ALFONSO MARIA GIUSEPPE ALBERTO OF BOURBON-ANJOU-TWO SICILIES. — Count of Caserta, b. at Caserta on 28 March 1841 to King Ferdinand II and Maria Teresa of Austria, d. at Cannes on 26 May 1934. An artillery officer in the Bourbon army, he took part in the obstinate and final defence of Gaeta (6 Nov. 1860 – 13 Feb. 1861), until, at dawn on 14 Feb., he embarked with his half-brother King Francis II on the *Mouette* and left the now-conquered fortress.
A persistent and ardent, often even venturesome, supporter of all ill-considered and unhappy attempts aimed, however, at an impossible restoration, after seeing Queen Mother Maria Teresa and the young Prince of Caltagirone, Ferdinand II’s last son, die of cholera in Albano in the summer of 1867, he actively cooperated that autumn within the papal ranks in the fierce struggle against the Garibaldians breaking into Lazio.
In Rome he had married on 8 June 1868 Antonia of Bourbon-Two Sicilies, and to Rome he quickly returned at the beginning of September 1870 with the intention of fighting once more in favour of the papal government. The events of 20 Sept. found him with his brother, the Count of Bari, at the Palazzo Farnese, which appeared to the newcomers obstinately closed and guarded by Prussian colours; but on the 23rd he was obliged to depart for Civitavecchia and thence from Italy under escort.
On 15 January 1895, in Munich, he succeeded the late Francis II, while the Neapolitan legitimist party, which long continued to linger on, acknowledged him as His Majesty Alfonso I of the Two Sicilies. He retired to Villa Maria Teresa in Cannes, devoting the many remaining years of his life to the education of his numerous children and to works marked by charitable and almost slavish piety, leaving behind an unqualified reputation for uncommon virtue and chivalrous nobility of character.
ALFONSO CARLO FERDINANDO GIUSEPPE GIOVANNI PIO OF BOURBON-ANJOU-SPAIN. — Infante of Spain, Duke of S. Giacomo, knight of the Order of St Hubert, b. in London on 12 Sept. 1849 to Prince John (1822–87) and Archduchess Maria Beatrice of Austria-Este (1824–1906), d. in Vienna from injuries sustained in a motor-car accident at the end of September 1936. He was the last representative of Carlism as nephew of Don Carlos (1788–1855). Proposed in 1861 to succeed his uncle Francis V of Modena, who was to have worn the imperial crown of Mexico, he offered himself, at almost twenty, on the day after Mentana, on 6 June 1868, to Pius IX as a simple zouave.
On 20 Sept. 1870, as Rome was about to be invested, he entered with his men into the line, manning the Aurelian Walls from Porta Pia to the bend of the Castro Pretorio, and then succeeded in falling back into St Peter’s Square; the next day, after Pius IX’s unforgettable final blessing to the army, he marched out through Porta S. Pancrazio, while the kingdoms paid their respects to the honourable soldiers, before returning to Austria and marrying on 26 Apr. 1871 the Infanta Maria de las Nieves of the legitimate branch of the Kings of Portugal, at the Bavarian castle of Heubach.
When the three-year Carlist conflict flared up in 1872, he immediately placed himself at the service of his pretender brother Carlos (1848–1909). After 1876 he undertook long and perilous exploratory journeys to wild and distant lands, and in 1900, following a sensational chivalric dispute between two Austrian officers, he launched that vast anti-duelling movement which, through a veritable international league, exercised such influence on the decline of the barbarous and absurd custom, especially among military men and aristocrats.
The World War found him in Austria in 1914, where, also by virtue of being uncle and at one time guardian of the future Empress Zita, he was able to take part through extensive charitable works, culminating in the conversion of his noble residence at Ebensweier near Altmünster into a hospital for the wounded. Deeply attached to Italy, whose language he spoke fluently and to which so many childhood and youthful memories bound him, A. di B. returned for the last time to the Peninsula, as a guest at the Bourbon villa delle Pianore near Viareggio, to attend the funeral of his nephew Don Jaime (d. 2 Oct. 1931), the Carlist pretender, and to assume the family rights also with regard to the Orléans and the legitimist succession to the Spanish throne, as well as to receive, as king, an act of fealty from the representatives of Carlism, before his death without heirs brought to a close the centuries-old dispute with the Isabelline branch, then represented by Alfonso XIII.