Maria Luisa of Spain (1782-1824)
Maria Luisa of Spain (full name: Maria Luisa Josefina Antonieta Vicenta ; Spanish: María Luisa de Borbón ) (born July 6, 1782 in Madrid , † March 13, 1824 in Rome ) was a Spanish infanta by birth . She married the Parmesian Hereditary Prince Ludwig in 1795 and became Queen of Etruria in 1801 . After the early death of her husband (1803) she acted as regent for her underage son Karl Ludwig , but returned to Spain after the occupation of Etruria by French troops at the end of 1807. In 1808 she followed her family to France, opposed Napoleon and had to live in a Roman monastery from 1811 to 1814. After Napoleon's fall, the Congress of Vienna gave her the Duchy of Lucca in 1815 , which she ruled until her death in 1824.
Lineage, Early Life, and Marriage
Maria Luisa Josefina Antonieta Vicenta was the third daughter of the Spanish King Charles IV (1748-1819) and his wife Maria Luise von Bourbon-Parma (1751-1819), a daughter of Duke Philip of Parma and his wife Marie , who survived early childhood Louise Élisabeth de Bourbon . She received her first two names after her older sister Maria Luisa Carlota, who died four days before she was born at the age of only four. She had a happy childhood and was called Luisetta within her family .
In 1795 Prince Ludwig (1773–1803), eldest son of Duke Ferdinand of Parma and his wife Maria Amalia of Austria , came to the Spanish court and, after an agreement between his family and the Spanish royal family, was to marry one of the daughters of Charles IV. Although he was expected to marry 15-year-old Infanta Maria Amalia , he preferred her younger, serene, and prettier sister, Maria Luisa, who had short stature, dark curly hair and brown eyes. Both infants gained a favorable impression of the tall and handsome prince.
On August 25, 1795, Maria Luisa, who was only 13 years old, married Prince Ludwig, who had been appointed Spanish Infante, in the royal palace of La Granja , while her sister Maria Amalia married her 39-year-old uncle Antonio Pascual . Maria Luisa now carried the title of Princess of Parma. Their marriage was happy, but marred by the marred and deteriorating health of her husband, who was suffering from epileptic seizures . The young couple spent the first years of their marriage, their happiest times, in Spain. During his stay there, Maria Luisa's first child, Karl Ludwig , was born on December 22nd, 1799 in Madrid. Then the couple wanted to move to the Duchy of Parma , which they were to inherit, but King Charles IV did not let them go. Goya painted the couple together with the Spanish royal family in early 1800 during a stay in the palace of Aranjuez .
Queen of Etruria
According to an agreement between Napoleon and King Charles IV of Spain and the House of Bourbon-Parma, concluded at the beginning of 1801 , Maria Luisa's husband was not to inherit the Duchy of Parma, which France would claim after the death of Duke Ferdinand , but ruler of the former Grand Duchy of Tuscany will be the newly created Kingdom of Etruria .
The politically inexperienced Maria Luisa rejected this plan. Despite her reluctance, under pressure from her family, she gave in to Napoleon's demand to go to Paris with her husband first in order to receive with him the establishment of her new rulership. The young couple left Madrid on April 21, 1801, crossed the border at Bayonne and traveled incognito as Count and Countess of Livorno to Paris, where they were honored by Napoleon on May 24. At first it didn't make a good impression in its unfashionable Spanish costume. Napoleon, however, was impressed by Maria Luisa's tenderness towards her little son, whom she nursed herself. The future Queen of Etruria was not particularly happy about her stay in Paris, reluctantly attended events held in her honor and often lay in bed with a fever. She was also concerned about her husband's poor health.
After 20 days, Maria Luisa and her husband left the French capital and traveled to Etruria via Piacenza , where Ludwig saw his parents again, and Parma , where they stayed for three weeks. The royal couple made their entry into Florence , the capital of their new empire , on August 12, 1801 . Although Tuscany was still occupied by the French general Joachim Murat , Count Ventura had taken possession of it in the name of King Ludwig. The people received their new rulers in an unfriendly manner, since they had arrived under the protection of French armies and were seen as a mere tool of France. Maria Luisa suffered a miscarriage and her husband had more frequent epileptic fits. Their residence, the Palazzo Pitti , was fairly empty, so that they had to furnish it with furniture borrowed from the local nobility due to lack of money.
The Viennese court was the first to recognize Ludwig's rule and sent General Colli to Florence as the Austrian ambassador. Pope Pius VII sent the later Cardinal Morozzo as Apostolic Nuncio to the Kingdom of Etruria. This suffered from the destruction of the war and shattered finances and had to pay for the French troops stationed there. Maria Luisa and her husband tried in vain to obtain the withdrawal of these military contingents and only received the promise that the soldiers in the capital would be transferred to Pisa and Livorno after the creation of a royal guard .
In the summer of 1802 Maria Luisa and her husband Ludwig were invited to the double wedding of their brother Ferdinand with Maria Antonia of Naples-Sicily and their younger sister Maria Isabel with Francesco von Bourbon , Crown Prince of Naples-Sicily. Because of Etruria's financial problems, the deteriorating health of Ludwig and her early pregnancy, Maria Luisa started the sea voyage to Spain only under pressure from her father, during which she fell ill and on October 2, 1802, shortly before reaching the coast near Barcelona , with difficulties gave birth to their daughter Maria Luisa Carlota . She recovered on board her ship for a few days before she was brought ashore in Barcelona, where her parents were waiting for them. So she missed the double wedding held on October 6th. When Ludwig found out that his father Ferdinand had died shortly afterwards, on October 9th, he wanted to return to Florence, but at the urging of her parents had to go to the Madrid court with Maria Luisa first and was only allowed to meet her in December Embark 1802 in Cartagena to return to Etruria. Once there, Ludwig's illness was kept a secret from the population and Maria Luisa ruled alone. Five months after his return to Etruria, Ludwig died on May 27, 1803 at the age of only 29, leaving Maria Luisa, shaken by the death of her husband, as regent for her underage son Karl Ludwig.
Regent of Etruria
The plan discussed in France and Spain to marry the barely 21-year-old Maria Luisa to her four years younger cousin Pedro Carlos von Bourbon , son of the Spanish Infante Gabriel , a younger brother of King Charles IV, was ultimately not realized. The Etrurian regent founded a higher educational institute for science, the Museum of Physics and Natural History, in Florence, and tried to win over her subjects through a mild regime. So she often had people entertained in the Palazzo Pitti and gave lavish receptions for artists and writers.
French troops were still stationed in various parts of Etruria and tax increases were necessary to maintain them. But these forces eventually evacuated the country and were replaced by 6,000 Spaniards. According to her memoirs, Maria Luisa had achieved this exchange of troops through her request to the French cabinet; According to another account, Napoleon himself proposed sending Spanish soldiers to Etruria in order to be able to deploy this army elsewhere in the French interest. In fact, Napoleon sent the Spanish troops stationed in Etruria to the coasts of the Baltic and North Sea in 1806 . Maria Luisa's subjects still had to pay high subsidies for military contingents deployed in the spirit of Napoleon.
Abdication and return to Spain
Through the Treaty of Fontainebleau of October 27, 1807, agreed by Napoleon and the Spanish King Charles IV , the Kingdom of Etruria was ceded to Napoleon against the (yet to be conquered) northern Portugal. On November 23, 1807, the French envoy demanded that Maria Luisa leave the country immediately. She asserted her rights in vain and was called to Spain by her father. So she had to leave Florence with her children on December 10, 1807. Napoleon later gave Etruria, annexed to France, to his sister Elisa , who ruled the country as Grand Duchess of Tuscany from March 3, 1809.
In Milan , Maria Luisa had a meeting with Napoleon, during which he promised her, as compensation for the loss of Etruria, as provided for in the Treaty of Fontainebleau, rule over the kingdom of Lusitania , which was to be created after the Franco-Spanish conquest of Portugal . She was also supposed to marry Lucien Bonaparte after he had divorced, but neither of them wanted to know anything about it. In addition, Maria Luisa did not want to take up the government planned for her in northern Portugal, as she would then have de facto taken the place of her eldest sister Carlota Joaquina , the rightful Portuguese crown princess. She returned to Spain and arrived in Aranjuez on February 19, 1808 , where she met her family again.
At that time the relationship between King Charles IV and his son Ferdinand was strained; The latter had even made a conspiracy against his father. Napoleon had sent French troops to Spain. From 17th to 19th March 1808 Aranjuez mutiny led to the overthrow of the leading statesman Manuel de Godoy and the abdication of Charles IV in favor of his son, who was known as Ferdinand VII. ascended the throne. Maria Luisa stood on her father's side in this family dispute and acted as mediator between the dethroned Charles IV and the commander-in-chief of the French armed forces on the Iberian Peninsula, Joachim Murat , who arrived in Madrid on March 23. This deal with Murat was viewed as an act directed against Spanish interests and contributed to Maria Luisa becoming unpopular.
Exile in France
When Ferdinand VII and his parents accepted Napoleon's invitation in April 1808 to meet him in Bayonne for an interview, Maria Luisa , who was recovering from a scarlet fever disease, was not in a position to come there as well. But since Napoleon insisted that she and all other relatives of Charles IV should go to France, Maria Luisa left Madrid on May 2 after convalescence and traveled to Bayonne, where she learned that her father and brother would be born on May 5. / 6. May 1808 had forcibly renounced the Spanish crown. She asked Napoleon for an audience and insisted in vain for her installation on the throne of Parma. She was promised a large pension, but protested against the annexation of her son's territory.
Like her parents, Maria Luisa would now live with her children in Fontainebleau and receive an annual pension of 400,000 francs. However, together with her children, she was only given a poor apartment and asked to be able to rent her own house in Passy . When she was about to get on a carriage to go there, an officer of Napoleon stood in her way and explained that he had been ordered to prevent her departure. She was charged with intending to flee and was forced to live with her children under police surveillance. On June 18, 1808, she received the order to go to Compiègne with her parents . She was often sick and lacked money. Since she did not own a horse, she had to be content to take walks with her children on foot. She inquired about the pension she was entitled to and was promised a monthly payment of 33,000 francs, but she would have to pay for her travel from Bayonne to Fontainebleau and from there to Compiègne. After Napoleon had finally sent her the promised funds minus the costs mentioned, she was able to buy a horse.
When Charles IV and his wife left for Marseilles on their request to be allowed to move to a warmer place with a healthier climate , Maria Luisa managed that she did not have to accompany her parents. She took this step because she had always been treated very strictly by them during the time of exile. Some time later, Napoleon promised Maria Luisa, who had again laid claim to Parma, that she would at least be allowed to live in the Ducal Palace of Colorno not far from Parma and that she would receive a substantial pension. She left Compiègne on April 5, 1809, but after arriving in Lyon learned from the prefect there that her destination was not Parma, but Nice , where she had to leave immediately. However, she had arrived in Lyons by night, and her son was also ill, so she asked not to continue her journey until the next day. She got this concession with difficulty, but a police superintendent spent the night in her anteroom. On April 18, she finally arrived in Nice with a police escort, where she was closely guarded.
Internment in a Roman monastery
In 1811 Maria Luisa tried to escape from Nice to England , but her letters were intercepted and the operation was foiled. Among the people she trusted were spies for Police Minister Anne-Jean-Marie-René Savary, duc de Rovigo . A police colonel came to their premises with gendarmes, claimed that an Englishman was hiding here and had their stable master and steward arrested, who were taken to Paris. After completing the official act, Maria Luisa had to learn that her pension payments had been suspended. Meanwhile, an investigation took place and Maria Luisa was sentenced to internment in a Roman monastery, where she was allowed to take her daughter while her son was to be handed over to the care of his grandfather Charles IV. Maria heard of this decision when she returned from a church visit. In a letter to Napoleon she had tried in vain to exonerate those accused of aiding and abetting her planned escape by taking the blame entirely on herself; two of her accomplices were executed.
Maria Luisa was brought to Rome and imprisoned there with her daughter on August 14, 1811 in the monastery of Santi Domenico e Sisto near the Quirinal. No order had been given to receive her, and when the prior came to the gate with a candle he apologized that nothing had been prepared for Her Majesty. An official sent by Napoleon took away all of her jewelry and announced that her pension had been limited to 2500 francs a month. During the first year of her detention, she was not allowed to write or receive letters, not even from her son.
The Cortes of Cádiz recognized Maria Luisa as well as her children on March 18, 1812, the rights to the Spanish crown, since it was under French control; it was not until 1820 that it regained its rights. When Charles IV and his wife came to Rome with Maria Luisa's son in June 1812, they were allowed to see their imprisoned daughter temporarily with the permission of General Miollis , and their first meeting was very cordial. Meanwhile, Maria Luisa was only allowed to meet her son under supervision for 20 minutes once a month. Napoleon should not be informed of this.
When the Neapolitan soldiers of Joachim Murat, who had switched sides, occupied Rome, Maria Luisa regained her freedom on January 14, 1814. A large contingent of troops took up positions in front of the monastery of Santi Domenico e Sisto, and the captain declared that he had orders to form an honor guard for the daughter of Charles IV. The General and Commander-in-Chief Pignatelli was very polite to Maria Luisa on a visit. The new governor de la Vauguyon also came to the monastery and assured Maria Luisa that she could leave it at any time. The next day, Pignatelli ordered that she and her children should move to the Palazzo Barberini, where their parents lived . Murat also met her in Rome and initially had her assigned a pension of 33,000 francs per month, which was then reduced to 10,000 francs.
Congress of Vienna
Napoleon had to abdicate on April 6, 1814. Maria Luisa, who was still in Rome, now hoped that her son would be installed in the rule of the Duchy of Parma. When an assembly of European rulers and politicians began to gather at the Congress of Vienna to decide on the reorganization of Europe, Maria Luisas quickly wrote her memoirs, which were written in Italian, to provide arguments for her cause. These memories were translated into French and English; the French writer and translator Auguste-Jacques Lemierre d'Argy published it in Paris in 1814 under the title Mémoires de la reine d'Étrurie, écrits par elle-même . During Napoleon's return and the short-term rule of the Hundred Days (March to June 1815) Maria Luisa fled Rome with her parents, stayed in various Italian cities and returned with them to Rome after Napoleon's final defeat.
At the Congress of Vienna, Maria Luisa's interests were not represented particularly successfully by the Spanish emissary, the Marqués de Labrador . Finally, the Congress decided that Maria Luisa and her son should receive the Duchy of Lucca in central Italy , while Napoleon's 23-year-old wife Marie Louise was given the Duchy of Parma, Piacenza and Guastalla for life.
Maria Luisa was initially not satisfied with this solution. She lived in a Roman palace with her children, but had increasingly strained relationships with her family. She opposed the plan of her parents and her brother Ferdinand VII to marry her 14-year-old daughter Maria Luisa Carlota to her 22-year-old brother Francisco de Paula , as well as the plan to marry her son Karl Ludwig with Maria Christina of Naples. Sicily , a daughter of her sister Maria Isabel .
In order to be able to break away from her family, Maria Luisa was satisfied with the sovereign rule over Lucca that was offered to her. In a contract concluded in Paris on June 14, 1817, it was further admitted that Napoleon's wife would remain in the possession of the Duchy of Parma, Piacenza and Guastalla for life, but that after her death it would pass into the possession of Maria Luisa or her son, and at the same time most of Lucca fall to the Habsburg Grand Duchy of Tuscany . The Spanish ambassador in Turin then administered the Duchy of Lucca until Maria Luisa's arrival on December 7, 1817.
Duchess of Lucca and death
The exhausting last ten years had left their mark on Maria Luisa; she looked less youthful and had become fuller. The desired marriage with the widowed Grand Duke Ferdinand III. of Tuscany did not come about, as did the planned marriage with Archduke Ferdinand Karl of Austria-Este . After the assassination of Charles Ferdinand d'Artois (February 14, 1820), there were also plans to marry Maria Luisa with his father, the later French king Charles X.
Maria Luisa, who continued to rule Lucca until the end of her life despite the fact that her son had come of age, tried to remove the traces of the previous government of Napoleon's sister Elisa, promoted public construction work, and left the interior decoration of the Palazzo Ducale from 1817 to 1820 Completely renew Lucca, favored science and the clergy, founded 17 new monasteries and promoted, among other things, the development of the port city of Viareggio , to which it granted city rights in 1820. In disregard of the constitution decreed by the Congress of Vienna, she governed moderately absolutist, appeared to be more open to the introduction of a constitution under the impression of the forced establishment of a more liberal system of government in Spain (1820), but came off again after the restoration of absolutism in Spain in 1823 from this attitude.
Maria Luisa's relationship with her son had cooled, but in 1820 she arranged for him to marry the 17-year-old Savoyard Princess Maria Teresa . Just as she spent the winters in Rome away from Lucca, she also traveled to Rome in October 1823, but was already feeling sick. She signed her last will on February 22nd, 1824 and appointed her brothers Ferdinand VII and Don Carlos as executors. She had been particularly fond of the latter. She died of cancer on March 13, 1824 at the age of 41 in Rome. Her embalmed corpse was first transported by sea to Viareggio, where it arrived on April 10th, and after the funeral ceremonies in Lucca Cathedral in August 1824, it was transferred to Spain on board a Sardinian corvette. The burial took place in Chapel 7 of the Pantheon of the Infants of the Escorial . Her son Karl Ludwig took over the government of Lucca, where Maria Luisa was erected a statue.
progeny
The marriage of Maria Luisa and her husband had two children:
- Karl II. Ludwig (22 December 1799 - 16 April 1883) King of Etruria ⚭ 1820 Maria Theresa of Savoy (1803–1879)
-
Maria Luisa of Bourbon-Parma (October 2, 1802 - March 18, 1857)
- ⚭ 1825 Maximilian of Saxony (1759–1838)
- ⚭ Count Ferdinand von Rossi († 1854)
- ⚭ Count Giovanni of Vimercati († 1861)
literature
- Marie-Louise-Joséphine : In: Louis Gabriel Michaud (Ed.): Biographie universelle , 2nd ed. (1843ff.), Vol. 26, pp. 632–637.
- Elvio Ciferri: Maria Luisa di Borbone . In: Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani , Vol. 70 (2008), pp. 257f. ( online )
- María de los Ángeles Pérez Samper: Borbón y Borbón, María Luisa Josefina Antonieta de , in: Diccionario biográfico español , Madrid 2009–2013, online version
Web links
| predecessor | Office | Successor |
|---|---|---|
| --- |
Queen of Etruria 1801–1803 |
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| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Maria Luisa of Spain |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Maria Louisa Josefa Antonietta Vicentia of Spain |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Queen of Etruria and regent for her underage son |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 6, 1782 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Madrid |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 13, 1824 |
| Place of death | Rome |