Marriage
In 1832, King Ferdinand II of the Two Sicilies, brother of Carolina of the Two Sicilies, Duchess of Berry, had proposed to marry his younger brother, Prince Antonio, Count of Lecce who was 16 years old, to Louise Marie Thérèse d’Artois who was then 13. The plans fizzled.
Prince Antonio quickly became known for his restless behavior. By age sixteen in 1832, he was already a consummate womanizer. The marriage negotiation failed as Princess Carolina, the Duchess of Angoulême opposed the union.
Princess Carolina, the Duchess of Angoulême also discarded the idea of marrying her niece to any Austrian Archduke. She was adamant that Louise Marie Thèrésa should marry a Bourbon. As there were very few princes to choose from, Louise Marie Thèrésa reached twenty-five still unmarried and at an advanced age for a single Princess of her time.
Finally in 1845, Princess Carolina, the Duchess of Angoulême arranged her marriage to Hereditary Prince Charles Louis of Lucca, the future Duke Charles III of Parma.
A few years younger than Louise Marie Thèrésa, Charles Louis used to spend some summers near Froshdorf and they had met when they were still children.
Charles III, Duke of Parma, was born at the Villa delle Pianore near Lucca on 14 January 1823, the only son of Charles Louis, Prince of Lucca, (later Duke of Lucca, and Duke Charles II of Parma) and his wife Princess Maria Teresa of Savoy (daughter of King Victor Emmanuel I of Sardinia and his wife, Archduchess Maria Teresa of Austria-Este herself the daughter of the daughter of Archduke Ferdinand Charles of Austria-Este, and Maria Beatrice d’Este, Duchess of Massa.
He was given the baptismal names Ferdinand Charles Victor Joseph Maria Baldassarre. Until his accession as Duke of Parma in 1849, he was called Ferdinand Charles or Ferdinand. His family called him Danduccio.
At the death of his grandmother, Infanta Maria Luisa of Spain, Duchess of Lucca, on March 13, 1824, Ferdinand Charles became the Hereditary Prince of Lucca.
Hereditary Prince Ferdinand Charles of Lucca, the future Duke Charles III of Parma was a member of the House of Bourbon-Parma, a sub-branch of the House of Bourbon-Spain, itself originally a branch of the House of Bourbon, and thus of the Capetian Dynasty and earlier a descendent of the Robertians.
Duke Charles III’s patriline is the line from which he is descended father to son. It follows the Dukes of Parma as well as the Kings of Spain, France, and Navarre. The line can be traced back more than 1,200 years from Robert of Hesbaye to the present day, through Kings of France & Navarre, Spain and Two-Sicilies, Dukes of Parma and Grand-Dukes of Luxembourg, Princes of Orléans and Emperors of Brazil. It is one of the oldest in Europe.
On November 10, 1845, at Schloss Frohsdorf in Austria, Louise Marie Thèrésa married Hereditary Prince Ferdinand Charles of Lucca.
The Duchy of Lucca was incorporated in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, and she and her husband became known as Hereditary Prince and Hereditary Princess of Parma.
In December 1847, at the death of Empress Marie Louise, his father became the reigning Duke Charles II of Parma. His reign in Parma as Duke Charles II was brief. He was ill-received by his new subjects and within a few months he was ousted by a revolution.
Empress Marie Louise was the eldest child of Franz II, Holy Roman Emperor and Emperor of Austria, and his second wife, Maria Theresa of Naples and Sicily. She was also the second wife of was Napoleon Bonaparte , Emperor of the French, and as such was the Empress of the French and Queen of Italy from their marriage on April 1, 1810 until his abdication on April 6, 1814.
In August 1848 the Austrian army entered Parma, and officially restored Duke Charles II. Ferdinand Charles and his wife Princess Louise Marie Thèrésa and family, however, remained in England, since hostilities continued between the Austrian and Piedmontese armies. For several years Charles II had considered abdicating in favor of Ferdinand Charles, but he delayed in the hope that when he did so things would be more secure for his son.
On April 9, the regency transformed into a provisional government. Only four months after regaining the throne of his ancestors, Charles II was forced to flee from Italy, finding refuge in the castle of Weistropp in Saxony. On April 19, 1848, Charles abdicated in favor of his son, living in exile in Great Britain.
Duke Charles III owed his throne to the support of Austrian troops. He placed Parma under martial law, inflicted heavy penalties on the members of the late provisional government, closed the university, and instituted a regular policy of persecution. His authoritarian policies made him unpopular.
His arbitrary decisions destroyed the respect that his subjects had for him and his dynasty and he became unpopular. By 1853 there were rumors of plots to remove him from power.
His personal life was also in turmoil. He grew apart from his wife, Princess Louise Marie Thèrésa, Duchess of Parma who became exceedingly fat. The Duchess was a sharp-tongued woman who liked having her way through intrigues and the force of her personality.
The rift between husband and wife grew when Charles III openly began an affair with Countess Emma Guadagni (1829–1866), a sister-in-law of the Austrian general governor of Trento. They met in Florence in February 1852, while Charles III was a guest of Leopold II, Grand Duke of Tuscany.
In a semi-official visit to Queen Isabella II of Spain in December 1853, Charles III took his mistress with him, bringing about the final breakdown of his marriage. In mid February 1854, Charles III returned to Parma.