CHARLES EMMANUEL IV OF SAVOY, King of Sardinia. - Born May 24, 1751 in Turin, died Oct. 5, 1819 in Rome. He was the son of Victor Amadeus III and of Maria Antonia Ferdinanda of Spain and was king from Oct. 1796 to June 1802. The education of the young prince was entrusted to the Barnabite father Giacinto Sigismondo Gerdil, later a cardinal, from whose teaching he received a vivid sense of piety that accompanied him throughout his life, sustained him in the hard years of exile, and prepared him to don the religious habit a few years before his death. In 1775 he married, with ecclesiastical dispensation, Maria Clotilde of Bourbon, sister of Louis XVI, a woman of lofty virtues, declared venerable by Pius VII in 1808.
When he ascended the throne in Oct. 1796, after the death of his father, C. E. IV found the state in a particularly difficult diplomatic and political situation. The French were in fact masters of Savoy and Piedmont, and hoped to have Sardinia legally ceded to them by means of negotiations. In such a state of affairs only one possibility remained to the new king, that of allying himself with France. An alliance that was all the more urgent the more frequent became the attempts of the republican circles of the kingdom to strip the monarchy of its authority. Thus, after the defeats of Wurmser and Alvinczy and after the peace of Tolentino, in Apr. 1797 the king consented to cede, upon the conclusion of the continental peace, Sardinia to France, in exchange for the uncertain promise of a debt of territorial compensation somewhere else in Italy; and likewise he undertook to contribute to the war of France by means of a contingent of troops. But the neighboring new republics, the Ligurian and the Cisalpine, ill tolerated the persistence of the monarchical order in Piedmont, and their envoys in Turin, backed also by the French representative, openly encouraged the innovators to rebellion. Indeed there were conspiracies and uprisings in various parts of the kingdom, but all were promptly suppressed. The émigrés, however, gave C. E. IV no respite, and an invasion by them from the direction of Carosio led to war with the Ligurian Republic. France, intervening on the pretext of putting an end to the struggle, as a guarantee of the king's good will demanded the surrender of the citadel of Turin. In this period Paris and Vienna considered with interest the project of making C. E. king of Rome for the protection of the Pope and of the Catholic religion, thus leaving France the arbiter of Piedmont. The king, however, would hear nothing of such a transfer. Toward the end of 1798 the fear of an attack from behind by the Piedmontese army advised France to throw off the mask decisively. In the night of Dec. 7-8 the king was forced to sign the act of abdication. He then departed for Parma, whence he reached Florence and finally Cagliari. Having stopped during the journey at the Certosa of Florence, he had offered the exiled Pius VI asylum in Sardinia. As soon as he arrived in his overseas domain, he protested against French violence and declared null the act of abdication, extorted from him by force and threats. When his consort died in Naples on March 7, 1802, he settled permanently in Rome, and abdicated on June 4, 1802 the throne in favor of his brother Victor Emmanuel I. On Feb. 11, 1815 he entered the Society of Jesus, dwelling in the novitiate house at S. Andrea del Quirinale, in whose church burial was also given him.
Bibliography5 works
Silvio Furlani