Maria Carolina was Queen of Naples and Sicily as the wife of King Ferdinand IV and III, who later became King of the Two Sicilies.
34 Facts About Maria Carolina
2.
Maria Carolina was a proponent of enlightened absolutism until the advent of the French Revolution, when, in order to prevent its ideas gaining currency, she made Naples a police state.
3.
Maria Carolina promoted Naples as a centre of the arts, patronising painters Jacob Philipp Hackert and Angelica Kauffman, and academics Gaetano Filangieri, Domenico Cirillo and Giuseppe Maria Galanti.
4.
Maria Carolina was the last surviving child of Maria Theresa.
5.
Maria Carolina was the last queen of Naples and Sicily before the unification of the two into the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.
6.
Maria Carolina's godparents were King Louis XV of France and his wife, Maria Leszczynska.
7.
Maria Carolina was the daughter who resembled her mother most.
8.
Maria Carolina formed a very close bond with her youngest sister, Marie Antoinette.
9.
Maria Carolina reacted badly to her engagement, crying, entreating and saying that Neapolitan marriages were unlucky.
10.
Maria Carolina's objections did not delay her preparation for her new role as Queen of Naples by the Countess of Lerchenfeld.
11.
In total, Maria Carolina bore Ferdinand eighteen children, of whom seven survived into adulthood including his successor, Francis I, the last Holy Roman Empress, a Grand Duchess of Tuscany, the last Queen of the French, and a Princess of Asturias.
12.
Until then, Maria Carolina presided over the rejuvenation of Neapolitan court life, largely neglected since the advent of her husband's regency.
13.
Academics Gaetano Filangieri, Domenico Cirillo, and Giuseppe Maria Carolina Galanti frequented her salon, among others.
14.
Tanucci's fall from grace came about over an argument with Maria Carolina regarding Freemasonry, of which she was an adherent.
15.
Maria Carolina proceeded to alienate large swaths of the nobility by replacing the influence of Spain with that of Austria.
16.
Maria Carolina replied using a letter written by the king, expounding to Charles III that Acton, the son of a French woman, was not English and that he was appointed before Spanish hostilities with Britain broke out.
17.
Acton and Maria Carolina were seen to have become so close by 1782 that, according to the Sardinian ambassador in Naples, people falsely believed they were lovers.
18.
Maria Carolina patronised German-Swiss artists, foremostly Angelica Kauffman, who famously painted the queen's family in an informal garden setting in 1783, and gave her daughters lessons in drawing.
19.
Maria Carolina showered Kauffman with gifts, but she preferred the artistic circles in Rome to Naples.
20.
Maria Carolina commissioned ornamental snuff boxes and jewellery from goldsmiths.
21.
Maria Carolina was anxious to improve Neapolitan-Papal relations, which had deteriorated owing to arguments with Pope Pius VI over ecclesiastical laws and the investiture and choice of bishops.
22.
On leaving, Maria Carolina was presented with the Golden Rose, a great mark of Papal favour.
23.
Maria Carolina rejected the French Revolution and was determined to prevent its ideology gaining prevalence in Naples.
24.
Maria Carolina did this by sub-dividing Naples into twelve police wards, controlled by government-appointed commissioners, replacing the popularly elected alderman system.
25.
Queen Maria Carolina was so horrified at what had happened at the Tuileries that day that she almost broke off relations with France altogether.
26.
Maria Carolina's plan backfired when the French government intercepted a letter detailing how he sabotaged the diplomatic mission of Huguet de Semonville to the Ottoman Empire.
27.
Concurrently, Maria Carolina arranged a treaty of alliance with Great Britain, on whom France had latterly declared war.
28.
Maria Carolina was so horrified by that event that she refused to speak French, "that monstrous language", and banned the "inflammatory" philosophical works of Galanti and Filangeri, who had hitherto enjoyed the queen's patronage.
29.
In 1794, following the discovery of a Jacobin plot to overthrow the government, Maria Carolina ordered Medici to suppress the Freemasons, of which she was once an adherent, believing they were partaking in treasonable activities with the French.
30.
Bonaparte's successes in Northern Italy compelled Maria Carolina to sue for peace, under which Naples had to pay to France a war indemnity of 8 million francs.
31.
In June 1800, Maria Carolina traveled with her three unmarried daughters, her younger son Leopoldo, and accompanied by William and Emma Hamilton and Nelson over Livorno, Florence, Trieste and Laibach to Vienna, where she arrived two months later.
32.
Maria Carolina stayed two years in her homeland, where she arranged advantageous marriages for her children.
33.
Maria Carolina's maid found the queen lying dead on the floor among scattered letters.
34.
Maria Carolina was buried in the Imperial Crypt in Vienna.