Maria Cristina Of Savoy, Queen Of The Two Sicilies, Venerable. Portrait Of Neapolitan School

MARIA CRISTINA di Savoia, Queen of the DUE SICILIE, venerable. Portrait of the Neapolitan school - Naples, Museo di S. Martino.

was in 1829 the fourth wife of King Fernando VII of Spain, with whom she had a daughter, the Infanta Isabella. Fernando, having had no male issue, altered the law of succession in order to leave the throne to Isabella, who upon his death (1833) was proclaimed queen under the regency of her mother. This gave rise to the civil wars against the deceased sovereign's brother, Don Carlos, who proclaimed himself King of Spain, supported by the absolutist powers. The Carlist crisis lasted until 1839, when the pretender was defeated by General Espartero and forced to seek refuge in France.

The following year Espartero seized the regency through a coup d'état, forcing M. C. to leave Spain. She was only able to return in 1843, after Isabella was declared of age and assumed sovereign powers. Nonetheless, M. C. continued to direct Iberian politics, curbing the authority of the Parliament and imposing her daughter's marriage to her cousin Don Francisco de Asís (1846). In 1854 a new uprising banished her a second time on the accusation of having squandered public finances to enrich her morganatic husband, Agustín Muñoz, on whom she had conferred the rank of duke and with whom she had three children. Readmitted to Spain after two years of exile, she played no further role in political events and spent the remainder of her life in obscurity, surviving the dethronement of Isabella by ten years. She died in France, having witnessed the republican interlude, the new Carlist attempt, the brief reign of Amedeo di Savoia, and the Bourbon restoration in the person of her grandson Alfonso XII. During the years of her dominance, Spain's military intervention against the Roman Republic of 1849 took place.