Between Praise and Condemnation: A Look at the Historical Debate

Abstract

As was previously mentioned, Maria Carolina has been denigrated by many historians who have painted her as a monster, unscrupulous both with men and women. Ten years later at the storming of the Bastille, the Kingdom of Naples was overwhelmed by a revolution which led to the establishment of the Republic (23 January 1799).¹ It was during the Neapolitan revolutionary period that the first slanders began against the Royal Bourbons, especially towards Maria Carolina. This defamation was spread by the Republican press and circulated within European public opinion.

Conclusion

In rebuilding the image of a woman once so widely celebrated, so flattered and worshipped by many, so cruelly slandered by others, I have tried with this research to throw fresh light upon what is already known and recorded concerning her: her diary. In fact, what I have perceived about Maria Carolina is that amongst general readers, students and historians what little is known about her is generally bad. Some people had no idea who she was at all, many depicted her in a hazy manner as an upstart interloper who usurped the Bourbon throne, which was a travesty of the real Maria Carolina.

Maria Carolina was the fortunate daughter of the Empress-Queen Maria Theresa; in fact, most of her children were overshadowed by a fatality which doomed them either to an early death, a disappointed life, or else to sorrows, dangers and calamities, which, as well as the grandeur of their birth, separated her from ordinary women. A woman of whom the magnificent prosperity of the earlier part of her life and the perils and misfortunes which clouded her later years. Those only exceeded by the still more lofty position and more terrible fate of the favourite sister Marie Antoinette for whom she strained all her energy to save, and whose murder changed and embittered the rest of her days.

I have attempted to portray Maria Carolina in such a way to disprove the accusation brought by those who for political and nationalist reasons were her bitterest enemies. So I have tried to “cross-analyse” the various writers from her age until ours and the documents preserved in the Archives of Naples and Vienna—her personal diary and letters—with references and descriptions of that time, besides explanations and information as to the character, motives and credibility shown by past historiography. The material contained in the unpublished sources proves not only the improbability but the strong unreliability of many charges brought against the Queen. I have examined the surviving pages of the diary which I hope may interest those who are acquainted with the fuller histories of Maria Carolina’s life and that of her still more illustrious mother given by the distinguished authors I have quoted in the previous pages.

The diary, as has been said, is made up of a series of short annotations. The sequence arranged in chronological order of institutional and informal commitments, seems to respect a pattern almost like a script. The mornings of the Queen appear to have been characterized by the same personal rites: family duties, institutional commitments, hearings, walks, while the evenings were divided between government commitments and moments of worldliness. However, Maria Carolina never reveals her thoughts, criticisms, doubts or personal interpretations about the talks or hearings, and she seems to insist with greater clarity of language on convivial situations. The Queen therefore opted to leave no trace on the canvas of her political commitment for sovereign prudence; it was as if the repeated absence of the King (the few times that King Ferdinand took part in the Council meeting were regularly recorded) made her assume, if possible, an even more reserved attitude in writing.

It is precisely these simple reminders of meetings of the Queen of Naples that testify to the years of her brilliant and eventful career. Her handwritten notes give us glimpses of the way various protagonists of the political and cultural life of the time stand out. In the daily hearings of the Sovereign, in fact, there was constantly present a welcome group of aristocrats who held positions at Court, as well as members of the political establishment, economists, diplomats, clergy, military, judges, doctors and artists. By reconstructing the biographical profiles of the characters who met in the salons of the Queen, we can differentiate the types of hearings. And it is this intersection between private and court life, including marital duties and obligations of government which is one of the most interesting aspects of the diary that follows here, from which we can derive—that is the hope—an interest in both the social and political history of the Kingdom of Naples in the difficult balance between reformist impulses and resistances of the ancien régime.

Consequently, the proof of the public role and political action carried out by the wife of Ferdinand IV was her effective participation in the administration of power, but also the ability to manoeuvre in the midst of political skirmishes. The meetings which are often cited in the pages of the diary confirm that it in the apartments of the Queen important decisions were made.

The correspondence with her two brothers, the Emperor Joseph II and Leopold, of which I have introduced here a few excerpts and which is the subject of my next monograph, confirms her strong position of power enriched by her personal thoughts and the certain presence of far-sighted and older brothers to whom she refers in moments of indecision and crisis, both familial and political. It is clear that the interest that Maria Carolina’s brothers showed in the Neapolitan court and in the Queen herself, was the manifestation of their intent to retain the orbit of their family sphere in the Kingdom without feeling its weight. In fact, the exchange of letters between Maria Carolina and her family continued to maintain caring familial relationships and sought both confirmation of her belonging to the House of Habsburg, as well as alliances to continue the policy of marriage strategies undertaken by her mother, whose ultimate goal was to “allocate” the Habsburgs in the major European courts and protect the interests of the house of Austria on the European scene.

Only after the death of Maria Carolina were the people, who had played a major role in her life, vindicated. The Queen in fact could not live to witness the solemn day on which her spouse ascended the throne of Naples again, for which she had given her soul; she could not attend the royal weddings of her daughters, for which she had prepared the way; and she could not see her bitter enemy Bonaparte exiled on a faraway island.

If the French Revolution had not brought unrest and discord to the Kingdom, Maria Carolina would have remained in her enlightened intentions of advanced freedom of her early reign and would happily have guided her husband. And perhaps the result would have been a long series of happy years, instead of the pain and struggles that embittered the last 20 years of the Queen’s life.