Princess Anna of Montenegro: Difference between revisions

Princess Anna of Battenberg

Princess Anna of Montenegro (18 August 1874 – 22 April 1971) was the seventh child and sixth daughter of Nicholas I of Montenegro and his wife Queen Milena.^[2]

Family and early life

Anna was born in Cetinje on 18 August 1874, a member of the House of Petrović-Njegoš, which had continuosly ruled the Principality of Montenegro since 1697, to Nicholas, Prince of Montenegro and his consort Princess Milena; on 28 August 1910, Nicholas would become King of Montenegro.

Anna’s sisters were particularly noted for achieving marriages with powerful royal figures, causing their father, like the contemporary Christian IX of Denmark, to earn the sobriquet “father-in-law of Europe“; one source declared that these advantageous marriages “had done more for [Montenegro] than all the brave deeds of this nation of warriors”.^[3] For instance, Princesses Zorka, Milica, Anastasia and Elena all made important marriages into the royal families of Serbia, Russia and Italy, respectively.

Their proud father encouraged the girls to brave the capital’s harsh winters by long hours of sledding, ice skating, and snow-shoeing along the frozen ground. In spring and summer, when the temperatures turned more hospitable, they made long excursions climbing into the nearby mountains, trekking and taking picnics, and there were also holidays at their father’s Villa Topolica on the shores of the Adriatic Sea. The girls were taught to ride bareback, to shoot and hunt, play golf, and could drive a four-in-hand easily. Still, Nicholas and Milena were conscious of the need to raise respectable princesses with an eye to their future marriages. They employed Swiss and German governesses and tutors, who were tasked with teaching them foundational and advanced lessons, as well as languages, deportment, and a host of skills deemed necessary to the well-bred lady, including painting, drawing, and dancing. Under this strict system, as one press article of the time recorded, the princesses “developed from tomboy girls into women of unusual grace and beauty, of exceptional personal distinction and of remarkable talent in many directions.”

All children of the ruler at the Montenegrin court were guided toward good literature, the study of foreign languages, and knowledge of their national history. Piano lessons were mandatory, and results depended on talent, determination, and perseverance.^[4]

Like all her older sisters before her, Anna was educated was educated at the Smolny Institute in Russia, at the expense of the Russian imperial family. This was probably an astute political choice.^[5] And upon each of their marriages, the princesses were given dowries of million rubles by the Russian emperor, the amount reserved only for the daughters of the Tsar.^[6][7]

Smolny Institute

They were placed under the special care of the Headmistress, enjoyed separate quarters and personal upkeep, and had their own dedicated tutor and maid, while still attending classes alongside the other pupils. In addition, by personal order of the Emperor, the State Treasury provided a one-time payment of 1,000 rubles “for accommodation” and an annual allowance of approximately 1,500 rubles for each girl’s expenses.

A special rooms were assigned only to the highest-ranking pupils, located next to the headmistress’s apartment. The girls dined with the headmistress, along with other pupils who took turns having lunch there, while tea was served in their own rooms. They would also retreat to their rooms after lessons ended. On Sundays and holidays, they were joined by young companions, who were allowed to play and dance with the Montenegrin princesses. Often, the princesses visited the Tsar’s family as guests, and at Christmas a court carriage would be sent for their outings, which included other students of the institute. In Smolny, Nichola’s daughters mingled with their fellow pupils without any particular airs of superiority.^[8]

Their position, however, reportedly improved after an official visit by their father, Prince Nicholas, to St. Petersburg, where Emperor Alexander III hosted him at a banquet in the Winter Palace and toasted him as “his only true friend.” Following this event, the Montenegro sisters’ status at Smolny was elevated immediately to that of royalty, and teachers were instructed to address them with royal etiquette.

This statement completely changed the political perception of them, even when it came to marriage proposals. The princesses, who had initially been considered insignificant and overlooked—so much so that they were expected to be sent to a convent on Lake Skadar to avoid being too great a financial burden on their father—suddenly became sought after as politically suitable matches.^[9]

In addition, all the princesses possessed a number of attractive qualities that could entice suitable husbands. In looks they were striking, with slightly darker complexions, dark eyes, and lithe figures. “Because the Prince did what he could to earn Alexander III’s good will,” Sergei Witte wrote, “it was only natural that the Emperor should show some attention to these young ladies upon their graduation from the institute. And this was enough to encourage some of the young men of the various Royal Families to seek their hands in marriage.”^[10]

Uncertainty surrounding the princesses’ prospects

It all started with Milena’s consecutive births of three more daughters, a sequence viewed in Montenegro at the time as a profound family misfortune—nearly a tragedy. There was no celebration at court, nor among the people. Montenegrins asked one another: “What will the Prince do with so many girls?” Only with her fifth childbirth did Milena deliver a son—Danilo, the heir apparent. His birth brought universal joy, both at court and among the populace.

After Danilo, she again bore daughters. During those years the court echoed more with crying than with cheer. Intelligent, educated, and witty, the girls spent their days in the Cetinje court surrounded by pianos, easels, and books—yet essentially isolated. In their thoughts, their previous life in Saint Petersburg remained the distant ideal. The semi-literate vojvodas, serdars, stern warriors, and deeply patriarchal attitudes of Montenegro shaped life in Cetinje at that time.

The Prince’s sorrow and his clear understanding of the country’s political and economic realities magnified his concerns for his daughters. Aside from beauty, education, and the title of princess, they possessed no substantial dowry. Nicholas found it unthinkable to marry them to prominent Montenegrins. Raised in luxury and accustomed to the wider world, they could not imagine living permanently in the small Montenegrin capital, where they would find few of the comforts they had grown up with. Moreover, the war-minded Montenegrin men would have represented an intellectual and emotional decline in status for the young princesses.

Nicholas might have endured even that, were it not for another danger such marriages posed: neither he nor the state could provide so many sons-in-law with positions, dowries, or stipends. These men would likely demand the most important posts in the government—posts they might fill poorly. No one in Montenegro could easily oppose the Prince’s will, and this could lead to the emergence of an incapable court oligarchy, hindering the country’s progress for a long time. Rivalries, intrigues, and behind-the-scenes conflicts would inevitably arise, each son-in-law supported by his own clan, thus fracturing the country into hostile factions. It would destroy everything the House of Petrović-Njegoš had built through effort and sacrifice.

He understood all this well and weighed it seriously. He also considered what might happen if his daughters remained unmarried—especially in the event of his death. His sons would have their wives, yet the court would be crowded with unmarried princesses.

Although usually indifferent to the troubles of others, Nicholas now found himself consumed and deeply troubled by the fate of his daughters. In addition to numerous state concerns—conflicts with the Turks, tensions with Serbia, personal and national ambitions—he now bore the heavy burden of arranging their futures.

After Serbian–Ottoman Wars, Montenegro expanded territorially. Among the newly acquired lands was Vranjina, an island on Lake Skadar. Following its annexation, Nicholas ordered the demolition of the old Turkish guard post and built a small church on the site. Next to it he constructed, for the time, a spacious house with several rooms and two large halls.

People throughout Montenegro were puzzled.
Why is the Prince spending so much on Vranjina? they asked one another.
No one imagined that the site was intended for nuns. Nikola had devised a secret plan: that the monastery on Vranjina would serve as a refuge for his daughters if they remained unmarried.

Such thoughts weighed even more heavily on him considering that he was more attached to his daughters, who were for the most part intelligent, had inherited his strong character, and from an early age demonstrated a sense for political affairs. Prince Nikola also had three sons, but fully aware of their spoiled nature and lack of aptitude for any serious affairs of state, he responded resignedly when Vojvoda Božo Petrović-Njegoš once reproached him for valuing his daughters more than his sons:

“Good heavens, Božo, don’t you know that I have no sons—only daughters!”

Prince Nicholas was, in fact, regarded as the last male scion of the House of Petrović possessing all the qualities of his predecessors: energetic, skilled, intelligent, cunning, and courageous. And such judgments of Nichola’s proved to be accurate and well-founded, for in the end, it was precisely through their marriages that his daughters achieved far more for the small Principality of Montenegro than all of his warriors combined..^[11]

Marriage

Background

Anna met Prince Francis Joseph of Battenberg at Cimiez, France, where the prince was a guest of the visiting Queen Victoria and Anna was visiting her sister Princess Milica of Montenegro and brother-in-law Grand Duke Peter Nikolaevich of Russia.^[12] In La Turbie, a small party composed of Queen Victoria, Princess Alice of Battenberg, Prince Francis Joseph, Princess Anna, and others went on an afternoon drive together.^[13] While most of the party went to a booth to view a camera obscura, Anna and Francis Joseph broke away; soon afterwards, Francis Joseph’s brother Prince Louis of Battenberg announced the engagement to Princess Anna.^[13]

The Battenberg family was the product of a morganatic marriage, and though it was a lesser status than other royalty, the family had close ties with the United Kingdom, as Prince Henry was married to Princess Beatrice of the United Kingdom, Victoria’s youngest daughter. The Battenbergs were well known for their good looks, charm, and perhaps most importantly, their lack of political controversy, which may have helped them secure favorable royal partners. Anna’s marriage to a Battenberg facilitated Prince Nicholas’s access to many European courts. After her wedding, he developed particularly cordial relations with the British court, and in several subsequent political matters, the English even supported some of the Montenegrin ruler’s initiatives.^[14]

Before that, the attitude of British diplomacy toward Montenegro, up until the Berlin Congress, ranged from cold indifference to open hostility, primarily because it saw Russian intrigues behind every disturbance on the Balkan Peninsula. This shifted slightly only after the Congress itself, when Britain did not oppose Montenegro’s territorial expansion; yet even afterwards, although it opened a formal mission in Cetinje, relations remained marked by a cool correctness that did not always include support for the Montenegrin ruler in all state affairs.

Relations with Germany were likewise disastrous, mainly due to Prince Nicholas’s arrogance when, after the Berlin Congress, he was supposed to receive a German envoy carrying important documents but deliberately left him waiting for days. When news of this reached Bismarck, deeply offended by the treatment of his emissary, he immediately ordered all German missions henceforth to ignore Montenegro and its representatives—an instruction they followed strictly for several decades.

This marriage alliance therefore offered the possibility of significant change in the normalization of relations, something Montenegro greatly desired. In addition, there was another—if not the principal—motive for supporting this match: Prince Nicholas believed that, given the great prestige former Prince Alexander still enjoyed in Bulgaria, his son-in-law might secure the Bulgarian throne, which would elevate Nicholas himself to the position of the foremost ruler in the Balkans.

Hints of the impending wedding could already be seen in February 1897, when Anna “by chance” travelled to visit her sister in Nice, where Queen Victoria was also staying. Around the same time, the British diplomatic representative Kennedy was promoted from chargé d’affaires to resident minister, and only a few days later Prince Nicholas received, with conspicuously solemn ceremony, the Royal Victorian Order. Two such gestures in such a short span—previously rare from the otherwise reserved British court toward Cetinje—suggested that something far more significant than ordinary courtesy lay behind them.

Afterward, he travelled to Nice, where—during a luncheon attended by his two sons-in-law, Grand Duke Peter Nikolaevich of Russia and George, Duke of Leuchtenberg, and by his three daughters Milica, Anastasia, and Anna—he formally announced Anna’s engagement to Prince Francis Joseph. The following day, together with Duke George of Leuchtenberg, he visited Queen Victoria, who, accompanied by her son the Prince of Wales, returned the visit the next day at the hotel where he was staying.

That same evening, Queen Victoria hosted a formal dinner in honour of the engagement. All members of the Montenegrin princely family present in Nice were invited, as well as the Queen’s youngest daughter, Princess Beatrice of Battenberg, and her granddaughter Victoria of Hesse, the wife of Prince Louis of Battenberg. In her toast, the Queen offered warm congratulations to the betrothed couple.

For the public, the engagement was officially announced on the last day of March 1897. It was agreed that the wedding would take place in Cetinje, first according to the Orthodox rite and then the Protestant one. The bride’s dowry was set at 500,000 florins, to be paid by her father with interest over several years. The original wedding date—4 May 1897—had to be postponed to 18 May because of a state visit by King Alexander Obrenović, and this rescheduling led many distinguished guests to cancel their attendance, including the Tsarina’s sister, the Queen’s daughter, the Prince and Princess of Naples, the bride’s own sister.

A few days before the wedding, Grand Duke Peter Nikolaevich and Duke George of Leuchtenberg arrived with their wives, as did Prince Peter Karađorđević with his children. The Russian, British, and Austrian courts accredited diplomats to represent them at the ceremony, while the Ottoman Sultan sent his adjutant, Tewfik Bey, who arrived in Cetinje bearing lavish gifts. The celebrations began two days before the wedding itself. The order of royal toasts—of which Nicholas was a master—was notable: first to Nicholas II, second to Emperor Franz Joseph, third to Queen Victoria, fourth to Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig, and fifth to his own sons, daughters, grandchildren, and sons-in-law.

Ceremony

Anna and Francis gained the permission of Queen Victoria and the Russian court in order to marry. On 18 May 1897 in the presence of her entire family, Anna married Prince Francis Joseph of Battenberg in both Eastern Orthodox and Protestant wedding ceremonies in Cetinje, Montenegro.^[2][12][15]

On the wedding day, all of Cetinje was decorated with the flags of Montenegro and the Grand Duchy of Hesse, intertwined with laurel wreaths. Not even the heavy rain that fell throughout the day prevented crowds from filling the streets to greet the bride and groom. The ceremony began shortly before nine in the morning, when the groom, accompanied by Duke Božo Petrović-Njegoš and his procession, arrived at the church. At exactly nine o’clock, a solemn cortege set out from the royal palace toward the Cetinje Monastery.

Two officers carrying large bouquets led the way, followed by Prince Nicholas with Princess Anna, dressed in white bridal attire and a long veil held by Princess Vjera, Princess Jelena Karađorđević, Princes George and Alexander Karađorđević, Miss Kennedy, Miss Petrović, and Miss Vukotić. Behind them walked Grand Duke Peter with Princess Milena, Duke George of Leuchtenberg with Grand Duchess Milica, Prince Peter Karađorđević with Duchess Anastasia of Leuchtenberg, Crown Prince Danilo with Mrs. Đuša Petrović, Prince Mirko with Miss Ika Petrović, Mr. Kimon Emmanuilovich ]Argyropoulos (1842-1918)—the Russian imperial envoy—and other dignitaries.

The Orthodox ceremony was performed by Mitrofan Ban, Metropolitan of the Montenegrin Church, assisted by numerous clergy and the choir of the Girls’ Institute of Cetinje. When the bridal couple emerged, they were greeted with applause, cannon salutes, and first the Montenegrin, then the Hessian anthem. The diplomatic corps accompanied the couple to the British legation, where the groom’s former tutor delivered an address.

A formal luncheon followed, at which both the Prince and the British resident minister offered toasts highlighting the significance of the marriage, noting especially that the Montenegrin dynasty—already connected to the Serbian, Russian, and Italian royal houses—now entered into kinship with the British royal family as well. They then proceeded to the palace for congratulations, where the groom delivered a toast in Russian language: “Long live His Highness Prince Nicholas, and long live the brave Montenegrin people!”

That same afternoon, the newlyweds departed by royal carriage for Kotor, from where they boarded the steamer Bari for Italy on their honeymoon.

On this occasion, King Nicholas wrote at once to Queen Victoria:

“The bride and groom, after receiving the nuptial blessing according to the rite of our religion and later the Evangelical rite, have left Cetinje. Their happiness is secured under the high protection of Your Majesty, whose gracious favour touches us all. — Nicholas.”

The Queen replied the very same day:

“From my heart I thank Your Highness for the kind telegram sent after the departure of the young couple, and I offer my most heartfelt prayers for the happiness of our dear bride and groom. I rejoice that I shall soon see your son and your daughter, the Crown Princess of Naples. Please convey my gifts to the Princess and to your children. — Victoria, Queen-Empress.”^[16]

Francis was a colonel in the Bulgarian cavalry, where his older brother Alexander had been sovereign Prince of Bulgaria until 1886.^[12] Francis was well liked not only by Queen Victoria, but also by Nicholas II of Russia and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna; Nicholas is said to have given Princess Anna one million rubles as a dowry.^[12] This Russian connection was likely the result of the political activities of their father, Nicholas I, and Anna’s two sisters (Princess Milica of Montenegro and Princess Anastasia of Montenegro) being married to Grand Duke Peter Nikolaevich and George Maximilianovich, 6th Duke of Leuchtenberg, respectively, as well as Francis being first cousin once removed of both Nicholas II and Alexandra Feodorovna.

Later life

Anna was said to be “unusually beautiful”; she was vivacious, and tall, while Francis was handsome, likable, tall, and well-educated.^[12] The happily married couple had no children. Anna and Francis were very popular with their respective families.

The same year they married, Francis was rumored to have been chosen as governor-general of the politically turbulent island of Crete by Turkey and Greece.^[17]

Prior to World War I, Anna and her husband spent much of their time at Prinz Emils Garten in Darmstadt, but once the war began, they were advised by Francis’ cousin Ernest Louis, Grand Duke of Hesse to stay out of Germany.^[18] When Italy joined the war, the couple found themselves to be permanent exiles, and consequently settled in Switzerland, where Francis pursued his academic studies.^[18] The couple had never been rich, but now their financial state was worse than ever; by August 1916, Francis was described as “awfully bad off”.^[18]

Throughout her life, Princess Anna anonymously wrote and published a large number of musical compositions that obtained a certain degree of commercial success.^[19][20] The royalties from these compositions provided a much-needed source of income for the couple.^[20] While working on an opera in 1899, Anna gained an interview of considerable length with the famous Italian composer Pietro Mascagni in the royal palace of Naples, as she wanted to consult him for musical advice.^[19][20] Anna’s sister Crown Princess Elena of Italy helped her procure the meeting.^[19]

During her marriage, her rank was elevated to Royal Highness in 1910 upon the proclamation of the Kingdom of Montenegro,^[21] which meant that she had the right to receive diplomats in her own right and that she now outranked her husband, Prince Francis Joseph, who held only the style of His Serene Highness, lower in rank than hers.

Princess Anna of Battenberg maintained a close relationship with Louise Neukomm von Hallau (1845-1932), who had initially been her governess and later became her lady-in-waiting. Louise, who had served as Oberhofmeisterin to Anna’s sister, Grand Duchess Milica of Russia, before the Russian Revolution^[22], often accompanied Anna on visits to her hometown, Hallau, and remained in close contact with the princess even in her old age. When Louise died in Stein am Rhein in 1932, she left 10,000 swiss francs to Hallau, and Anna contributed 500 francs in memory of her devoted attendant.^[23]

Death

Francis died on 31 July 1924 in Territet (near Montreux, Switzerland). Though she had never met him, his niece-in-law Edwina Mountbatten had continuously sent him an allowance during his lifetime, and continued to do so with his widow, sending Anna money until Edwina’s own death in 1960.^[24]

In the British royal family’s 1917 eradication of German titles and styles, the Battenbergs became known as Mountbattens – all except Prince Francis and Anna. She would continue to use the name Battenberg until her death, surpassing all others in the royal house.^[25] Just as it became clear that Anna’s death was imminent, her nephew, Umberto II of Italy, happened to be staying in Cetinje on a private visit. Upon learning of her condition, he shortened his planned stay in Montenegro, hurrying to see his aunt once more in the Swiss sanatorium where she had been placed.^[26] Anna died on 22 April 1971 in Montreux, Switzerland, aged 96.^[2] Her body was buried, alongside her husband Francis Joseph, in the Waldfriedhof, Schaffhausen, Switzerland.^[27] For a number of years, she was Europe’s oldest living princess.^[28]

See also

References

External links