Victor Valois (1841–1924), also called Anton Friedrich Victor Valois, was a vice-admiral (Vizeadmiral) in the

German Imperial Navy The Imperial German Navy or the Imperial Navy () was the navy of the German Empire, which existed between 1871 and 1919. It grew out of the small Prussian Navy (from 1867 the North German Federal Navy), which was mainly for coast defence. Wilhel ...

. He graduated from the post-graduate Naval War College, the Imperial Naval Academy (Marineakademie) in 1874 in a class with three other future admirals:

Otto von Diederichs Ernst Otto von Diederichs (7 September 1843 – 8 March 1918) was an Admiral of the Imperial German Navy (''Kaiserliche Marine''), serving in the Prussian Navy and the North German Federal Navy. Early life Diederichs was born 7 September 1843 in ...

, Felix von Bendemann,

Gustav von Senden-Bibran Gustav Freiherr (Baron) von Senden-Bibran (23 July 1847, Reisicht, Lower Silesia, Germany – 23 November 1909 in Berlin) was an admiral of the German Imperial Navy. Biography His father was a Silesian landowner who had served in the Austr ...

. Commissioned into the Prussian navy in 1857, Valois fought at the Battle of Jasmund in 1864. Between 1865 and 1868 he circumnavigated the world and later served in the Franco-Prussian War as captain of . He sank or captured several French ships before being blockaded in Vigo until the end of the war. In 1890 he became commander of the

German East Asia Squadron The German East Asia Squadron (german: Kreuzergeschwader / Ostasiengeschwader) was an Imperial German Navy cruiser squadron which operated mainly in the Pacific Ocean between the mid-1890s until 1914, when it was destroyed at the Battle of the ...

. Towards the end of his naval career and in retirement he was active in the debate regarding the role of the German navy. Valois supported creating a fleet of light commerce raiders, as opposed to the orthodoxy of building up a battleship force for a decisive fleet action. He wrote several influential books and pamphlets.

Family

According to family legend, Valois' great-grandfather was lured from France to Switzerland during the

Seven Years' War The Seven Years' War (1756–1763) was a global conflict that involved most of the European Great Powers, and was fought primarily in Europe, the Americas, and Asia-Pacific. Other concurrent conflicts include the French and Indian War (175 ...

, where he was conscripted into Habsburg service. During the Prussian victory at

Liegnitz Legnica (Polish: ; german: Liegnitz, szl, Lignica, cz, Lehnice, la, Lignitium) is a city in southwestern Poland, in the central part of Lower Silesia, on the Kaczawa River (left tributary of the Oder) and the Czarna Woda. Between 1 June 1975 ...

he was among the 4,700 Austrian prisoners, and was persuaded to join the Prussian military. After the war he settled in the town of Prussian Holland, a village settled by Dutch refugees during the fourteenth century. (The town is now called Pasłęk and is part of modern-day

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populou ...

.) The son of the erstwhile prisoner became a merchant, and his son, while studying to be a justice, married the daughter of one of the deputies of the Prussian Parliament, Antonie Pohl-Senslau.Memim Encyclopedia
''Victor Valois,''
2015, Accessed 29 August 2015. Victor Valois, born in 1841 to this couple, married Minna von Behrendt.San Francisco News Letter and California Advertiser, June 13, 1891. He was generally reckoned by other naval officers to be a pleasant man who spoke perfect English.

Career

Valois entered the Prussian naval academy and was commissioned on 18 June 1857 and passed his naval exams that year. Afterward he joined the Corvette ''Amazone'' on a training cruise around the

Baltic Sea The Baltic Sea is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that is enclosed by Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Sweden and the North and Central European Plain. The sea stretches from 53°N to 66°N latitude and ...

. In 1861 he joined the Frigate ''Thetis'' for a three-year cruise to East Asia. At the outbreak of the Prussian war with Denmark he was officer of the watch on the steam-powered Gunboat Loreley, under command of Captain Hans Kuhn. On 17 March 1864 he participated in the naval battle at Jasmund. At the end of the war in 1866 the Prussian navy was transferred to the North German Confederation. From 1865 to 1868, Valois circumnavigated the world on the

steam frigate Steam frigates (including screw frigates) and the smaller steam corvettes, steam sloops, steam gunboats and steam schooners, were steam-powered warships that were not meant to stand in the line of battle. There were some exceptions like for exa ...

''Vineta'', and subsequently on the sail corvette ''Nymphe''. With the rest of the crew of ''Nymph'', he transferred to the S.M.S. ''Augusta'', a lieutenant commander, where he was both second officer and navigation officer. After a brief supply trip to Kiel, he served as the navigator for the steam corvette around the British Isles. The ship attacked several vessels of the French government at Bordeaux, taking two as prizes, and sinking a steamship loaded with supplies for the French Army. Subsequently, ''Augusta'' took refuge in the Spanish harbour at Vigo, where it was blockaded by three French warships until 1871, when the ship returned to Kiel. Valois commanded the corvette (France, 1863) in February 1881 on a cruise to Liberia to protest a native attack on the shipwrecked crew of a German merchant ship. He exacted a monetary fine from the Liberian government and shelled the village of the natives involved in the attack. In early 1890 he left the position of Director (Oberwerftdirektor) of the Imperial Shipyard in Kiel to become commander of the German East Asia Squadron. In December 1890 he was in Australia with , SMS ''Leipzig'', and . The purpose of the East Asia Squadron was to protect and promote imperialist interest in Asia and the Pacific. On 21 December 1890 he was as Samoa with his squadron in connection with German plans to annex the Marshall Islands when an approaching hurricane caused him to flee in his flagship ''Leipzig''. This was a period of tensions and rivalries in the

Pacific The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the contine ...

between the great powers, including Germany and the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

. This tension was increased slightly when Valois brought his squadron into

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

on 4 June 1891 without the expected courtesy of raising an American flag. Perhaps it was for this reason that Admiral

Andrew E. K. Benham Andrew Ellicott Kennedy Benham (April 10, 1832 – August 11, 1905) was an American admiral. In his early career, he served in China, the Pacific and Paraguay. During the American Civil War, he took part in the capture of Port Royal, South Carolina ...

, commander of Mare Island Station did not visit Valois. This was during the 1891 Chilean Civil War and he was soon ordered south where, along with US and British navies, he was involved in the search for the gun-running Chilean ship ''Itata'' (

Itata Incident The ''Itata'' incident was a diplomatic affair and military incident involving the United States and Chilean insurgents during the 1891 Chilean Civil War. The incident concerned an arms shipment by the Chilean ship ''Itata'' from the United St ...

Retirement

The late 1890s were a period of conflict within the Imperial German navy. By this time,

Alfred von Tirpitz Alfred Peter Friedrich von Tirpitz (19 March 1849 – 6 March 1930) was a German grand admiral, Secretary of State of the German Imperial Naval Office, the powerful administrative branch of the German Imperial Navy from 1897 until 1916. Prussi ...

, who favored the construction of heavy ships in direct competition with Britain, had come to power as the State Secretary of the Naval Office. In 1898, Tirpitz secured passage of the 1898 naval law, which emphasized a fleet strength that relied on battle ships and heavy cruisers. In 1899 Valois had written a book favoring cruisers if war came with Britain. Such ships, light and fast, could attack

Great Britain Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It i ...

's merchant ships in case of war. Ships of the great tonnage, called

capital ships The capital ships of a navy are its most important warships; they are generally the larger ships when compared to other warships in their respective fleet. A capital ship is generally a leading or a primary ship in a naval fleet. Strategic ...

, were expensive and time-consuming to build, and, according to Valois, would not serve the German marine well. This strategic philosophy, with its emphasis on cruisers, did not match William's (or Tirpitz's) concept of an appropriate German navy that could compete in weight, size, and impressive appearance with the vast British fleet.

Additional work

His book ''Seekraft Seegeltung Seeherrschaft'' published in 1899 caused a stir of interest in international naval circles as in it he admitted that the German naval build up was directed at Britain and proposed that mutual interest of the

and Germany should lead to an alliance against Britain. He was considered a progressive in the naval related questions of the time, such as foreign colonies, even after his retirement. As a member of the ''Kolonialrat'' (colonial advisory board) he was the only supporter of a 1901 proposal to free all slaves in Germany's African colonies by 1920. Valois proposed that all children born to slaves should be born free, but this was overruled as "premature" and the board objected strongly to the proposal. He was long a foe of the United Kingdom and supported a strong cruiser fleet as the most feasible way to fight her in any future war. In the April 1910 issue of ''Überall'', the magazine of the Navy League (''Flottenverein''), he published a violently anti-British article, "Our Navy in the Service of the Colonial Movement". In it he wrote "there is at present no greater menace to the world's peace than the presumption of England." Although he was long retired when the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

entered the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

against Germany, he published a pamphlet "Nieder mit England!" (Down with England!) which strongly attacked the new enemy and called for her destruction.

Promotions

* Cadet Aspirant: 21 June 1959 * Cadet 1 October 1859 * See Cadet: 10 December 1859 * Unter Leutnant zur See: 19 July 1864 * Leutnant zur See: 29 August 1866 * Captain Leutant zur See: 25 Jan 1870 * Capitän zur See (Korvettenkapitäns): 17 December 1881

Awards

* Prussian Red Eagle Order, 4th class, with swords * Order of Merit: Iron Cross * Order of the Crown, 3rd class, with swordsPruessische Marine, p. 30–31.

Works authored

* Victor Valois, ''Seekraft Seegeltung Seeherrschaft'', 1899. * Victor Valois, ''Deutschland als Seemacht'', Leipzig: Wiegand, 1908. * Victor Valois, ''Nieder mit England!'' 1914 or 1915.