Amélie d'Orléans

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Portrait photograph of Amélie d'Orléans from around 1886 to 1888

Amélie d'Orléans (full name: Marie Amélie Louise Hélène d'Orléans; born September 28, 1865 in London -Twickenham; † October 25, 1951 in Le Chesnay ) was the last queen from 1889 to 1908 through her marriage to Charles I from Portugal . As the only member of the Portuguese royal family, she paid a visit to Portugal after the end of the monarchy .

Life

Childhood and youth

Amélie was born as the eldest child of the French pretender Louis Philippe Albert d'Orléans and his wife Maria Isabella d'Orléans-Montpensier in Twickenham, now part of London. Her parents had after the February revolution there into English exile issued. She was baptized on the day she was born, her full first name being Marie Amélie Louise Hélène. The princess grew up with her seven siblings (only five of them reached adulthood) and received a deeply religious upbringing that corresponded to the views of the time. The relationship with her father was very close, and the two shared a love of horse riding and nature, while the relationship between Amélie and her strict mother was always a bit tense.

In 1884 she made a tour of Europe. While Amélie her uncle, the Spanish King Alfonso XII. visited, the Spanish press praised the beauty and elegance of the French princess, and in Vienna the Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph I invited her to attend a theater performance with him in his box. Her final stay in Munich brought her a couple of months later the marriage proposal of a Bavarian prince, which her parents refused.

Marriage and first years of marriage

Amélie with her son Ludwig Philipp, born in 1887

In 1884, the Portuguese heir to the throne, Karl, became aware of the young woman through a photograph by Amélie. To get to know her personally, he went to Chantilly in January 1886 , where the Orléans family had resided in the castle there since they returned to France in 1871 . Karl and Amélie shared a mutual affection from the beginning, and their engagement was soon announced, which was celebrated with great pomp in Paris . The newly fiancé then traveled by train to Portugal, where she arrived in Vimieiro on May 19, 1886. From there the princess went to the palace of Necessidades in Lisbon .

Three days later, on the afternoon of May 22, 1886, in the Lisbon church of Sao Domingos , Amélie married the future King of Portugal, Charles I. After a short honeymoon in Sintra , the heir to the throne moved into the Palácio Nacional de Belém . There Amélie received the news that her family had been expelled from France again. Her parents then went back to England. In the same year, the couple officially announced that Amélie was pregnant. After an uncomplicated pregnancy, she gave birth to her first son Ludwig Philipp on March 21, 1887 in an unusually lengthy confinement . The birth had taken so long that relatives and courtiers were terribly worried and feared the worst. In the same year Amélie had the opportunity to see her family again. This was offered on the first official trip of the heir to the throne couple, which took them to the English capital on the occasion of Queen Victoria 's 50th anniversary . The couple then traveled on to Scotland , from where the two were able to send the news of Amélie's second pregnancy to Portugal.

After her return, the princess devoted herself intensively to welfare and charitable projects. In contrast to other members of the European nobility , however, she did not just leave it to pure financial support, but became active herself. This earned her criticism from both the Portuguese monarchists and the Republicans . However, she was not deterred by this and continued to be personally committed. She also founded several welfare institutions, including the Instituto de Socorros a Náufragos , an association to assist shipwrecked people, and the National Tuberculosis Association ( Portuguese Assistência Nacional aos Tuberculosos ). In December 1887 she suddenly felt very uncomfortable. The doctors who were called could not prevent Amélie's second child, her daughter Maria Anna, from being born as a premature baby on December 14th and dying on the same day. While her well-being gradually improved, Amélie found it very difficult to get over the loss. However, her health was never fully restored, which later resulted in chronic heart problems.

Queen of Portugal

Amélie as Queen of Portugal
Vittorio Matteo Corcos : Portrait of Amélie von Orléans , 1905

When Amélie's father-in-law Ludwig I died in October 1889, her husband ascended the Portuguese throne as Charles I in December, making her Queen of Portugal. About a month earlier, the monarch had given birth to her second son Manuel on November 15 . When Karl set out on his first official trip abroad on October 2, Amélie stayed behind in Portugal and took over the reign during his absence . But she succeeded just as little as her husband in restoring inner calm to the country, which was deeply divided by party struggles. Political problems were also accompanied by increasing financial difficulties, which finally culminated in national bankruptcy in 1891 . All this led to an enormous loss of reputation for the monarchy and the royal family.

In 1902 the queen had to cope with several blows of fate. At the beginning of the year, Joaquim Augusto Mouzinho de Albuquerque , the educator of her son Ludwig Philipp, committed suicide because he could no longer bear the rumors circulating at court about his platonic passion for Amélie. Her heart disease also got worse and culminated in a first serious illness in June. Shortly after her older son returned from the coronation of King Edward VII in August 1902 as a representative of the Portuguese royal family , Amélie had a stroke , from the consequences of which she was able to recover.

In the years that followed, political struggles intensified and the social unrest in the country increasingly resulted in local revolts . The disputes and the increasing hatred of the royal family culminated in an assassination attempt on the king on February 1, 1908 , when he drove with Amélie and their two sons in an open carriage across the Praça do Comércio . Two Republicans fired pistol shots at the royal vehicle. Karl I was fatally hit in the neck and died immediately. The Crown Prince Ludwig Philipp was also fatally wounded and died a few minutes after his father. Prince Manuel was injured in the arm by the gunshots. Amélie was the only member of the royal family to remain unharmed and in a general tumult, full of desperation, tried to beat one of the two assassins with her bouquet of flowers .

After her younger son Manuel, who was completely inexperienced in government affairs, had succeeded his murdered father on the throne on February 3, 1908, Amélie saw it as her primary responsibility to provide the young king with advice and assistance. During the following two years she had a great influence on Manuel II. She formulated official statements by the king, which he only signed, read reports and dispatches in order to give him recommendations afterwards, and even led political council meetings. But Manuel II could not pacify his country either, on the night of October 3rd to 4th, 1910, uprisings broke out in Lisbon and other large cities . The Republic was proclaimed in Porto on October 5th . Amélie was in Sintra with her mother-in-law Maria Pia of Savoy when news of the unrest reached her. She rushed back to Lisbon immediately, but had to flee to Ericeira with her son in view of the fact that the palace of Necessidades was being shelled by warships . Because the situation was hopeless for the royal family, it went from there to Gibraltar .

Exile in England and France

Amélie finally went to England with her family, where she stayed with her brother Louis Philippe on his country estate, Wood Norton Hall . There she saw the outbreak of the First World War , during which she again became charitable by caring for war invalids as a volunteer in the war hospitals of Wandsworth and Whitechapel .

In 1920 she left England and went to France. Because of her poor health, the doctors had advised her not to spend another harsh winter on the British Isles. She moved into a mansion in Le Chesnay near Versailles , the Bellevue Palace . There she spent - with a few short interruptions - the remaining 30 years of her life. One of these exceptions was the sad occasion in 1932 to have to bury their second son Manuel. He had died in exile in England, and together with her daughter-in-law, Auguste Viktoria von Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen , Amélie organized the funeral services in London . However, neither she nor Auguste Viktoria was allowed to attend the state funeral in Lisbon, which Manuel II received at the behest of the Portuguese Prime Minister António de Oliveira Salazar in the São Vicente de Fora monastery .

In Le Chesnay, the ex-queen experienced the outbreak of World War II and the occupation of France by German troops. Shortly before the capture of Paris, the Portuguese government offered Amélie to take her there, but she refused. Their castle was requisitioned by the German occupiers as quarters for a general and his staff . At the intervention of the Portuguese ambassador , however, they left the building and from then on respected it as a neutral Portuguese territory. After the war, Salazar invited Amélie to visit Portugal. This time, the almost 80-year-old accepted the invitation and traveled there in May 1945. Until June 30th, she completed a round trip there, during which she once again visited places that had been important to her as Queen of Portugal.

After her return to France, Amélie's health deteriorated in the following years. Not only did her heart problems bother her, but because of her age, she also suffered intermittently from depression and states of confusion. She died at the age of 86 on October 25, 1951 in her castle in Le Chesnay. After an initial mourning ceremony in Paris, the Portuguese government arranged for her body to be transferred to the Panteão da Casa de Bragança family crypt in the São Vicente de Fora monastery and ordered a three-day national mourning .

progeny

Amélie's marriage to Charles I of Portugal resulted in three children, two of whom reached adulthood:

  • Ludwig Philipp (born March 21, 1887 - † February 1, 1908)
  • Maria Anna (* / † December 14, 1887)
  • Manuel II (November 15, 1889 - July 2, 1932), King of Portugal

literature

Web links

Commons : Amélie d'Orléans  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Amélie Queen of Portugal in the Munzinger archive , accessed on December 1, 2012 ( beginning of the article freely accessible).
  2. ↑ a b c d e f Detailed biography, part 1 , accessed on December 1, 2012.
  3. ↑ a b c Detailed biography, part 2 , accessed December 2, 2012.
  4. ↑ a b c d Detailed biography, part 3 , accessed on December 2, 2012.
  5. ^ Eduardo Nobre: O trono e as lágrimas. A rainha da saudade ( Memento of January 26, 2011 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on December 2, 2012.
  6. ^ C. Arnold McNaughton: The Book of Kings. A Royal Genealogy . Volume 1. Garnstone Press, London 1973, pp. 277-278.
predecessor Office Successor
Maria Pia of Savoy Queen of Portugal
1889–1908 		-
personal data
SURNAME Amélie d'Orléans
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Amelie of Orléans; Amelia of Orléans; Marie Amélie Louise Hélène d'Orléans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Queen of Portugal
DATE OF BIRTH September 28, 1865
PLACE OF BIRTH London -Twickenham
DATE OF DEATH October 25, 1951
Place of death Le Chesnay