Francis Bertie, 1st Viscount Bertie of Thame

Lord Bertie of Thame, 1915

Francis Leveson Bertie, 1st Viscount Bertie of Thame GCB , GCMG , GCVO , PC (born August 17, 1844 in the parish of Wytham , Berkshire , † September 26, 1919 in London ) was a British diplomat . Among other things, he was British ambassador to Italy from 1903 to 1905 and to France from 1905 to 1918, at the time of the Entente cordiale .

Life

Origin and education

Bertie was the second son of Montagu Bertie , 6th Earl of Abingdon , and the Elizabeth Lavinia Vernon-Harcourt. He was trained in Eton and after graduating in 1860 spent two years in Bonn .

Diplomatic service

In 1863 Bertie entered the diplomatic service. From 1874 to 1880 he served as the private secretary of the State Secretary in the Foreign Office ( Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs ), Robert Bourke , and in this role took part in the Berlin Congress of 1878. In 1880 he became Assistant Clerk in the Eastern Department , later Senior Clerk and in 1894 Assistant Under-Secretary . He played a role in the creation of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1902, his country's first step out of the “ splendid isolation ” of the 19th century. In the same year he was inducted into personal nobility as Knight Commander of the Order of Bath, and the following year he became Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order. In March 1903 he was appointed Ambassador Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Italy, with whom Great Britain was associated in the Mediterranean Entente. At the same time he was sworn into the Privy Council . Bertie was not happy in Italy and, in the year of his appointment, tried to succeed Edmund Monson , the ambassador to France, whose term of office was soon to end. He wholeheartedly welcomed the Entente cordiale with France of 1904, initially only an agreement on colonial issues, as in his opinion it offered the opportunity to draw borders on the continent for the aspiring, world-renowned German Empire. In 1904 he was awarded the Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St. Michael and St. George.

After two years as ambassador in Rome, he was appointed ambassador to Paris in January 1905, where his late father-in-law Henry Wellesley, 1st Earl Cowley, had been ambassador from 1852 to 1867. It was a prominent position in British diplomacy during the Entente Cordiale , and Bertie, as a hands-on worker (he was also called "the Bull" because of his energetic manner) and a member of the anti-foreign service, which was gradually gaining the upper hand at the time, was a concern -German parliamentary group a logical occupation. With Charles Hardinge , ambassador to Saint Petersburg since 1904, and a few other officials ( Louis Mallet , Eyre Crowe , ...), he had already formed a faction or clique in the Foreign Office for some time, which opposed the (from their point of view) aggressive foreign policy of the German Reich sought to find an antidote. His German counterpart in Paris, Hugo Fürst von Radolin (ambassador from 1901 to 1910), described him shortly after his arrival as “an outspoken opponent of Germany”. Shortly before his death in 1919, Bertie declared that his stay in Bonn at the beginning of his career had allowed him to get to know the “true German character”. Bertie was introduced by his friend Maurice de Bunsen , who was then still Counselor in Paris. In 1908 he was raised to the Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Bath.

After a few initial difficulties, Bertie became a successful ambassador who contributed to the fact that more and more of an alliance-like association emerged from the “cordial agreement”. In the two Moroccan crises of 1905/06 and 1911 , he advocated a policy of clear support for France with his superiors in the Foreign Office. He was able to reassure his French counterparts, including Théophile Delcassé , who feared that Britain would abandon its partner in an emergency. At that time, the priority in London was still the effort to play off the continental powers (and colonial rivals) France and Germany against each other. It was only under the Campbell-Bannerman government with Foreign Minister Edward Gray , which took over from December 1905 , that Great Britain gradually decided to adopt the Entente as a permanent part of its foreign policy. Bertie took part in this regard when the Cartagena Agreement was reached (1907) .

At the outbreak of the First World War, already almost 70 years old and long awaiting retirement, Bertie knew how to keep his post for almost the entire duration of the war. He was only replaced by ex-War Minister Lord Derby in April 1918 after he was seriously ill. However, his role during the war was rather marginal, so numerous special missions from London were handled without his direct involvement, including multiple meetings Lord Esher with French officials. In 1915 Bertie was raised to hereditary peer as Baron Bertie of Thame and thereby became a member of the House of Lords . After the February Revolution in Russia, he spoke out against letting the Romanovs get into exile in France. He was promoted to Viscount Bertie of Thame when he left the diplomatic service . He never fully recovered from his illness and died in London in 1919 at the age of 75.

Marriage and offspring

Bertie had married Lady Feodorowna Cecilia Wellesley, daughter of 1st Earl Cowley , in 1874 . With her he had a son and heir Vere Frederick Bertie, 2nd Viscount Bertie of Thame (1878-1954). With his childless death in 1954, the two nobility titles Baron and Viscount Bertie of Thame expired .

literature

• Keith Hamilton: Bertie of Thame. Edwardian Ambassador. The Boydell Press, 1990.
• Andreas Rose: Between Empire and Continent. British foreign policy before the First World War. Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, 2011.
• Christopher Clark: The sleepwalkers. How Europe moved into World War I. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Munich 2013.
• Kenneth J. Calder: Britain and the Origins of the New Europe 1914-1918. Cambridge University Press, 1976.
• Keith M. Wilson: The Policy of the Entente. Essays on the Determinants of British Foreign Policy, 1904-1914. Cambridge University Press, 1985.

Web links

Commons : Francis Bertie, 1st Viscount Bertie of Thame  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Mr Francis Bertie at the Hansard (English)
• Francis Leveson Bertie, 1st Viscount Bertie of Thame on thepeerage.com

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Quoted from Hamilton: Bertie of Thame , p. 17.

predecessor	Office	successor
Philip Currie, 1st Baron Currie	British ambassador to Italy 1903–1905	Edwin Henry Egerton
Sir Edmund Monson	British ambassador to France 1905–1918	Edward Stanley, 17th Earl of Derby
New title created	Baron Bertie of Thame 1915-1919	Club Bertie
New title created	Viscount Bertie of Thame 1918-1919	Club Bertie