MARIA CAROLINA d'Asburgo-Lorena, queen of NAPLES and SICILY. — Born at Schönbrunn (Vienna) on 13 August 1752, died there on 8 September 1814. Daughter of Emperor Francesco and Maria Teresa, she married King Ferdinando di Borbone, IV of Naples and III of Sicily. Intelligent and unscrupulous, intriguing and ambitious, she kept her indolent husband under her domination, assuming a clear predominance in affairs of state.
Having freed Naples from Spanish tutelage in order to bind it to Austria and England, and having made the minister
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Acton, her favourite, all-powerful, she was the bold inspiration behind various reforms, enacted to alleviate the Kingdom’s serious deficiencies. Later, she became a tenacious and determined opponent of the revolutionary movement spreading from France throughout Europe. In 1799, having returned from Sicily, where she had been forced to take refuge because of the French invasion of the Kingdom, she was implacable in persecuting the innovators who had directed the Parthenopean Republic; with Nelson’s complicity, she acted to have them tried and sent to the scaffold, despite their being protected by the capitulation by which they had surrendered to Cardinal Ruffo, head of the Sanfedist forces. In 1806, when the French returned to Naples because Ferdinando had joined the third anti-Napoleonic coalition, she again took refuge in Sicily with her husband; there, having attempted to resist the arrogant English tutelage, she was forced by Lord Bentinck, in June 1814, to leave the island and take refuge in Vienna.