(1850-1942)
In 1866, when he was sixteen, Arthur entered the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich; In 1868 he was gazetted a lieutenant in the Royal Engineers. On August 22, 1869, he traveled to Canada to spent a year with his regiment. He was enchanted eith that country and told his mother that Niagara Falls were the "grandest and finest that one can possible imagine. He liked the Canadians themselves whom he found to be "honest, free thinking but loyal". The Canadian experience enlarged Prince Arthur's horizons and incresed his self confidence. A year later he was promoted captain in the Rifle Brigade and lieutenent-colonel in 1876. His mother created him Duke of Connaught and Strathearn in 1874.
In 1870, Queen Victoria began to look for a suitable wife for her favourite son. Among the candidates there were Princess Mary of Hanover and Princess Thyra of Denmark. Arthur wished to marry Princess Mary, who was the daughter of King George V of Hanover, but she never decided to accept him. On the other hand, Princess Thyra, who was the Princess of Wales' sister, loved him, but the project of marrying her was not completely liked by Queen Victoria and it was aborted. Other candidates were the daughters of Prince Frederick Karl of Prussia, a first cousin of the future German Emperor Frederick III, husband of Arthur's eldest sister Vicky. Prince Arthur decided for the third one, Princess Luise Margaret.
On March 13, 1879, Prince Arthur married Princess Luise Margaret of Prussia. The bride's father, Prince Frederick Karl, was a morose, bully and brutal man; when his third daughter , Luise Margaret, was born, he was furious because the baby was not a boy and he boxed his wife, Marianne of Anhalt, on the ears, leaving her with a damaged hearing for the rest of her life.
The Duke and the Duchess of Connaught had three children: Margaret, born in 1882, Arthur, born in 1883 and Patricia, born in 1886. In 1882 the Duke served in the expeditionary force in Egypt and commanded the First Guards Brigade at Tel-el-Kabir In 1886 he went to India where he commanded the Bombay army until 1890. On his return to England he held command in the southern district of Aldershot from 1893 to 1898. and in 1900 he was appointed commander in chief in Ireland. On the re-organization of the War Office in 1904 he held the new officeof inspector-general to the forces until 1907, when he was appointed comander in chief in the Medirterranean. In 1910 the Duke of Connaught opened the Union Parliament of South Africa as representative of his nephew King George V. The next year he succeeded Earl Grey as Governor-General and Commander-in-Chief in Canada, where he stayed until 1916. As Governor-Genreral, he aroused controversy by attempting to intervene in Canada's milirtary affairs. In 1920 he went to India as the representative of the King to inaugurate the provincial legislative councils of Madras, Bangal and Bombay.
Robert of Baden Powell, the creator of Boy Scouts, wrote about the Duke of Connaught in "Lessons of the Varsity of Life":
"He had the extraordinary gift of seeing the human side of every venture. he realised how far his officers and how far his men could go, and through his personal simpathy and memory of every personality with which he came into contact, he gained the whole-hearted and devoted team work of those serving under him". The Duke of Connaught was a great suppoorter of Boy Scouts; he opened a camp for 50,000 scouts in Artrowe Park, Birkenhead, England.
Arthur of Connaught died on January 16 , 1941 , when he was ninety one years old. He had live longer than his brothers and his life was dominated by a high sense of duty and a strong sense of family life, the same as his father Prince Albert.
Eilers, Marlene; Queen Victoria's Descendants
Frankland, Noble: Witness of a Century
Princess Marie Louise: My Memories of Six Reigns
Packard, Jerrold M.; Victoria's Daughters
Pakula, Hannah; An Uncommon Woman
Encyclopedia Brittanica
