Ludwig IV, Grand Duke of Hesse-Darmstadt, 1837-1892

Louis IV; German: Ludwig IV; Born 12 September 1837, Prinz-Carl-Palais, Darmstadt, Grand Duchy of Hesse, German Confederation; Died 13 March 1892 (aged 54), New Palace, Grand Duchy of Hesse, German Empire; 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; 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; In 1866 the Austrians suffered defeat in the Austro-Prussian War and the Hessian grandduchy 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), a fate from which Hesse-Darmstadt appears to have been spared 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 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, from which he recovered but to which 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; During the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, Louis commanded the Hessian cavalry in support of the Austrian side. In the 1870-71 Franco-Prussian War, Louis led the Hessian contingent of the armies of the North German Confederation; On 13 June 1877, he succeeded his uncle as Grand Duke of Hesse, taking the name "Ludwig IV"; 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 Alexandrina Hutten-Czapska (3 September 1854 – 8 May 1941), the former wife of Aleksander Kolemin, the Russian chargé d'affaires in Darmstadt. His second wife received the title Countess von Romrod on 31 May 1884. But the couple, facing objections from the Grand Duke's in-laws, separated within a week and the marriage was annulled within three months; Grand Duke Ludwig IV died on 13 March 1892 of a heart attack