Maria Carolina Bourbon-Sicilian (1798)

Her childhood passed amid the storms of the Napoleonic wars , so she did not receive a good education: she spoke Italian in Sicilian dialect , and she did not learn French to write correctly until the end of her life. After the fall of Murat in 1815, the Bourbons returned to the Neapolitan throne, and the following year Louis XVIII asked for the hand of Mary Caroline for his nephew, the Duke of Berry. Their first meeting took place in Fontainebleau on June 15, 1816, and two days later a wedding took place in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris .

The duke was not happy at the wedding and began to cheat on his wife almost immediately after the wedding. However, the couple lived peacefully and were popular in society. After her husband was killed in 1820, and father-in-law Charles X was overthrown by the July revolution of 1830, she made several vigorous attempts to restore the throne to the child born after the death of her husband in 1820 - Heinrich, Duke of Bordeaux (he is Count de Chambord).

After the death of the Duke of Berry, only one daughter, Louise Maria Theresia of Bourbon , mademoiselle de France (born in 1819; married to Duke Charles III of Parma ; died February 1, 1864) remained from his marriage with Maria-Caroline. All the more joyfully, the royal house was greeted by the news of the permission of the widowed duchess of a male child of Berry (September 1820), who received the name of Heinrich and the title of duke of Bordeaux (better known under the name of Count Chambord). When the July Revolution of 1830 elevated the Duke of Orleans to the French throne ( Louis-Philippe I ), he declared the royal grandson a bastard (born not a duchess and replaced).

The Duchess followed Charles X to Scotland, to the Edinburgh Palace Holyrood . But in France, especially in the south and in the Vendee , in the interests of her son, as a legitimate claimant to the throne, agitated a strong party. To make it easier to keep in touch with the leadership of this party, the duchess moved to Italy (1831). Here soon there were grouped around her adherents who convinced her to make an attempt to disembark in France and raise the banner of her son, the king "Henry V".

In April 1832, the duchess really landed near Marseilles . The uprising of the legitimists in this city, produced on the 30th, with news of the arrival of the duchess with her son, was suppressed. The Duchess herself managed to flee to Vandeya and openly acted as regent , issued proclamations on behalf of her son, but was soon arrested in Nantes (November 8). From here she was escorted to Blau , where she was detained as a state criminal. Her arrest caused a storm in the country.

In January 1833, the Duchess was found to be pregnant by her husband, the Italian Marquis Lucchesi Palley, from the family of the princes Campo Franco, with whom she secretly married in Italy. This statement immediately deprived the duchess of political significance: in the eyes of the legitimists of the widowed French princess, she became an Italian marquise and a foreign national who had no right to become regent of the French crown. Therefore, the French government found it possible to relieve her immediately upon her resolution from the burden of her daughter (May 10). The Duchess first went to Sicily in Palermo .

Its position at this time was not easy. Many did not believe her marriage, the closest relatives did not want to see her. It soon became clear that on December 14, 1831, in Rome, Pater Rozaven covered her marriage with Lucchesi, who in Nantes, when she was hiding there, repeatedly had the occasion to see her. The second spouse, who was eight years younger than her, was treated by Carolina with great tenderness; he behaved like a Morganatic spouse and in letters he called her Madame or “Royal Highness”.

They have long lived in Venice . The first daughter died in infancy, but then they had four more children, a son and three daughters. The arrangement of the fate of all the children required considerable money, but the funds from the former Duchess of Berry were few. In 1864, her son was released from creditors from his first marriage, Earl of Chambord, having appointed his mother a large lifetime pension. After the death of her husband, the duchess settled in the castle of Brunsee, not far from Graz (in Austria ), where she died from an apoplexy stroke in April 1870.

• Bred in the novel of the French writer Alexander-Dumas-father " Wolf of Mashkul " in 1858.