Queen Of Spain Maria Luisa Of Parma

Notable

Family

Spanish queen who reigned from 1788 to 1808 as the wife of King Carlos IV. She was the youngest daughter of Felipe I, Duke of Parma and his wife, Princess Louise-Élisabeth of France, the eldest daughter of King Louis XV. Her parents had been the Duke and Duchess of Parma since 1749, when the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748) awarded the duchy to the Bourbon. She, her brother Ferdinando, and her sister Isabella were educated in Parma by Étienne Bonnot de Condillac, a well-known French philosopher. In 1762 Maria Luisa was engaged to Carlos, Prince of Asturias, later King Carlos IV of Spain, whom she married on 4 September 1765 in La Granja Palace. The couple would have fourteen children, six of whom survived into adulthood. As there was no queen in Spain at that time, María Luisa became the first lady in precedence at the court from the beginning of her residence there. Her husband was the son and heir of the widowed Carlos III of Spain, previously Duke of Parma and King of Naples and Sicily. Due to pressure from Napoleon I, María's husband abdicated the throne of Spain and spent the rest of his life in exile. When Napoleon's army invaded the country, several pamphlets blamed her for the abdication. María Luisa spent some years in France and then in Rome where she died on 2 January 1819, aged 67. Link to Wikipedia biography