Prince Alexander of Hesse and by Rhine
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Prince Alexander | |||||
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Born | Darmstadt, Hesse | 15 July 1823||||
Died | 15 December 1888 Jugenheim, Hesse | (aged 65)||||
Burial | Rosenhohe, Darmstadt | ||||
Spouse | Julia, Princess of Battenberg | ||||
Issue |
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Hesse-Darmstadt | |||||
Father | Louis II, Grand Duke of Hesse (officially) Wilhelmine of Baden |
Grand Ducal Family of Hesse and by Rhine |
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Louis II |
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Prince Alexander of Hesse and by Rhine
Family and background
It was openly rumoured that Alexander and his sister Marie were not the children of the Grand Duke, but that their father was actually August von Senarclens de Grancy, their mother's chamberlain. His mother, although married to the grand duke, lived apart from her husband, who did not repudiate paternity of any of the four children born during the marriage. His ancestry listed below assumes his legitimacy. See Grancy's page for his rumored paternal ancestry.
When the future emperor
Alexander's marriage
Alexander fell in love with
Alexander left for England to contemplate his future, but then returned to Russia and
Alexander's older brother
Alexander's wife would deliver his first child barely six months after their elopement. Nonetheless, Julia von Hauke was a countess in her own right, as well as a former ward of the Russian Emperor whose husband retained, despite exile from Russia, the sympathetic support of the tsarevich and tsarevna. Grand Duke Louis III therefore chose to distinguish her from several non-royal wives of other Hessian princes by conferring upon her, along with the Battenberg countship, the
Career
As a
But once his elder brother recognized his wife, he was able to obtain an appointment in the Austrian army, where he resumed his military career, although remaining sufficiently in disgrace never to be billeted in Vienna. Each of his children would be born in a different city, depending upon where in the Austro-Hungarian empire Prince Alexander was stationed.
After serving Austria with distinction in several battles, he was given a major command in Hesse's small army in its war, as an ally of Austria, with Prussia in 1866. By this time his wife and children had taken up their home at Alexander's small castle at Seeheim-Jugenheim in Hesse, to which he retired after Prussia defeated Austria and Hesse. Although the electorate of Hesse-Kassel, ruled by another branch of Alexander's family, was annexed by Prussia for adhering to the losing side, the fact that Hesse-Darmstadt's grand duke was the brother-in-law of the Russian tsar saved its independence, although not without loss of territory. Henceforth, Alexander and his family alternated between their castle in the grandducal capital of Darmstadt, and their country home a few hours away by carriage.
Alexander was often in attendance at his elder brother's court. But a shift occurred when his sister, now Empress of Russia, began to pay annual visits to her brother in the 1870s along with her husband, children, and a large entourage. Louis III, while benefitting from his kinship to the tsar, preferred to defer entertaining him to Alexander and Marie at Heiligenberg. These annual visits had the twofold effect of enhancing the international prestige of the grandduchy while socially rehabilitating Alexander's morganatic household. The memoirs of his daughter, Marie of Battenberg, document the cordiality between Alexander and his eldest brother, while also recording the growing importance of her own family's household as diplomats who wished to pay court to the Russian emperor would await his annual visit to the Hessian countryside to do so discreetly in the more intimate setting of Alexander's home.
Children
Although Prince Alexander retained his own dynastic rights and
Alexander of Hesse and Julia of Battenberg had five children. The children were:
- Princess Marie of Battenberg 1852–1923
- Prince Louis of Battenberg 1854–1921
- Prince Alexander of Battenberg, 1857–1893
- Prince Henry of Battenberg 1858–1896
- Prince Francis Joseph of Battenberg 1861–1924
Prince Alexander of Hesse died of cancer in 1888; Princess Julia of Battenberg, having converted to Lutheranism in 1875, died at Schloss Heiligenberg in 1895 at the age of 70. They lived to see four of their five children, who had no rights of succession to the Hessian throne, mount a throne or marry dynastically, and to become welcome in-laws to Queen Victoria, whose correspondence reflected a consistent respect and fondness for the Battenberg family.
Descendants
Prince Alexander's children formed marital ties with several reigning families.
- Prince Louis married Princess Victoria (daughter of Queen Victoria's second daughter, Alice). Their children included:
- Gustaf VI Adolf of Sweden.
- King Charles III of the United Kingdom.
- Prince Henry married Queen Victoria's youngest daughter, Beatrice. Their only daughter:
- Felipe VI.
- Prince Alexander became the first Wilhelm II, as a matter of dynastic pride, prompting Queen Victoria to withdraw her support as a concession to diplomacy, and Alexander to lose interest in favor of a morganatic marriage to Johanna Loisinger.
Honours and awards
Prince Alexander received the following awards:[1]
- Hesse-Darmstadt:[2]
- Grand Cross of the Ludwig Order, 8 November 1839
- Grand Cross of the Merit Order of Philip the Magnanimous, with Swords, 1 May 1840
- Military Medical Cross, 2 April 1871
- Hesse-Kassel:[3]
- Grand Cross of the Golden Lion, 29 December 1847
- Knight of the Military Merit Order, 20 March 1860
- Anhalt: Grand Cross of the Order of Albert the Bear
- Knight of St. Hubert, 1852[4]
- Baden:[5]
- Knight of the House Order of Fidelity, 1843
- Grand Cross of the Zähringer Lion, 1843
- Brunswick: Grand Cross of the Order of Henry the Lion
- Mecklenburg:
- Grand Cross of the Wendish Crown, with Crown in Ore
- Military Merit Cross, 2nd Class (Schwerin)
- Nassau:[6]
- Knight of the Gold Lion of Nassau, June 1863
- Grand Cross of the Order of Adolphe of Nassau, with Swords, September 1864
- Prussia:[7]
- Knight of the Black Eagle, 25 September 1847
- Pour le Mérite (military), 3 November 1859
- Knight of Honour of the Johanniter Order, 23 May 1884
- Saxony: Knight of the Rue Crown, 1872[8]
- Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach: Grand Cross of the White Falcon, 1 October 1857[9]
- Württemberg: Grand Cross of the Württemberg Crown, 1857[10]
- Austria:[11]
- Grand Cross of the Imperial Order of Leopold, September 1857
- Knight of the Military Order of Maria Theresa, 1859
- Grand Cross of the Royal Hungarian Order of St. Stephen, 1874
- Grand Cross of St. Alexander
- Denmark: Knight of the Elephant, 20 November 1875[12]
- Greece: Grand Cross of the Redeemer
- Italy: Grand Cross of Saints Maurice and Lazarus
- Grand Cross of St. Charles, 23 April 1865[13]
- Ottoman Empire: Order of Osmanieh, 1st Class
- Russia:
- Knight of St. Andrew, in Diamonds, 15 April 1841[14]
- Knight of St. Alexander Nevsky, 15 April 1841[14]
- Knight of the White Eagle, 15 April 1841[14]
- Knight of St. Anna, 1st Class, 15 April 1841[14]
- Knight of St. George, 4th Class, 1845; 3rd Class, July 1859
- Knight of St. Vladimir, 1st Class
- United Kingdom: Honorary Grand Cross of the Bath (military), 22 July 1885[15]
Ancestry
Ancestors of Prince Alexander of Hesse and by Rhine | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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References
- ^ Hof- und Staats-Handbuch des Großherzogtum Hessen (1886/7), Genealogy pp. 3-4
- ^ Hof- und Staats-Handbuch ... Hessen (1879), "Großherzogliche Orden und Ehrenzeichen" pp. 9, 46, 146
- ^ Hessen-Kassel (1866). Kurfürstlich Hessisches Hof- und Staatshandbuch: 1866. Waisenhaus. pp. 15, 42.
- ^ Bayern (1870). Hof- und Staatshandbuch des Königreichs Bayern: 1870. Landesamt. p. 9.
- ^ Hof- und Staats-Handbuch des Großherzogtum Baden (1862), "Großherzogliche Orden" pp. 32, 44
- ^ Staats- und Adreß-Handbuch des Herzogthums Nassau (1866), "Herzogliche Orden" pp. 9, 12
- ^ "Königlich Preussische Ordensliste", Preussische Ordens-Liste (in German), 1, Berlin: 5, 11, 1048, 1886
- ^ "Königliche Ritter-orden", Staatshandbuch für den Freistaat Sachsen (1873) (in German), Dresden, 1873, p. 4
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: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - ^ Staatshandbuch für das Großherzogtum Sachsen / Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach (1859), "Großherzogliche Hausorden" p. 13 Archived 2019-08-22 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Württemberg (Kingdom). Statistisches Landesamt (1877). Staatshandbuch für Württemberg. Druck von W. Kohlhammer. p. 22.
- ^ "Ritter-Orden", Hof- und Staatshandbuch der Österreichisch-Ungarischen Monarchie, 1888, pp. 80, 82, 87, retrieved 2 April 2020
- ISBN 978-87-7674-434-2.
- ^ Sovereign Ordonnance of 23 April 1865
- ^ a b c d List of Cavaliers of Russian Imperial and Tsarist Orders (in Russian), St. Petersburg, 1845, pp. 3, 5, 7, 20
- ^ Shaw, Wm. A. (1906) The Knights of England, I, London, p. 198
External links
Media related to Prince Alexander of Hesse at Wikimedia Commons