Maria Cristina of Savoy, Queen of the Two Sicilies, Venerable. Portrait of Neapolitan School

MARIA CRISTINA of Savoy, queen of the TWO SICILIES, venerable. Portrait of the Neapolitan school - Naples, Museum of S. Martino.

in 1829 she became the fourth wife of the king of Spain Ferdinand VII, by whom she had a daughter, the infanta Isabella. Ferdinand, who had had no male offspring, modified the law of succession in order to leave the throne to Isabella, who at his death (1833) was proclaimed queen under the regency of her mother. Hence arose the civil wars against the brother of the deceased sovereign, don Carlos, who proclaimed himself king of Spain, with the support of the absolutist powers. The Carlist crisis lasted until '39, when the pretender was defeated by General Espartero and forced to take refuge in France.

The following year Espartero seized the regency by a coup d'état, forcing M. C. to leave Spain. She was able to return there only in 1843, after Isabella had been declared of age and had assumed sovereign powers. Nevertheless M. C. continued to direct Iberian policy, limiting the authority of Parliament and imposing the marriage of her daughter to her cousin don Francisco de Asís (1846). In 1854 a new uprising banished her a second time on the charge of having squandered the public finances to enrich her morganatic husband Agustín Muñoz, on whom she had conferred the rank of duke and by whom she had three children. Readmitted to Spain after two years of exile, she no longer had any part in political affairs and spent the rest of her existence in the shadows, surviving by ten years the dethronement of Isabella. She died in France, after having witnessed the republican interlude, the new Carlist attempt, the brief reign of Amadeus of Savoy and the Bourbon restoration in the person of her grandson Alfonso XII. During the years of her predominance there took place the military intervention of Spain against the Roman Republic of '49.

Renzo U. Montini