Maria Karolina, Queen of Naples and Sicily, passed away on 8 September 1814. She was the last surviving child of Maria Theresa and was said to have closely resembled her mother in political talent.
There was little to envy in Maria Karolina’s life. After a happy childhood in Vienna, she was married off to King Ferdinand of Naples and Sicily — a poorly educated, idle, and pleasure-seeking man who cared little for either state affairs or family life. Of the 18 children Maria Karolina bore, only seven survived to adulthood.
The last decades of her life were the hardest. Horrified by the terror in France, which claimed the life of her beloved younger sister Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, Maria Karolina allied her kingdom with Austria and Britain against Revolutionary and later Napoleonic France. A French invasion of Naples forced the royal family to flee to Sicily. Twice, in 1798 and 1806, Maria Karolina and Ferdinand were deposed from the throne. Yet the Queen’s fierce opposition to Napoleon earned even his reluctant acknowledgment.
After the second deposition, the couple lived in exile in Vienna. One final blow Maria Karolina had to endure was her granddaughter’s marriage to Napoleon, which led her to bitterly call herself “the devil’s grandmother.” She died at the age of 62, just a year before her husband’s restoration to the Neapolitan throne by the Congress of Vienna.
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