BORBONE, CARLO di. — Born around 1433 to Carlo I, Duke of Bourbon; died in Lyon on 13 September 1488. At the age of eleven he was appointed archbishop of Lyon by the cathedral canons, but his appointment was not confirmed until December 1446; he did not, however, assume governance of the diocese until 1447. He was created cardinal in December 1476 at the request of Luigi XI, to whom B. remained almost constantly attached; from him he received rich and numerous benefices and was appointed governor of Paris, where he won considerable esteem. In Lyon he had the cathedral façade built.
BORBONE - ANJOU - TWO SICILIES, ALFONSO MARIA GIUSEPPE ALBERTO. - Count of Caserta, born in Caserta on 28 March 1841 to King Ferdinand II and Maria Teresa of Austria, died in Cannes on 26 May 1934. An artillery officer in the Bourbon army, he took part in the stubborn and supreme defense 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, leaving the fortress now conquered.
A steadfast and ardent supporter—often indeed reckless—of all the ill-advised and unfortunate attempts aimed, in any case, at an impossible restoration, after witnessing in the summer of 1867 the death by cholera of his mother Queen Maria Teresa and the young Prince of Caltagirone, the last son of Ferdinand II, in Albano, he actively cooperated that autumn among the pontifical ranks in the fierce struggle against the Garibaldini invading Lazio.
In Rome, he had married on 8 June 1868 Antonietta of Borbone-Two Sicilies, and to Rome he promptly returned at the beginning of Sept. 1870 with the intention of fighting again in favor of the pontifical government. The events of 20 Sept. surprised him with his brother, the Count of Bari, at Palazzo Farnese, which appeared stubbornly closed and protected by Prussian colors to the new arrivals; but on the 23rd he was forced to leave for Civitavecchia and Italy under escort.
Upon the death of Francis II on 15 Jan. 1895 in Munich, while the Neapolitan legitimist party, which continued to vegetate for a long time, recognized him as His Majesty Alfonso I of the Two Sicilies, he withdrew to Villa Maria Teresa in Cannes, dedicating the many remaining years of his life to the education of his numerous offspring as well as to notable works of charitable and unassuming piety, leaving behind an unconditional reputation for uncommon virtue and chivalrous nobility of character.
On 20 September 1870, as Rome was about to be besieged, he entered the front line with his men, garrisoning the Aurelian Walls from Porta Pia to the return of Castro Pretorio, and then managed to retreat to St. Peter’s Square: the following day, after Pius IX’s unforgettable final blessing to the army, he marched out through Porta San Pancrazio, while the royal troops rendered military honours, to return to Austria and marry, on 26 April 1871, the infanta Maria de las Nieves, of the legitimate branch of the kings of Portugal, at the Bavarian manor of Heubach.
When the three-year Carlist conflict erupted in 1872, he immediately placed himself at the service of his brother Carlos (1848-1909), the pretender. After 1876, he devoted himself to long and perilous exploratory journeys in wild and distant lands. In 1900, following a sensational duel-related dispute between two Austrian officers, he initiated a vast anti-duelling movement, which, through a veritable international league, greatly influenced the decline of this barbaric and absurd custom, especially among the military and aristocracy.
The World War found him in Austria in 1914, where, also as the uncle and former guardian of the future Empress Zita, he was able to participate with extensive charitable works, culminating in the conversion of the noble residence of Ebenzweier near Altmünster into a hospital for the wounded. A profound lover of Italy, whose language he spoke fluently and to which so many childhood and youthful memories bound him, A. of B. returned to the Peninsula for the last time, as a guest of the Bourbon villa of Pianore near Viareggio, to attend the funeral of his nephew don Jaime (d. 2 October 1931), the Carlist pretender, and to assume his family rights against the Orléans and the legitimist succession to the Spanish throne, as well as to receive, as king, an act of allegiance from the representatives of Carlism, before his death without heirs concluded the centuries-old dispute with the branch of Isabella, then represented by Alfonso XIII.