Louis Francis Albert Victor Nicholas Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma (born Prince Louis of Battenberg; 25 June 1900 – 27 August 1979), commonly known as Lord Mountbatten, was a British statesman, naval officer, and member of the British royal family. A maternal uncle of Prince Philip and second cousin once removed of Queen Elizabeth II, he served in the Royal Navy during both world wars and rose to become Supreme Allied Commander, South East Asia Command, in the later stages of the Second World War. He subsequently oversaw the transition of British India to independence as the last Viceroy and the first Governor‑General of independent India. As the last viceroy of India, Mountbatten also oversaw its partition into the Dominions of India and Pakistan and the integration of the princely states into India.
Mountbatten later held senior posts in the post‑war armed forces, serving as First Sea Lord and then as Chief of the Defence Staff until 1965, making him the longest-serving professional head of the British Armed Forces to date. During this period Mountbatten also served as chairman of the NATO Military Committee for a year. He remained closely associated with the royal family throughout his life and acted as a mentor to his great‑nephew, the future King Charles III. Beyond his official duties, he was active in international education, naval and sporting organisations, and a range of charitable and cultural initiatives.
His career and reputation have been the subject of considerable debate. Admirers highlighted his energy, charm, and administrative ability, while critics accused him of vanity, self‑promotion, and flawed judgement, particularly in relation to the partition of India and his wartime assessments in South East Asia. His private life attracted scrutiny, and after his death allegations of sexual abuse were made, some of which were dismissed by official inquiries.
In August 1979, Mountbatten was assassinated by the Provisional Irish Republican Army when a bomb exploded aboard his fishing boat in Mullaghmore, County Sligo. His death prompted widespread condemnation and international mourning, and he received a ceremonial funeral at Westminster Abbey.
Early life
Mountbatten, then styled Prince Louis of Battenberg, was born on 25 June 1900 at Frogmore House in the Home Park, Windsor, Berkshire. He was the youngest child and second son of Prince Louis of Battenberg and his wife Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine. Mountbatten's maternal grandparents were Louis IV, Grand Duke of Hesse, and Princess Alice of the United Kingdom, a daughter of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. His paternal grandparents were Prince Alexander of Hesse and by Rhine and Julia, Princess of Battenberg. Their marriage was morganatic, as Julia was not of royal lineage; consequently, Mountbatten and his father bore the style Serene Highness rather than Royal Highness, were ineligible for the title Princes of Hesse, and held the lesser Battenberg designation. His elder siblings were Princess Alice of Battenberg (mother of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh), Princess Louise of Battenberg (later Queen Louise of Sweden), and Prince George of Battenberg (later George Mountbatten, 2nd Marquess of Milford Haven). He wore the original 1841 royal christening gown at the ceremony. and later to the Royal Naval College, Osborne, in May 1913.
Mountbatten's mother's younger sister was the Russian Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. As a child he visited the imperial court at St Petersburg and became close to the Russian imperial family, harbouring romantic feelings for his maternal first cousin Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna, whose photograph he kept at his bedside for the rest of his life.
Mountbatten adopted his surname as a result of World War I. From 1914 to 1918, Britain and its allies were at war with the Central Powers, led by the German Empire. To appease British nationalist sentiment, in 1917 King George V issued a royal proclamation changing the name of the British royal house from the German House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to the House of Windsor. The King's British relatives with German names and titles followed suit, with Mountbatten's father adopting the surname Mountbatten, an anglicisation of Battenberg. His father was subsequently created Marquess of Milford Haven.
First World War
At the age of 16, Mountbatten was posted as midshipman to the battlecruiser in July 1916 and, after seeing action in August, transferred to the battleship during the closing phases of the First World War. He paid a ten-day visit to the Western Front in July 1918.
thumb|left|upright|Portrait by [[Philip de László, 1925]]
While still an acting-sub-lieutenant, Mountbatten was appointed first lieutenant (second-in-command) of the P-class sloop HMS P. 31 on 13 October 1918 and was confirmed as a substantive sub-lieutenant on 15 January 1919. HMS P. 31 took part in the Peace River Pageant on 4 April 1919. Mountbatten attended Christ's College, Cambridge, for two terms from October 1919, studying English literature (including John Milton and Lord Byron) in a programme designed to augment the education of junior officers whose studies had been curtailed by the war. He was elected for a term to the Standing Committee of the Cambridge Union Society and was suspected of sympathy for the Labour Party, then emerging as a potential party of government for the first time.
Interwar period
thumb|Prince Edward with his staff all wearing kimono during the Pacific visit to Japan in 1922. (Mountbatten standing, first from left). The [[Rising Sun Flag in the background.]]
Mountbatten was posted to the battlecruiser in March 1920 and accompanied Edward, Prince of Wales, on a royal tour of Australia. HMS Renown returned to Portsmouth on 11 October 1920. Early in 1921, Royal Navy personnel were deployed for civil defence duties as serious industrial unrest appeared imminent, and Mountbatten was required to command a platoon of stokers in Northern England, many of whom had never handled a rifle before. Edward and Mountbatten formed a close friendship during the trip. He was posted to the battleship in the Mediterranean Fleet in January 1923. He was posted to the battleship in the Reserve Fleet in 1926 and became Assistant Fleet Wireless and Signals Officer of the Mediterranean Fleet under Admiral Sir Roger Keyes in January 1927. Mountbatten returned to the Signals School in July 1929 as Senior Wireless Instructor. was posted to the battleship . Mountbatten was appointed a personal naval aide-de-camp to King Edward VIII on 23 June 1936, and, having joined the Naval Air Division of the Admiralty in July 1936, he attended the coronation of George VI and Elizabeth in May 1937. He was promoted captain on 30 June 1937 and was given command of the destroyer in June 1939.
Within the Admiralty, Mountbatten was known as "The Master of Disaster" for his penchant for getting into difficult situations.
Second World War
thumb|Mountbatten inspecting sailors before the [[Operation Biting|Bruneval Raid, February 1942]]
When war broke out in September 1939, Mountbatten became Captain (D) (commander) of the 5th Destroyer Flotilla aboard HMS Kelly, which soon became noted for its exploits. as the directors swung off and lost target, resulting in Javelin being struck by two torpedoes. He rejoined Kelly in December 1940, by which time her torpedo damage had been repaired. an incident that later served as the basis for Noël Coward's film In Which We Serve. Coward, a personal friend of Mountbatten, incorporated some of his speeches into the film. and 21 March 1941, and was awarded the Distinguished Service Order in January 1941.
left|thumb|(Front row, L–R) [[Walter Short, Mountbatten and Husband E. Kimmel (Back row) Frederick Martin and Patrick Bellinger in Hawaii 1941]]
In August 1941, Mountbatten was appointed captain of the aircraft carrier , which was in Norfolk, Virginia, for repairs following action at Malta in January.
right|thumb|Clockwise from lower right, [[Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Sir Hastings 'Pug' Ismay, Mountbatten: January 1943 at the Casablanca Conference]]
Mountbatten was a favourite of Winston Churchill. On 27 October 1941, Mountbatten replaced Admiral of the Fleet Sir Roger Keyes as Chief of Combined Operations Headquarters and was promoted to commodore.
On 18 March 1942, he was promoted to the acting rank of vice admiral and given the honorary ranks of lieutenant general and air marshal to provide the authority required for his duties in Combined Operations. Despite the misgivings of General Sir Alan Brooke, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Mountbatten was placed on the Chiefs of Staff Committee. He was in large part responsible for the planning and organisation of the St Nazaire Raid on 28 March, which put out of action one of the most heavily defended docks in Nazi-occupied France until well after the war's end, a result that contributed to Allied supremacy in the Battle of the Atlantic.
After the successes at Bruneval and St Nazaire came the disastrous Dieppe Raid of 19 August 1942. Mountbatten was central to the planning and promotion of the assault, which proved a marked failure, with casualties of almost 60%, the great majority of them Canadians. In the aftermath, he became a controversial figure in Canada, and the Royal Canadian Legion distanced itself from him during later visits. His relations with Canadian veterans, who blamed him for the losses, "remained frosty" after the war.
left|upright|thumb|Mountbatten during his tour of the [[Arakan campaign (1942–1943)|Arakan campaign in Burma in February 1944]]
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 Major General Julian Thompson, a former Royal Marine, have argued that these lessons should not have required a debacle such as Dieppe to be recognised. Nevertheless, as a direct result of the failings, the British introduced several innovations, most notably Hobart's Funnies, specialised armoured vehicles which, during the Normandy Landings, undoubtedly saved many lives on the three Commonwealth beachheads of Gold, Juno, and Sword.
SEAC and Burma campaign
In August 1943, Churchill appointed Mountbatten Supreme Allied Commander, South East Asia Command (SEAC), with promotion to acting full admiral.
right|upright|thumb|Mountbatten's address on the steps of Singapore's [[City Hall, Singapore|Municipal Building after the surrender]]
British interpreter Hugh Lunghi recounted an embarrassing episode during the Potsdam Conference when Mountbatten, hoping for an invitation to visit the Soviet Union, repeatedly attempted to impress Joseph Stalin with his former connections to the Russian imperial family. The attempt fell flat, with Stalin dryly inquiring whether "it was some time ago that he had been there". Lunghi later recalled, "The meeting was embarrassing because Stalin was so unimpressed. He offered no invitation. Mountbatten left with his tail between his legs."
During his time as Supreme Allied Commander of the Southeast Asia Theatre, Mountbatten's command oversaw the recapture of Burma from the Japanese by General Sir William Slim. A personal high point was the receipt of the Japanese surrender in Singapore, when British troops returned to the island to accept the formal capitulation of Japanese forces in the region, led by General Itagaki Seishiro on 12 September 1945, in an operation codenamed Tiderace. South East Asia Command was disbanded in May 1946, and Mountbatten returned home with the substantive rank of rear-admiral. That year, he was made a Knight Companion of the Garter and created Viscount Mountbatten of Burma, of Romsey in the County of Southampton, as a victory title for war service. In 1947, he was further created Earl Mountbatten of Burma and Baron Romsey, of Romsey in the County of Southampton.
Following the war, Mountbatten largely shunned the Japanese out of respect for his men killed during the conflict, and, in accordance with his will, Japan was not invited to send diplomatic representatives to his funeral in 1979. He did, however, meet Emperor Hirohito during the latter's state visit to Britain in 1971, reportedly at the urging of the Queen.
Viceroy of India
Mountbatten's experience in the region, and in particular his perceived Labour sympathies at the time, together with his wife's longstanding friendship and collaboration with V. K. Krishna Menon, led Menon to put forward Mountbatten's name alone as a viceregal candidate acceptable to the Indian National Congress, in clandestine meetings with Sir Stafford Cripps and Clement Attlee. Attlee advised King George VI to appoint Mountbatten Viceroy of India on 20 February 1947, charging him with overseeing the transition of British India to independence no later than 30 June 1948. Mountbatten's instructions were to avoid partition and preserve a united India as the outcome of the transfer of power, but he was authorised to adapt to a changing situation in order to secure Britain's prompt withdrawal with minimal reputational damage.
thumb|Lord and Lady Mountbatten visit an affected village in the aftermath of the [[Rawalpindi Massacres]]
Mountbatten arrived in India on 22 March by air from London. That evening, he was taken to his residence, and two days later he took the viceregal oath. His arrival coincided with large-scale communal riots in Delhi and Bombay, and large-scale massacres in Rawalpindi. Mountbatten concluded that the situation was too volatile to wait even a year before granting independence. Although his advisers favoured a gradual transfer of power, he decided that the only viable course was a quick and orderly handover of power the end of 1947; in his view, any longer risked civil war. Mountbatten also hurried the process so that he could return to the Royal Navy.
Mountbatten was fond of Congress leader Jawaharlal Nehru and his liberal outlook for the country, and, through the efforts of their close mutual friend, Krishna Menon, developed a depth of feeling and intimacy with Nehru that was shared by his wife, Edwina. He felt differently about the Muslim League leader Muhammad Ali Jinnah, but recognised his influence, stating "If it could be said that any single man held the future of India in the palm of his hand in 1947, that man was Mohammad Ali Jinnah." Mountbatten tried to persuade him of the merits of a united India, citing the difficultly of dividing the mixed provinces of Punjab and Bengal, but Jinnah remained unyielding in his goal of establishing a separate Muslim state called Pakistan.
thumb|left|Mountbatten meeting with [[Jawaharlal Nehru (left) and Muhammad Ali Jinnah (right) in discussing the partition of British India, 1947.]]
Given the British government's recommendation to grant independence quickly, Mountbatten concluded that a united India was no longer an achievable goal and resigned himself to a plan for partition, creating the independent nations of India and Pakistan.