The failure of the raid on Dieppe (19 August 1942) brought much criticism on Mountbatten and his Combined Operations organization, though many of the faulty decisions leading to the disaster were in fact the responsibility of others. For a time even Churchill seemed to lose confidence in his protégé and the newspaper magnate Lord Beaverbrook (at that time in the Cabinet) never forgave Mountbatten for the heavy casualties suffered by his fellow Canadians. Mountbatten, however, rose above these attacks, and secured the adoption of many techniques used in the successful landings in Normandy in June 1944. In August 1943 he accompanied the Prime Minister to the Quebec Conference, where, although not the first choice, he was appointed Supreme Allied Commander, South-East Asia, with acting promotion to admiral and the honorary ranks of lieutenant general and air marshal. He once more established a large headquarters, initially in the Indian capital, Delhi, but after April 1944 in Kandy, the ancient capital of Ceylon (Sri Lanka), with the intention (encouraged by Churchill) of personally directing the operations of all Allied forces in his Command area. He was defeated in this by the local C-in-Cs, who were supported by the Chiefs of Staff in London in their insistence that he should act as a chairman and co-ordinator.
Mountbatten’s relations with the C-in-C, Eastern Fleet, Sir James Somerville [93], to whom he had originally written in fulsome terms, grew frosty when (with SEAC press releases referring to “Mountbatten’s fleet”) he claimed authority over what was in most respects an independent command directly under the Admiralty. Somerville’s successor, Sir Bruce Fraser [95], appointed in September 1944, proved more tolerant of Mountbatten’s pretensions. Most of the heavy units of the Eastern Fleet subsequently became the nucleus of the new British Pacific Fleet and the remainder, under Sir Arthur Power [97], was renamed the East Indies Fleet and mostly allotted to SEAC’s amphibious operations. Mountbatten’s Deputy Supreme Commander, the anglophobe United States General “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell, who was also chief of staff to the Chinese Nationalist Army, never succumbed to his famous charm, and blamed Mountbatten for his recall in October 1944.
Mountbatten defined the major problems facing his command as monsoon, malaria and morale. With the Indian Army’s ablest field commander, Lieutenant General Sir William Slim, commanding the Fourteenth Army in Burma, he decided that the Allies would fight on through the monsoon of 1944–45 and gave the fullest support to improved medical services. While Slim rebuilt the morale of his own troops, Mountbatten toured more widely, addressing assembled sailors, soldiers and airmen in carefully staged “informal” talks, with the newsreel cameras in attendance, and assuring them of their ability to defeat the Japanese. In May 1945 General Sir Oliver Leese, Commander of Allied Land Forces, SEAC, decided that Slim, who had just reconquered Burma, should be removed from his Army command. Mountbatten, after consulting the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Sir Alan Brooke, dismissed Leese (with whom he was already on bad terms) and secured the appointment of Slim in his place. Their intended invasion of Malaya was pre-empted by the Japanese capitulation in response to nuclear bombardment in August 1945. Outraged at the initial offer of a barony, Mountbatten settled with reluctance for a viscountcy in the 1946 New Year Honours, with a special remainder in favour of his daughter. He declined to use his new title (Viscount Mountbatten of Burma) and continued to be known as Lord Louis Mountbatten
With the end of the war, the SEAC area was increased to include the Dutch East Indies and French Indo-China. Mountbatten had insufficient Allied forces to maintain civil order and therefore made use of surrendered Japanese troops for this purpose. In these areas, as well as in Burma and Malaya, he actively sympathized with local nationalists and thought it unrealistic to attempt the re-establishment of European colonial rule. At the end of May 1946 he left his headquarters in Singapore to return home, with reversion to his substantive rank of rear-admiral. His progressive views were appreciated by the Labour Cabinet that had come to power in 1945 and he was offered the post of Viceroy and Governor-General of India.
Mountbatten assumed office in March 1947, enthusiastically committed to the Cabinet policy of ending British rule in India within the year. He soon became friends with the Hindu leader of the Congress party, Jawaharlal Nehru, as, to an even greater extent, did the Vicereine herself, but was unable to influence the Muslim leader, Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Faced with the collapse of imperial authority, he brought forward the date of independence to 15 August 1947. The partition of the Indian Empire into two successor states, a theocratic Muslim Pakistan and a secular, predominantly Hindu, India, was accompanied by a degree of “ethnic cleansing” that left some 250,000 dead and many more as refugees. Mountbatten’s opponents argued that, under the influence of Nehru, and in a hurry to return to the Navy, he sacrificed the unity of the sub-continent, tore up British treaties with the Indian princes and failed to forestall inter-communal massacres. Against this, his sympathizers claimed that, had the nationalist leaders not been forced to accept their responsibilities without further delay, the bloodshed would have been worse, with no prospect of an orderly hand-over of power.
After the achievement of independence, Mountbatten remained as Governor-General of the new dominion of India and as chairman of a Joint Defence Council, set up to divide the assets of the British Indian Army. Pakistanis came to regard him as over-sympathetic to India, especially over the question of Kashmir, Nehru’s homeland, where the population was largely Muslim, but the ruler was a Hindu. When the state was invaded by Pathan (Pashtun) tribesmen from Pakistan, Mountbatten insisted that Indian troops could only be sent to restore order after the ruler had acceded to India. The resulting issues of legitimacy led to a series of armed conflicts between India and Pakistan and to demands for Kashmiri self-determination that, more than fifty years later, still continue to be a cause of terrorism and international tension. By October 1947 Indian politicians had come to believe that Field Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck, the Supreme Commander of the armies of both new dominions, was prejudiced in favour of Pakistan. Mountbatten arranged for his retirement and the disbandment of his headquarters, to the indignation of the Pakistanis. Auchinleck, who had come to despise Mountbatten, declined his offer to obtain him a peerage. Mountbatten himself received the customary award of governor-generals at the end of their period in office, by being advanced one step in the peerage. He was accordingly created Earl Mountbatten of Burma, again with a special remainder in favour of his daughter, on 14 August 1947.
During 1947 Mountbatten had the satisfaction of seeing his nephew, Prince Philip of Greece, [99] take the surname Mountbatten and, on 20 November 1947, marry Princess Elizabeth, heiress to George VI. Mountbatten himself had spared no effort to encourage this match and would later insist that, after her accession as Elizabeth II, a Mountbatten sat on the throne of the United Kingdom and that the Royal Family’s surname had become Mountbatten-Windsor. After leaving India at the end of June 1948 he was given command of the First Cruiser Squadron in the Mediterranean Fleet, with his flag in the cruiser Newcastle. He was promoted to vice-admiral on 22 June 1949 and from April to May 1950 was second-in-command of the Mediterranean Fleet. Between June 1950 and April 1952 he was Fourth Sea Lord at the Admiralty. On the Iranian nationalization of the British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Corporation, he argued that the British government should make the best of the situation, rather than use force to oppose what he saw as the spirit of the times. In June 1952 Mountbatten was given command of the Mediterranean Fleet, with his flag in the cruiser Glasgow, followed by the additional new NATO appointment of C-in-C, Allied Forces, Mediterranean, in January 1953. He was promoted to admiral on 27 February 1953 and in October 1954 was selected to be First Sea Lord in the Board headed by James Thomas (Lord Cilcennin) in Churchill’s second administration.
Mountbatten fulfilled a lifetime’s ambition to succeed his father in this office on 18 April 1955, with promotion to admiral of the fleet on 22 October 1956. He began with a vigorous justification of the Navy’s needs at a time when British
public opinion attributed the parlous state of the economy to excessive defence spending. The apparent uselessness of this expenditure was revealed when the Egyptian government nationalized the Suez Canal, and Anglo-French landings there in October 1956, though militarily successful, proved a political disaster. Mountbatten believed that the age of Empire was over and that the Cabinet should come to terms with nationalism in Egypt, just as he had in Burma and India. He twice offered to resign, but was persuaded that it was his duty to remain in post and was retained by Harold Macmillan when the latter succeeded Eden in January 1957. The new Minister of Defence, Duncan Sandys, was ordered to make drastic economies and to rationalize the whole defence system. Mountbatten resisted Sandys’s view that the advent of nuclear missiles had made conventional forces obsolete and argued persuasively that there was still a requirement for strong naval forces in the Far East as well as in the Atlantic. He successfully campaigned for a new generation of aircraft carriers and the conversion of old ones into commando carriers, but failed in his bid to transfer land-based maritime aircraft from the RAF to the Navy. Always fascinated by uniforms, he changed the regulations for naval head-dress so that white-topped caps, previously worn in temperate climates only in summer, became the permanent pattern.
In July 1959 Mountbatten became Chief of the Defence Staff. He pushed on with the policy of unifying the defence establishment and his normal three-year tour of office was extended by Macmillan by a further two. In 1964 the Admiralty, the War Office and the Air Ministry were renamed the Navy, Army and Air Force Departments, and combined in a new Ministry of Defence. He failed in his plan to strengthen the position of the CDS at the expense of the Chiefs of Naval, General, and Air Staffs, and alienated these officers by his cavalier attitude to truthfulness and his habit of agreeing a policy with them but privately advising the Ministers against it. In 1964 Peter Thorneycroft, who had remained in office as Defence Minister when Macmillan was succeeded by Sir Alec Douglas-Home, arranged for Mountbatten to stay on as CDS for a sixth year, while the new MOD organization was carried into effect. On the fall of the Conservative government in October 1964, the new Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, with Denis Healey as Minister of Defence, honoured this decision, but when Mountbatten left office in July 1965 it was with the feeling that the work of unification was only half-completed. Nevertheless, the steps taken in that direction had made him unpopular with his Service colleagues, who suspected him of personal aggrandisement and bad faith.
After leaving the Defence Ministry he undertook a number of official tasks, including a report into prison security. He attended to his extensive archives, opened the country house and estate at Broadlands, (inherited from his wife) to the public, contributed to a television series, The Life and Times of Lord Mountbatten, and spoke extensively on defence subjects. He became a friend and counsellor to the young Prince of Wales and studied the genealogies of the many Royal Houses with which he was connected. On 27 August 1979, together with his grandson Nicholas Knatchbull and an Irish boy, Paul Maxwell, he was murdered when Irish extremists blew up his fishing boat off his country house near Mullaghmore in County Sligo. His daughter Patricia, her husband Lord Brabourne, and their other son were injured, and Lord Brabourne’s mother died of her injuries. After a state funeral in Westminster Abbey, planned by himself, Earl Mountbatten was buried in Romsey Abbey, near Broadlands. His elder daughter, Patricia, Lady Brabourne, succeeded him as the second Countess Mountbatten. Of her father’s many biographers, one of the most scholarly, Philip Zeigler, summed up his career thus. “He flared brilliantly across the face of the twentieth century; the meteor is extinguished but the glow lingers on in the mind’s eye.”
MUNDY
Sir GEORGE RODNEY, GCB (1805–1884) [38]
George Mundy was born on 19 April 1805. His father became a general, his uncle and namesake became an admiral, and his mother was the youngest daughter of Admiral Lord Rodney, victor of the battle of The Saints (Iles des Saintes). He was educated at the Royal Naval College, Portsmouth, from February 1818 to December 1819 and was then appointed a volunteer, with two years’ seniority, in the 5th-rate Phaeton on the North America station. Between 1822 and 1824 he served in the Mediterranean as a midshipman in the 5th-rate Euryalus and the 2nd-rate Rochfort. He then moved to the South America station, where he was successively in the 5th-rate Blanche, the sloop Jaseur, the 3rd-rate Wellesley and the 2nd-rate Cambridge, serving at times as acting lieutenant before being confirmed in that rank on 4 February 1826. From July 1826 to September 1827 he was in the sloop Eclair. During 1828 Mundy was in the British fleet at Lisbon, successively in the 6th-rate Challenger and the 5th-rate Pyramus, before being promoted to commander on 25 August 1828. At the end of the Belgian War of Independence Mundy was in the 3rd-rate Donegal as a liaison officer in the Anglo-French operations to force the Dutch to surrender Antwerp. He was then a British representative in negotiations between the Belgian and Netherlands governments leading to the end of hostilities in May 1833.
In August 1833 Mundy was appointed to the sloop Favorite in which he served in the Mediterranean until returning home after his promotion to captain on 10 January 1837. In October 1842 he was appointed to command the 6th-rate Iris. After serving off the coast of West Africa in 1843 the ship was recalled to Portsmouth for a refit and to replace numerous losses from fever among her crew. She then sailed for the East Indies station, arriving at Singapore in July 1844. During 1846 Iris was in the river expedition led by Sir Thomas Cochrane [28] and James (later Rajah) Brooke against the Sultan of Brunei. Mundy commanded the boats of the larger warships and was mentioned in despatches for his part in assaulting shore positions and a subsequent pursuit of the Sultan through the swamps and rain forests of Borneo. Between August 1846 and February 1847 he commanded in further operations against the Borneo pirates and twice received the thanks of the Admiralty.
Mundy then returned home, where he remained on half-pay until July 1854, when, with the outbreak of the Crimean War, he was appointed to the 2nd-rate Nile. He served in the Baltic during 1854 and 1855 and, at the end of the war, was deployed to the West Indies in 1856. He was promoted to rear-admiral on 30 July 1857. Between 1859 and 1861, with his flag in the 2nd-rate Hannibal, he was second-in-command of the Mediterranean Fleet. This period coincided with the wars of Italian unification. In the south Garibaldi and his red-shirts crossed from Sicily under the guns of the Royal Navy and deposed the tyrannical King of Naples, Francis II, known to his subjects as “Bombino”. Mundy was stationed at Palermo and Naples to protect British interests and played a part in the relief of local civilians caught up in the fighting. He was awarded the KCB in November 1862 and became a vice-admiral on 15 December 1863. Between 1867 and 1869 Sir George Mundy was C-in-C in the West Indies. He was promoted to admiral on 26 May 1869 and was C-in-C, Portsmouth, from 1872 to 1875. He then went onto the retired list, where he was promoted to admiral of the fleet on 27 December 1877. He died, unmarried, on 23 December 1884.
NICHOLAS II
HIM Emperor (Tsar) of Russia, KG (1868–1918) [60]
The future Emperor Nicholas II was born in St Petersburg on 18 May 1868, the eldest son of the then Tsarevich Alexander, who succeeded to the Russian throne as Alexander III on the assassination of his own father, Alexander II, in 1881. Alexander III rejected his father’s liberal views and saw it as his duty to rule as an absolute monarch. Of impressive physical strength and size, he became an object of hero-worship to his small and slightly-built heir, who accepted without question his father’s opposition to any kind of constitutional reform. In 1893 he visited London for the wedding of his cousin, the Duke of York, the future George V [64], whom he physically much resembled. He became engaged to Princess Alix of Hesse-Darmstadt and returned to England with her to visit her sister, the wife of Prince Louis of Battenberg [74]. They were widely feted and a new horse-race, the Cesarewitch, was named (using the French system of transliteration) in Nicholas’s honour.
Nicholas succeeded his father
as Tsar on 1 November 1894. His reign began inauspiciously. Even before his coronation he alienated liberal opinion by declaring that the idea of representative government was a “senseless dream”, ill-chosen words for which his wife, the new Tsarina Alexandra, as reactionary as she was wilful, was widely held to have been responsible. The disasters to Russian arms in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–5 weakened imperial prestige, and the annihilation of the Baltic fleet at the battle of Tsushima (27/8 May 1905), after an epic voyage of 17,000 miles, was a particularly devastating blow. In international politics Germany’s decision to build a strong navy drove the United Kingdom to settle its differences with France in 1904 and with Russia in 1907. To mark the new friendship between the two powers, Nicholas was appointed an honorary admiral of the fleet in the Royal Navy on 11 June 1908. The Tsarina, after producing four daughters, turned to religious mysticism in her anxiety for a male heir. In 1904 she bore the Tsarevich Alexei, but it soon became apparent that, as a grand-daughter of Queen Victoria, she carried the genes of haemophilia, a disease carried in the female line but apparent only in the male. Grigori Efimovich Rasputin, an uncouth Siberian holy man, appeared to be able to ameliorate the sufferings of the young Tsarevich and thereby gained great influence over the Imperial family.
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