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November 11, 1748: Birth of King Carlos IV of Spain.

12 Thursday Nov 2020

Posted by liamfoley63 in Abdication, Empire of Europe, Featured Monarch, From the Emperor's Desk, Kingdom of Europe, Royal Genealogy, Royal House, Royal Succession

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Age of Enlightenment, House of Bourbon, King Carlos III of Spain, King Carlos IV of Spain, King Felipe V of Spain, King Louis XV of France, King Louis XVI of France, Kingdom of Spain, Manuel de Godoy, Maria Louisa of Parma, Napoleon Bonaparte, Queen Marie Antoinette, Spanish Empire


From the Emperor’s Desk: Due to technological difficulties I was unable to post this yesterday.

Carlos IV (November 11, 1748 – January 20, 1819) was King of Spain and the Spanish Empire from 14 December 14, 1788, until his abdication on March 19, 1808.

The Spain inherited by Carlos IV gave few indications of instability, but during his reign, Spain entered a series of disadvantageous alliances and his regime constantly sought cash to deal with the exigencies of war. He detested his son and heir Fernando, who led the unsuccessful El Escorial Conspiracy and later forced Carlos’s abdication after the Tumult of Aranjuez in March 1808, along with the ouster of his widely hated first minister Manuel de Godoy.

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Summoned to Bayonne by Napoleon Bonaparte, who forced Fernando VII to abdicate, Carlos IV also abdicated, paving the way for Napoleon to place his older brother Joseph Bonaparte on the throne of Spain. The reign of Carlos IV turned out to be a major turning point in Spanish history.

Early life

Carlos was the second son of Carlos III and his wife, Maria Amalia of Saxony. He was born in Naples (November 11, 1748), while his father was King of Naples and Sicily. His elder brother, Don Felipe, was passed over for both thrones, due to his learning disabilities and epilepsy.

In Naples and Sicily, Carlos was referred to as the Prince of Taranto. He was called El Cazador (meaning “the Hunter”), due to his preference for sport and hunting, rather than dealing with affairs of the state. Carlos was considered by many to have been amiable, but simple-minded. In 1788, Carlos III died and Carlos IV succeeded to the throne, and ruled for the next two decades.

Even though he had a profound belief in the sanctity of the monarchy, and kept up the appearance of an absolute, powerful king Carlos IV never took more than a passive part in his own government. The affairs of government were left to his wife, Maria Luisa, and the man he appointed first minister, Manuel de Godoy.

Carlos occupied himself with hunting in the period that saw the outbreak of the French Revolution, the executions of his Bourbon relative Louis XVI of France and his queen, Marie Antoinette, and the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte. Ideas of the Age of Enlightenment had come to Spain with the accession of the first Spanish Bourbon, Felipe V.

Carlos IV’s father Carlos III had pursued an active policy of reform that sought to reinvigorate Spain politically and economically and make the Spanish Empire more closely an appendage of the metropole. Carlos III was an active, working monarch with experienced first ministers to help reach decisions. Carlos IV by contrast was a do-nothing king, with a domineering wife and an inexperienced but ambitious first minister, Godoy.

Well-meaning and pious, Carlos IV floundered in a series of international crises beyond his capacity to handle. He was painted by Francisco Goya in a number of official court portraits, which numerous art critics have seen as satires on the King’s stout vacuity.

Riots, and a popular revolt at the winter palace Aranjuez, in 1808 forced the king to abdicate on March 19, in favor of his son. Fernando took the throne as Fernando VII, but was mistrusted by Napoleon, who had 100,000 soldiers stationed in Spain by that time due to the ongoing War of the Third Coalition.

Marriage and children

Carlos IV married his first cousin Infanta Maria Louisa of Parma, the daughter of Philip, Duke of Parma, in 1765. The couple had fourteen children, six of whom survived into adulthood:

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Infanta Maria Luisa of Parma (1751 – 1819) was Queen consort of Spain from 1788 to 1808 leading up to the Peninsular War. She was the youngest daughter of Philip, Duke of Parma, the fourth son of Felipe V of Spain and Louise Élisabeth of France, the eldest daughter of King Louis XV. In 1765 she married Carlos, Prince of Asturias who ascended the throne in 1788 and thus became queen.

Maria Luisa’s father, Philip (1720 – 1765) was Infante of Spain by birth, and Duke of Parma from 1748 to 1765. Born at the Royal Alcazar in Madrid as Felipe de Borbón y Farnesio, he was the third child and second son of Felipe V of Spain and his wife, Elisabeth Farnese. He founded the House of Bourbon-Parma, a cadet line of the Spanish branch of the Bourbon dynasty. He was a son-in-law of Louis XV.

Maria Luisa’s relationship with Manuel Godoy and influence over the King made her unpopular among the people and aristocrats. In total, Maria Luisa had twenty-four pregnancies of which fourteen children were born and ten miscarried.

She was rivals with the Duchess of Alba and the Duchess of Osuna attracting popular attention. The death of her daughter-in-law Princess Maria Antonia of Naples and Sicily, whom she disliked, was said to be the poisoning by the queen. When Carlos IV abdicated in 1808 he was accompanied by Maria Luisa.

Following Napoleon’s deposing of the Bourbon dynasty, the ex-King Carlos IV, his wife, Maria Luisa and former Prime Minister Godoy were held captive in France first at the château de Compiègne and three years in Marseille (where a neighborhood was named after him).

After the collapse of the regime installed by Napoleon, Fernando VII was restored to the Spanish throne. The former Carlos IV drifted about Europe until 1812, when he finally settled in Rome, in the Palazzo Barberini. His wife died on January 2, 1819, followed shortly by Carlos IV who died on January 20, of the same year.

August 9, 1830: Accession of Louis-Philippe as the King of the French.

09 Sunday Aug 2020

Posted by liamfoley63 in Featured Monarch, Kingdom of Europe, Royal Genealogy, Royal House, Royal Succession, Royal Titles, This Day in Royal History

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Emperor Nicholas I of Russia, French Revolution, July Revolution, King Charles X of France, King of the French, Louis Philippe, Louis Philippe I of France, Marie Antoinette, Prince Edward Duke of Kent, Queen Marie Antoinette

Louis-Philippe I (October 6, 1773 – August 26, 1850) was King of the French from 1830 to 1848 and the last king of France.

Louis-Philippe was born in the Palais Royal, the residence of the Orléans family in Paris, to Louis Philippe II, Duke of Chartres (Duke of Orléans, upon the death of his father Louis Philippe I), and Louise Marie Adélaïde de Bourbon. As a member of the reigning House of Bourbon, he was a Prince of the Blood, which entitled him the use of the style “Serene Highness”. His mother was an extremely wealthy heiress who was descended from Louis XIV of France through a legitimized line.

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Louis Philippe was the eldest of three sons and a daughter, Antoine-Philippe, Duke of Montpensier, Françoise d’Orléans (died shortly after her birth) Adélaïde d’Orléans, and Louis-Charles, Count of Beaujolais a family that was to have erratic fortunes from the beginning of the French Revolution to the Bourbon Restoration.

Louis-Philippe struck up a lasting friendship with Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, and moved to England, where he remained from 1800 to 1815.

In 1808, Louis-Philippe proposed to Princess Elizabeth, daughter of King George III of the United Kingdom. His Catholicism and the opposition of her mother Queen Charlotte meant the Princess reluctantly declined the offer.

In 1809, Louis-Philippe married Princess Maria-Amalia of Naples and Sicily, daughter of King Ferdinand IV of Naples and Archduchess Maria-Carolina of Austria, the thirteenth child of Empress Maria Theresa and Holy Roman Emperor Franz I. The ceremony was celebrated in Palermo November 25, 1809. The marriage was considered controversial, because she was the niece of Archduchess Marie-Antoinette of Austria, while he was the son of Louis-Philippe II, Duke of Orléans who was considered to have played a part in the execution of her aunt.

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Maria-Amalia, Duchess of Orléans with her son Ferdinand-Philippe d’Orléans

Maria-Amalia’s mother, Archduchess Maria-Carolina of Austria, was skeptical to the match for the same reason. She had been very close to her younger sister, Archduchess Marie-Antoinette of Austria, and devastated by her execution, but she had given her consent after he had convinced her that he was determined to compensate for the mistakes of his father, and after having agreed to answer all her questions regarding his father.

In 1830, the July Revolution overthrew King Charles X of France and Navarre who abdicated in favour of his 10-year-old grandson, Henri, Duke of Bordeaux, and, naming Louis-Philippe Lieutenant général du royaume, charged him to announce to the popularly elected Chamber of Deputies his desire to have his grandson succeed him. Louis-Philippe did not do this, in order to increase his own chances of succession.

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As a consequence, because the chamber was aware of Louis-Philippe’s liberal policies and of his popularity with the masses, they proclaimed Louis-Philippe, King, who for eleven days had been acting as the regent for his young cousin, as the new French king, Henri V. With his accession the House of Orléans displaced the senior branch of the House of Bourbon.

Charles X and his family, including his grandson, went into exile in Britain. The young ex-king, the Duke of Bordeaux, who, in exile, took the title of comte de Chambord, later became the pretender to the throne of France and was supported by the Legitimists.

Louis-Philippe was sworn in as King Louis-Philippe I on August 9, 1830. Upon his accession to the throne, Louis-Philippe assumed the title of King of the French – a title already adopted by Louis XVI in the short-lived Constitution of 1791. Linking the monarchy to a people instead of a territory (as the previous designation King of France and of Navarre) was aimed at undercutting the legitimist claims of Charles X and his family.

By an ordinance he signed on August 13, 1830, the new king defined the manner in which his children, as well as his “beloved” sister, would continue to bear the territorial designation “d’Orléans” and the arms of Orléans, declared that his eldest son, as Prince Royal (not Dauphin), would bear the title Duke of Orléans, that the younger sons would continue to have their previous titles, and that his sister and daughters would only be styled Princesses of Orléans, not of France.

In 1832, his daughter, Princess Louise-Marie, married the first ruler of Belgium, Leopold I, King of the Belgians. Their descendants include all subsequent Kings of the Belgians, as well as Empress Carlota of Mexico.

Louis-Philippe and Emperor Nicholas I of Russia

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Emperor Nicholas I of Russia

Louis-Philippe’s ascension to the title of King of the French was seen as a betrayal by Emperor Nicholas I of Russia, and it ended their friendship.

In 1815, Grand Duke Nicholas arrived in France, where he stayed with the duc d’Orleans, who soon become one of his best friends, with the grand duke being impressed with duc’s personal warmth, intelligence, manners and grace. For Nicholas the worst sort of characters were nobility who supported liberalism, and when the duc d’Orleans become the king of the French as Louis Philippe I in the July revolution of 1830, Nicholas took this as a personal betrayal, believing his friend had gone over as he saw it to the dark side of revolution and liberalism.

Nicholas hated Louis-Philippe, the self-styled Le roi citoyen (“the Citizen King”) as a renegade nobleman and an “usurper,” and his foreign policy starting in 1830 was primarily anti-French, based upon reviving the coalition of Russia, Prussia, Austria and Britain to isolate France. Nicholas detested Louis-Philippe to the point that he refused to use his name, calling him merely “the usurper.”

January 21, 1793: Execution of King Louis XVI of France and Navarre.

21 Tuesday Jan 2020

Posted by liamfoley63 in Featured Monarch, Kingdom of Europe, Royal Succession, This Day in Royal History

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Archduchess of Austria, House of Bourbon, House of Capet, King Louis XVI of France, Kingdom of France, Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, National Convention, Queen Marie Antoinette

* 1793 – After being found guilty of treason by the French National Convention, Louis XVI of France is executed by guillotine.

Louis XVI (August 23, 1754 – January 21, 1793), born Louis-Auguste, was the last king of France and Navarre before the fall of the monarchy during the French Revolution.

Louis-Auguste de France, who was given the title Duc de Berry at birth, was born in the Palace of Versailles. One of seven children, he was the second surviving son of Louis, the Dauphin of France, and the grandson of Louis XV of France and Navarre and of his consort, Maria Leszczyńska. His mother was Marie-Josèphe of Saxony, the daughter of Prince-Elector Friedrich August II of Saxony, (also King Augustus III of Poland) and Maria Josepha of Austria.

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In 1765, at the death of his father, Louis, Dauphin of France son and heir apparent of Louis XV, Louis-Auguste became the new dauphin of France. Upon his grandfather’s death on May 10, 1774, he assumed the title “king of France and Navarre”, which he used until September 4, 1791, when he received the title of “king of the French” until the monarchy was abolished on September 21, 1792.

On May 16, 1770, at the age of fifteen, Louis-Auguste married the fourteen-year-old Habsburg Archduchess Maria Antonia of Austria (better known by the French form of her name, Marie Antoinette), his second cousin once removed and the youngest daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor Franz I of Lorraine and his wife, the Empress Maria Theresa of Austria.

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Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were the parents of four live-born children:
* Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte (December 19, 1778 – October 19, 1851)
* Louis-Joseph-Xavier-François, the Dauphin (October 22, 1781 – June 4, 1789)
* Louis-Charles, Dauphin after the death of his elder brother, future titular king Louis XVII of France (March 27, 1785 – June 8, 1795)
* Sophie-Hélène-Béatrix, died in infancy (July 9, 1786 – June 9, 1787)

In a context of civil and international war, Louis XVI was suspended and arrested at the time of the Insurrection of 10 August 1792; one month later, the absolute monarchy was abolished; the First French Republic was proclaimed on September 21, 1792. He was tried by the National Convention (self-instituted as a tribunal for the occasion), found guilty of high treason, but before the trial started and Louis mounted his defense to the Convention, he told his lawyers that he knew he would be found guilty and be killed, but to prepare and act as though they could win. He was resigned to and accepted his fate before the verdict was determined, but he was willing to fight to be remembered as a good king for his people.

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Louis XVI was executed by guillotine on 21 January 1793, as a desacralized French citizen under the name of “Citizen Louis Capet,” in reference to Hugh Capet, the founder of the Capetian dynasty – which the revolutionaries interpreted as Louis’ surname. Louis XVI was the only King of France ever to be executed, and his death brought an end to more than a thousand years of continuous French monarchy. Both of his sons died in childhood, before the Bourbon Restoration; his only child to reach adulthood, Marie Therese, was given over to the Austrians in exchange for French prisoners of war, eventually dying childless in 1851.

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