Andrey Grechesky: the prince at home and in exile

Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark was the seventh child and fourth son of King George and Queen Olga. He was the grandson of the king of Denmark.

Childhood

Andrei Grechesky was born in 1882 in Athens, in a large family of His Royal Majesty King of Greece George I, the son of Danish King Christian IX, and the Russian Princess Olga Nikolaevna, the granddaughter of Emperor Nicholas I. His father was the founder of the Glucksburg dynasty, which was related to the English the royal house. The family had five sons and two daughters. King George I ruled the country for about fifty years, significantly bringing it closer through dynastic marriages with Russia, which significantly weakened Turkey in the Balkans and strengthened Russia's influence in the Mediterranean.

The royal couple spoke German among themselves. Their children, including Andrei Grechesky, were fluent in seven languages, but communicated among themselves in Greek, and with their parents in English. The hero of our article, despite myopia, was prepared for military service. Andrei Grechesky graduated from a cadet school and college in Athens and received an additional private military education under the program of General Panagiotis Danglis. In May 1901, he entered the cavalry.

Betrothal and marriage

In 1902, Prince Andrei Grechesky and Alice Battenberg (1885-1969) met at the coronation celebrations of King Edward VII in London.

The German princess was in family relations with the English Queen Victoria and the Romanovs' house. Young people took each other seriously. And just a year later, in early October 1903, when the prince was 21 years old and the princess eighteen, they registered a common-law marriage in Darmstadt.

The next day, a Lutheran marriage took place in the castle evangelical church and a wedding in the Greek Orthodox chapel.

The prince and princess had 4 daughters and one son, who all had descendants.

This is what Prince Andrei Grechesky looked like (photo below) with his large family.

Political career

In 1909, a coup occurred in Greece. The fact was that the government in Athens did not want to support the Cretan parliament, which called for the unification of Crete (the island was still under the rule of the Ottoman Empire) with mainland Greece. A group of officers dissatisfied with this situation created the Greek National Military League. His Highness Prince Andrew retired from the army, and Venizelos came to power.

Three years later, the Balkan Wars began . Prince Andrei Grechesky was reinstated in the army with the rank of lieutenant colonel in the third cavalry regiment. He oversaw the field hospital. At the behest of the heart, his wife acted as a nurse. She even courageously participated in operations. Then the father of Andrei was killed, and the prince inherited from him the villa "My Rest".

By 1914, His Highness had military awards in Russia, Prussia, Italy and Denmark, and also held military posts in the Russian and German empires.

During World War I, he continued to visit relatives in the United Kingdom, despite the thunderous protests of the British House of Commons, who considered him a German agent. His brother, King Constantine, pursued a policy of neutrality.

But the French Republic, the Russian and British empires supported the government of Venizelos. The Greek king abdicated in 1917, and since then almost the entire royal family has lived in Switzerland.

Return to Greece

For some time, the son of Konstantin Alexander was on the throne, but then the king was again restored. The whole family settled in a hereditary villa in Corfu.

During the Greek-Turkish war of 1919-1922, Prince Andrei commanded the second army corps. His work was hampered by poor training of officers. He refused to comply with the order of the commander-in-chief and attack Turkish positions because of the panic of the officers. The prince was removed from command for two months, but later returned to the army. And when in 1922 Greece was overwhelmed by the revolutionary movement, the prince was arrested and was in the balance of death.

Emigration

On board the British cruiser Calypso, the prince’s family was transported to a safe place and settled on the western edge of Paris. Alice's wife suffered a nervous breakdown and was admitted to a psychiatric clinic in Switzerland. Their daughters got married one after another and lived in Germany, and their son studied in Britain. Alice could not be present at the weddings of her daughters due to illness.

After the cure, she lived separately from her husband, although they were not divorced. Princess Alice did a lot of charity work. During the fascist occupation, she remained in Athens, where she tried to help the Jews avoid raids and concentration camps.

Life on the French Riviera

His Highness settled on the small yacht of his friend Countess Andre de la Binh. During the Nazi attack on France, he was forced to live only in Vichy, in the territory, which was nominally free from the presence of the Nazis. His son Philip fought on the side of the British. But his father did not have the opportunity to see him for five years and died of heart failure at the Metropol Hotel in Monaco in 1944. He did not even know how the world war ended, and about the happy marriage of his son.