MARIA CAROLINA OF HABSBURG-LORRAINE, Queen of Naples and Sicily. - B. at Schönbrunn (Vienna) on 13 Aug. 1752, d. there on 8 Sept. 1814. Daughter of Emperor Francis and of Maria Theresa, she married King Ferdinand of Bourbon, IV of Naples and III of Sicily. Intelligent and unscrupulous, intriguing and ambitious, she held her indolent husband in subjection, assuming a clear predominance in the affairs of the State.

Having withdrawn Naples from Spanish tutelage in order to bind it to Austria and to England, and having made the minister

Acton, her favorite, all-powerful, she was the bold inspirer of various reforms, carried out to alleviate the grave deficiencies of the Kingdom. Subsequently, 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 obliged to take refuge because of the invasion of the Kingdom by the French, she was implacable in persecuting the innovators who had directed the Parthenopean Republic, and with the complicity of Nelson she worked so that they were tried and sent to the scaffold, despite their being protected by the capitulation with which they had surrendered to Cardinal Ruffo, head of the Sanfedist masses. In 1806, when the French returned to Naples, because Ferdinand had adhered to the third anti-Napoleonic coalition, she took refuge again in Sicily with her husband; there, having sought to oppose the arrogant English tutelage, she was forced by Lord Bentinck, in June 1814, to leave the Island and take refuge in Vienna.

Bibliography4 works

BIBL.: I. Helfert, M. Karolina: Auklage und Vertheidigungen, Vienna 1884; A. Valente, M. C. d'Austria negli ultimi anni di vita, offprint from Rassegna storica del Risorgimento, 23 (1936), fasc. III; id., G. Murat e l'Italia meridionale, Turin 1941, passim; A. Capograssi, Gl'Ingliesi in Italia durante le campagne napoleoniche, Bari 1949, passim.

Alfonso La Cava

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Maria Carolina of Habsburg-Lorraine, Queen of Naples and Sicily

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