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As we saw when we talked of Charles of Bourbon, when
in 1759 he left the Throne of Naples to take that
of Madrid - and by this he sanctioned de facto
the definitive separation of the two Crowns - he appointed
as his heir in Naples his third son, Ferdinand, then
aged 8, and entrusted him to a Regency Council of
Regency formed by 8 people, among which Prime Minister
Tanucci and the Prince of San Nicandro, Ferdinand’s
uncle.
The former had the precise task of being the political
guide of the Kingdom, the latter was tasked with the
child’s education.
Ferdinand
of Bourbon -
Portrait by Francesco Liani
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Born
in Naples on 12 January 1751, son of King Charles
of Bourbon and Maria Amalia Walburga of Saxony,
he died in Naples on 4 January 1825. He reigned
for one of the longest periods in history, if
we date the reign from 1759 (66 years). From
the Prince of San Nicandro he received a quite
common education mainly focused on the care
of body strength (his features and his use of
dialect earned him the nickname - certainly
not disdainful - of "Re Lazzarone"
(Rascal King)  .
Until he came of age, the kingdom was run in
all respects by Tanucci, who continued without
delay the reformist policy of Charles of Bourbon,
in close agreement with the Throne of Madrid.
Those were the decades of the famous Bourbon
reformism, then continued also by Ferdinand
until the years of the revolutionary storm.
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In
1768 he married Maria Carolina of Austria, daughter
of the Empress of the Sacred Roman Empire Maria Teresa
of Hapsburg, and therefore sister of Emperor Joseph
II, Emperor Leopold II and the Queen of France Maria
Antoinette. Ferdinand’s heir, Francis, was born
after five girls (of which Maria Teresa became Empress
of Austria, Maria Amelia Queen of the French, Maria
Luisa Grand Duchess of Tuscany).
Maria
Carolina
Portrait by Francesco Liani
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Maria
Carolina arrived in Naples when she was just
16 and immediately acquired a great weight in
Ferdinand’s political choices, especially
after the birth of Francis. A clash with Tanucci
was therefore unavoidable, as unavoidable was
the progressive break with Madrid, in which
the Queen succeeded in involving also Ferdinand
( a reason, this, of deep sorrow for the then
old King of Spain, who saw not only the political
control escape him, but also in a way his son
Ferdinand). In 1775 Maria Carolina officially
became member of the State Council; at first,
Tanucci had to consent to a great reduction
of his scope of action, and then he had to leave
the scene in 1777. Two years later, his place
was taken by the British Minister Prince John
Acton, who during the years enjoyed the total
confidence of the Royal Highnesses, which allowed
him to transfer the Kingdom from the Spanish
influence to the British one (confirmed, in
the crucial years of Napoleonic wars, by the
presence at the Court of Horatio Nelson and
several other British people who exerted a great
influence on the decisions taken by Maria Carolina). |
Prime
Minister
Bernardo Tanucci |
However,
after Tanucci left the scene, the reformist
process was not stopped. After all, the parents
of both monarchs (Charles of Bourbon and Maria
Teresa of Hapsburg) had both been reformers
and had moulded their children’s way of
thinking in the same way (as Joseph II showed
with unremitting zeal in Vienna!). This policy
of reforms, however, had to be stopped due to
the weight of the revolutionary storm of the
‘90s. The events of France, at first only
worrisome but then tragically devastating (fall
of the Monarchy, Jacobin Republic, murder of
the King and then of the Queen and their young
son, civil war, the Terror, Robespierre’s
dictatorship, hundreds of thousands of casualties,
etc.) forced a natural change in the naive and
open-minded political views (sometimes lacking
critical discernment) of the two Neapolitan
monarchs. Especially after 1794, due to the
French events and the discovery of a republican
conspiracy in Naples. |
Ferdinand and Maria Carolina began to understand the
true face of the reformer ,
especially the Enlightenment and Masonic intellectuals
(that until then they had always supported). However,
despite some further attempt of reconciliation with
the newly born French Republic, Ferdinand actually
joined international anti-revolutionary and anti-Napoleonic
Coalitions and in so doing remained also faithful
to the Bourbon "family pact" and his alliance
with the British. |
