page_title: Miklós Horthy
section_title: Early life and naval career
hierarchical_section_title: Miklós Horthy / Early life and naval career
caption_attribution_description: English: Admiral Miklós Horthy
context_page_description: Miklós Horthy de Nagybánya was a Hungarian admiral and statesman, who became the regent of Hungary. He served as regent of the Kingdom of Hungary between World Wars I and II and throughout most of World War II, from 1 March 1920 to 15 October 1944. He was styled His Serene Highness the Regent of the Kingdom of Hungary, Hungarian: Ő Főméltósága a Magyar Királyság Kormányzója.
  Horthy started his career as a sub-lieutenant in the Austro-Hungarian Navy in 1896 and attained the rank of rear-admiral in 1918. He saw action in the Battle of the Strait of Otranto and became commander-in-chief of the Austro-Hungarian Navy in the last year of the First World War; he was promoted to vice-admiral and commander of the Fleet when the previous admiral was dismissed from his post by Emperor-King Charles following mutinies. In 1919, following a series of revolutions and external interventions in Hungary from Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia, Horthy returned to Budapest with the National Army and was subsequently invited to become regent of the kingdom by parliament.
context_section_description: Miklós Horthy de Nagybánya was born at Kenderes to an untitled lower nobility (regarded as equivalent to the British gentry),  descended from István Horti, ennobled by King Ferdinand II in 1635. His father, István Horthy de Nagybánya, was a member of the House of Magnates, the upper chamber of the Diet of Hungary, and lord of a 1,500 acre estate. He married Hungarian noblewoman Paula Halassy de Dévaványa in 1857. Miklós was the fourth of their eight children.
  Horthy entered the Austro-Hungarian "Imperial and Royal Naval Academy" (k.u.k. Marine-Akademie) at Fiume (now Rijeka, Croatia) at age 14. Because the official language of the naval academy was German, Horthy spoke Hungarian with a slight, but noticeable, Austro-German accent for the rest of his life. He also spoke Italian, Croatian, English, and French.
  As a young man, Horthy travelled around the world and served as a diplomat for Austria-Hungary in the Ottoman Empire and other countries. Horthy married Magdolna Purgly de Jószáshely in Arad in 1901. They had 4 children: Magdolna (1902), Paula (1903), István (1904) and Miklós (1907). From 1911 until 1914, he was a naval aide-de-camp to Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria, for whom he had a great respect. 
  At the beginning of World War I, Horthy was commander of the pre-dreadnought battleship SMS Habsburg. In 1915, he earned a reputation for boldness while commanding the new light cruiser SMS Novara. He planned the 1917 attack on the Otranto Barrage, which resulted in the Battle of the Strait of Otranto, the largest naval engagement of the war in the Adriatic Sea. A consolidated British, French and Italian fleet met the Austro-Hungarian force. Despite the numerical superiority of the Allied fleet, the Austrian force emerged from the battle victorious. The Austrian fleet remained relatively unscathed, however Horthy was wounded. After the Cattaro mutiny of February 1918, Emperor Charles I of Austria selected Horthy over many more senior commanders as the new Commander-in-Chief of the Imperial Fleet in March 1918. In June, Horthy planned another attack on Otranto, and in a departure from the cautious strategy of his predecessors, he committed the empire's battleships to the mission. While sailing through the night, the dreadnought SMS Szent István met Italian MAS torpedo boats and was sunk, causing Horthy to abort the mission. He managed to preserve the rest of the empire's fleet until he was ordered by Emperor Charles to surrender it to the new State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs (the predecessor of Yugoslavia) on 31 October.
  The end of the war saw Hungary turned into a landlocked nation, and with that, the new government had little need for Horthy's naval expertise. He retired with his family to his private estate at Kenderes.
caption: Admiral Miklós Horthy during World War I
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