Louis IV, Grand Duke of Hesse
Louis IV (; 12 September 1837 – 13 March 1892) was the Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine from 13 June 1877 until his death in 1892. Through his own and his children's marriages he was connected to the British Royal Family, to the Imperial House of Russia and to other reigning dynasties of Europe. Early life. Louis was born at the Prinz-Karl-Palais in Darmstadt, the capital of the Grand Duchy of Hesse and by Rhine in the German Confederation, the first son and child of Prince Charles of Hesse and by  Rhine (23 April 1809 – 20 March 1877) and Princess Elisabeth of Prussia (18 June 1815 – 21 March 1885), granddaughter of King Frederick William II of Prussia. As his father's elder brother Louis III (1806-1877), the reigning Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine, had been married to his first wife since 1833 without legitimate children and from 1868 was married morganatically, Prince Louis was from birth second-in-line to the grand ducal throne, after his father. First marriage. On 1 July 1862, Louis married Princess Alice, a daughter of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, at Osborne  House on the Isle of Wight. On the day of the wedding, the Queen issued a royal warrant granting her new son-in-law the style of "Royal Highness" in the United Kingdom. The Queen also subsequently made Prince Louis a knight of the Order of the Garter. Although an arranged marriage orchestrated by the bride's father Albert, Prince Consort, the couple did have a brief period of courtship before betrothal and wed willingly, even after the death of the Prince Consort left Queen Victoria in a protracted state of grief that cast a pall over the nuptials . Becoming parents in less than a year following their marriage, the young royal couple found themselves strapped financially to maintain the lifestyle expected of their rank. Princess Alice's interest in social services, scientific development, hands-on child-rearing, charity and intellectual stimulation were not shared by Louis who, although dutiful and benevolent, was bluff in manner and conventional in his pursuits. The death of the younger of their two sons, Frittie, who was afflicted with hemophilia and suffered a fatal fall from a palace window before his third birthday in 1873, combined with the wearying war relief duties Alice  had undertaken in 1870, evoked a crisis of spiritual faith for the princess in which her husband does not appear to have shared. Military career. During the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, Louis commanded the Hessian cavalry in support of the Austrian side. The Austrians were defeated in the War, and the Hessian grand duchy was in jeopardy of being awarded as the spoils of war to victorious Prussia, which annexed some of Austria's other allies (Hanover, Hesse-Cassel, Nassau). Hesse-Darmstadt appears to have been spared this fate only by a cession of territory and the close dynastic  kinship between its ruler and the Emperor of Russia (Alexander II's consort, Empress Maria Alexandrovna, was the sister of Hesse's Grand Duke Louis III and of Prince Charles). In the Franco-Prussian War Prince Louis fought on the side of Prussia and the North German Confederation; commanding the 25th Division. He was credited with courageous military service, especially at the Battle of Gravelotte, which also afforded him the opportunity of mending the previous war's grievances with the House of Hohenzollern by fighting on the same side as his brother-in-law and future emperor, Crown Prince Frederick  William of Prussia. He had good relationship with Frederick William and his wife Victoria, the Princess Royal, all of his lifetime. He also visited him on his deathbed in 1888. Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine. In March 1877, Louis became heir presumptive to the Hessian throne when his father died and, less than three months later, found himself reigning grand duke upon the demise of his uncle, Louis III. A year and a half later, however, Grand Duke Louis was stricken with diphtheria along with most of his immediate family. He recovered; but his four-year-old daughter  Marie succumbed, along with his wife of 16 years. From then on, he reigned and raised his five surviving children alone. His daughter Alix married Tsar Nicholas II two years after his death in 1894. Second marriage. Grand Duchess Alice having died in 1878, Louis IV contracted a morganatic marriage on 30 April 1884 in Darmstadt (on the eve of the wedding of his eldest daughter, for which Queen Victoria and other relatives of his first wife were gathered in the Hessian capital) with Countess Alexandrine Hutten-Czapska (3 September 1854 – 8 May 1941), daughter of Count Adam Hutten-Czapski  and Countess Marianna Rzewuska. She was the former wife of Aleksander von , the Russian chargé d'affaires in Darmstadt. But the couple, facing objections from the Grand Duke's in-laws, separated within a week and the marriage was annulled within three months. As a compensation, she received the title "Countess von Romrod" on 31 May 1884 and a financial compensation. Alexandrine later married for the third time to Basil von Bacheracht. Death. Grand Duke Ludwig IV died on 13 March 1892, of a heart attack in the New Palace in Darmstadt and was succeeded by his son, Ernest Louis. After  his second marriage, he was largely excluded from his first wife's British royal family, but his funeral was attended by Victoria, the Empress Dowager of Germany, by the Dowager Duchess of Albany, and by the Duke and Duchess of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, by the Duke and Duchess of Connaught, by the Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augusterburg and by the Duke and Duchess of Argyll. It was not attended by his other two surviving in-laws, the Prince and Princess of Wales or by Queen Victoria due to her poor health. His remains are buried at Rosenhöhe, the  mausoleum for the Grand Ducal House outside of Darmstadt.