adulterous dalliances on both parts. Both husband and wife readily admitted to several affairs, particularly during the 1930s; Lady Mountbatten's intimacy with Nehru has long been well known; and both Mountbatten daughters have candidly acknowledged that their mother had a fiery temperament and was not always supportive of her husband when jealousy of his high profile overbore a sense of their having common cause.
During the Indian viceroyalty, in particular, Mountbatten's evenings were often given over to assuaging his wife's feelings of angry resentment. Latterly, A.N. Wilson in his well-regarded After the Victorians: 1901–1953 has asserted that Mountbatten himself carried on affairs with lovers of both sexes and that he was known to friends as "Mountbottom." A small item in Private Eye magazine regarding drunken naval ratings at Mountbatten's London home, and which alluded to Mountbatten's bisexuality, was widely commented upon. Mountbatten's official biographer wrote that he could find nothing to support the allegation, but several eyewitness accounts supporting Private Eye were later published.
Until his assassination in 1979, Mountbatten kept a photograph of his cousin Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna of Russia, beside his bed in memory of the crush he once had upon her.
Daughter as heir
Since Mountbatten had no sons, when he was created Viscount on 23 August 1946, then Earl and Baron on 28 October 1947, the Letters Patent were drafted such that the titles would pass to the female line and its male issue. This was at his firm insistence: his relationship with his elder daughter had always been particularly close and it was his special wish that she succeed to the title in her own right. There was longstanding precedent for such remainders for military commanders: past examples included the 1st Viscount Nelson and the 1st Earl Roberts.
Mentorship of Prince of Wales
Mountbatten was a strong influence in the upbringing of his great-nephew, The Prince of Wales, and later as a mentor—"Honorary Grandfather" and "Honorary Grandson", they fondly called each other according to the Jonathan Dimbleby biography of the Prince—though according to both the Ziegler biography of Mountbatten and the Dimbleby biography of the Prince the results may have been mixed. He from time to time strongly upbraided the Prince for showing tendencies towards the idle pleasure-seeking dilettantism of his predecessor as Prince of Wales, King Edward VIII, later known as the Duke of Windsor, whom Mountbatten had known well in their youth. Yet he also encouraged the Prince to enjoy the bachelor life while he could and then to marry a young and inexperienced girl so as to ensure a stable married life.
Mountbatten's qualification for offering advice to this particular heir to the throne was unique; it was he who had arranged the visit of George VI and Queen Elizabeth to Dartmouth Royal Naval College on 22 July 1939, taking care to include the young Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret in the invitation, but assigning his nephew, Cadet Prince Philip of Greece, to keep them amused while their parents toured the facility. This was the first recorded meeting of Charles's future parents. But a few months later, Mountbatten's efforts nearly came to naught when he received a letter from his sister Alice in Athens informing him that Philip was visiting her and had agreed to permanently repatriate to Greece. Within days, Philip received a command from his cousin and sovereign, King George II of the Hellenes, to resume his naval career in Britain which, though given without explanation, the young prince obeyed.
(1982) at St. George's Cathedral, Cape Town, South Africa, in memory of Lord Mountbatten.]]
In 1974 Mountbatten began corresponding with Charles about a potential marriage to his granddaughter, Hon. Amanda Knatchbull. It was about this time he also recommended that the 25-year-old prince get on with sowing some wild oats, and he made his own home available for Charles' romantic liaisons, which could be arranged with minimal press knowledge.
Charles dutifully wrote to Amanda's mother (who was also his godmother), Lady Brabourne, about his interest. Her answer was supportive, but advised him that she thought her daughter still rather young to be courted.
Four years later Mountbatten secured an invitation for himself and Amanda to accompany Charles on his planned 1980 tour of India. Their fathers promptly objected. Prince Philip thought that the Indian public's reception would more likely reflect response to the uncle than to the nephew. Lord Brabourne counselled that the intense scrutiny of the press would be more likely to drive Mountbatten's godson and granddaughter apart than together.
Charles was re-scheduled to tour India alone, but Mountbatten did not live to the planned date of departure. When Charles finally did propose marriage to Amanda, later in 1979, the circumstances were tragically changed, and she refused him.
Death
Mountbatten usually holidayed at his summer home in Mullaghmore, County Sligo, a small seaside village between Bundoran, County Donegal and Sligo, County Sligo on the northwest coast of Ireland. Bundoran was a popular holiday destination for volunteers of the IRA, many of whom were aware of Mountbatten's presence and movements in Mullaghmore. Despite security advice and warnings from the Garda Síochána, on 27 August 1979, Mountbatten went sailing in his thirty-foot wooden boat, the Shadow V, which was moored in the small harbour at Mullaghmore. An IRA member named Thomas McMahon had slipped onto the unguarded boat that night and attached a radio-controlled fifty-pound bomb. When he was on the boat en route to Donegal Bay, McMahon detonated the bomb from shore. Mountbatten was fatally wounded and died soon after the blast. Others killed in the blast were Nicholas Knatchbull, his elder daughter's fourteen-year-old son; Paul Maxwell, a 15-year-old youth from County Fermanagh who was working as a crew member; and Baroness Brabourne, his elder daughter's 83-year-old mother-in-law who was seriously injured in the explosion, and died from her injuries the following day.
Nicholas Knatchbull's mother and father, along with his twin brother Timothy, survived the explosion but were seriously injured.
Sinn Féin vice-president Gerry Adams said of Mountbatten's death:
The IRA gave clear reasons for the execution. I think it is unfortunate that anyone has to be killed, but the furor created by Mountbatten's death showed up the hypocritical attitude of the media establishment. As a member of the House of Lords, Mountbatten was an emotional figure in both British and Irish politics. What the IRA did to him is what Mountbatten had been doing all his life to other people; and with his war record I don't think he could have objected to dying in what was clearly a war situation. He knew the danger involved in coming to this country. In my opinion, the IRA achieved its objective: people started paying attention to what was happening in Ireland.
On the same day Mountbatten was assassinated, the IRA also ambushed and killed eighteen British Army soldiers, sixteen of them from the Parachute Regiment at Warrenpoint, County Down in what became known as the Warrenpoint ambush. After this action, graffiti proclaiming "Bloody Sunday's Not Forgotten, We Got Eighteen And Mountbatten" was seen in some Republican areas in Ireland.
Prince Charles took Mountbatten's death particularly hard, remarking to friends that things were never the same after losing his mentor.
Funeral
The President of Ireland, Patrick Hillery, and the Taoiseach, Jack Lynch, attended a memorial service for Mountbatten in St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin.
Mountbatten was buried in Romsey Abbey after a televised funeral in Westminster Abbey which he himself had comprehensively planned.
On 23 November 1979, Thomas McMahon was convicted of murder for his part in the bombing and later was released in 1998 under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.
On hearing of Mountbatten's death, the then Master of the Queen's Music, Malcolm Williamson, was moved to write the Lament in Memory of Lord Mountbatten of Burma for violin and string orchestra. One of the most poignant of tributes paid to Mountbatten, the 11-minute work was given its first performance on 5 May 1980 by the Scottish Baroque Ensemble, conducted by Leonard Friedman.
Styles from birth to death
- His Serene Highness Prince Louis of Battenberg (1900–1917)
- German: Durchlaucht Prinz Ludwig Franz Albrecht Viktor Nicholas Georg von Battenberg
- Mr. Louis Mountbatten (1917)
- Lord Louis Mountbatten (1917–1920)
- Lord Louis Mountbatten, MVO (1920–1922)
- Lord Louis Mountbatten, KCVO (1921–1937)
- Lord Louis Mountbatten, GCVO (1937–1941)
- Lord Louis Mountbatten, GCVO, DSO (1941–1943)
- Lord Louis Mountbatten, GCVO, CB, DSO (1943–1946)
- The Right Honourable The Viscount Mountbatten of Burma, KG, GCVO, KCB, DSO (1946–1947)
- The Right Honourable The Viscount Mountbatten of Burma, KG, GCVO, KCB, DSO, PC (1947)
- The Right Honourable The Earl Mountbatten of Burma, KG, GCSI, GCIE, GCVO, KCB, DSO, PC (1947–1955)
- The Right Honourable The Earl Mountbatten of Burma, KG, GCB, GCSI, GCIE, GCVO, DSO, PC (1955–1965)
- The Right Honourable The Earl Mountbatten of Burma, KG, GCB, OM, GCSI, GCIE, GCVO, DSO, PC (1965–1979)
Popular Culture
Lord Mountbatten (played by Christopher Owen) appears in the 2008 film The Bank Job, telling the story of a government-approved bank robbery in the 1970s. In a covert rendezvous at Paddington station, Mountbatten is portrayed as the representative of the British government and gives the robbers documents guaranteeing immunity from prosecution, in exchange for photographs potentially embarrassing to the Royal Family. Mountbatten quips "I haven't had this much excitement since the war".
In his song Post World War Two Blues, published on the LP Past, Present and Future from 1973, singer and songwriter Al Stewart has a reference to Mountbatten's controversy with Winston Churchill about India.
Mountbatten is due to feature in an upcoming film Indian Summer which covers his time as Viceroy of India, and specifically the affair between his wife and Nehru. It is loosely based on the book Indian Summer: The Secret history of the end of an empire by Alex von Tunzelmann.
Lord Mountbatten was played by David Warner in the 2008 television film In Love with Barbara, a biopic of the romantic novelist Barbara Cartland which was shown on BBC Four in the United Kingdom.
The Mountbatten School was opened in his name in 1969 on land that originally used to be part of the Broadlands Estate in Whitenap, Romsey.
Benny Hill told a famous joke which went, "What's white and flies?" "Lord Mountbatten's Plimsol"
Honours
A road located at the Central Business District (CBD) of Singapore was named Mountbatten Road, in reference to Louis Mountbatten.
See also
Further reading
- Philip Ziegler, Mountbatten: the official biography, (Collins, 1985)
- Richard Hough, Mountbatten; Hero of our time, (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1980)
- The Life and Times of Lord Mountbatten (Hutchinson, 1968)
- Andrew Roberts Eminent Churchillians, (Phoenix Press, 1994).
- Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins Freedom at Midnight, (Collins, 1975).
- Robert Lacey Royal (2002)
- A.N. Wilson After the Victorians: 1901-1953, (Hutchinson, 2005)
- Jon Latimer Burma: The Forgotten War, (John Murray, 2004)
- Montgomery-Massingberd, Hugh (editor), Burke's Guide to the Royal Family, Burke's Peerage, London, 1973, ISBN 0220662223
- Tony Heathcote The British Admirals of the Fleet 1734 - 1995, (Pen & Sword Ltd, 2002), ISBN 0 85052 835 6
External links
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- The Mountbatten School, Romsey- http://www.mountbatten.hants.sch.uk/home/index.php
Supreme Allied Commander South East Asia Theatre
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