Infanta Maria Luisa of Spain
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| Infanta Maria Luisa of Spain | |
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| Holy Roman Empress; Queen consort of the Romans, Hungary, Croatia, and Bohemia; Archduchess consort of Austria; Grand Duchess consort of Tuscany; Infanta of Spain; Princess of Naples and Sicily | |
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| Tenure | 20 February 1790 - 1 March 1792 |
| Spouse | Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor |
| Issue | |
| Maria Theresa, Queen of Saxony Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand III, Grand Duke of Tuscany Archduke Charles, Duke of Teschen Archduke Alexander Leopold Archduke Joseph, Palatine of Hungary Maria Clementina, Queen of the Two Sicilies Archduke Anton Victor Archduke Johann Archduke Rainer Joseph Archduke Louis Archduke Rudolf |
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| House | House of Habsburg-Lorraine House of Bourbon |
| Father | Charles III of Spain |
| Mother | Maria Amalia of Saxony |
| Born | November 24, 1745 The Reggia di Portici, Campania, Italy |
| Died | May 15, 1792 (aged 46) Vienna, Austria |
Infanta Maria Luísa of Spain (Spanish: María Luisa, German: Maria Ludovika) (24 November 1745–15 May 1792) was Grand Duchess of Tuscany and Holy Roman Empress as spouse of Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor.
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[edit] Names
Due to her father, the future Charles III of Spain being given the throne of the Kingdom of Naples and Sicily in 1735, Maria Luisa was born as Maria Luisa of Naples and Sicily. When her father became King at the death of her half-uncle, Ferdinand VI of Spain in 1759, she became known as Infanta Maria Luisa of Spain. She still had the use of the style of Royal Highness.
Upon her marriage in 1764, she was to be known as Archduchess Maria Ludovika of Austria. The next year, 1765, she became the Grand Duchess Consort of Tuscany and would have been known as Maria Luisa of Tuscany. When her husband became the Holy Roman Emperor in 1790, she reverted to her Austrian title of Maria Ludovika, Empress of Austria, Queen of Hungary etc.
[edit] Life
Maria Louisa was born in Portici, in Campania, the site of the summer palace (Reggia di Portici) of her parents, King Charles VII of Naples and Sicily and Maria Amalia of Saxony. She was the fifth daughter, and second surviving child, of her parents. Her father became King of Spain as Charles III in 1759, and she moved with her family to Spain.
One of 13 children, she was the sister of the future; Infante Philip, Duke of Calabria (1747-1777); King Charles IV of Spain (1748 - 1819); King Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies (1751 – 1825), who united the kingdoms of Naples and Sicily in 1816; and Infante Gabriel of Spain (1752 - 1788).
[edit] Marriage
On 16 February 1764 she was married by proxy at Madrid to Archduke Peter Leopold, the second son of Emperor Francis I and Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, and the heir apparent to the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. The next year, on 5 August, she married him in person at Innsbruck. Only a few days later, the death of Emperor Francis made Maria Louisa's husband the new Grand Duke of Tuscany, and the newly married couple moved to Florence, where they would live for the next twenty-five years.
During the first 5 years of her husbands rule in Tuscany, he had little power due to the influence of Maria Luisa's mother-in-law, Maria Theresa. The councillors for the Tuscan Government had been appointed by Maria Theresa and in 1770, he made a journey to Vienna to secure the removal of this vexatious guardianship and returned to Florence with a free hand. During the twenty years which elapsed between his return to Florence and the death of his eldest brother Joseph II in 1790, he was employed in reforming the administration of his small state.
 Maria Luisa while in Tuscany |
 Maria Luisa in Tuscany in 1773 |
 Empress Maria Luisa |
The reformations of her husband were carried out by the removal of the ruinous restrictions on industry and personal freedom imposed by his predecessors of the house of Medici and left untouched during his father's life, by the introduction of a rational system of taxation, and by the execution of profitable public works, such as the drainage of the Val di Chiana. As he had no army to maintain, and as he suppressed the small naval force kept up by the Medici, the whole of his revenue was left free for the improvement of his state. Leopold was never popular with his Italian subjects. His disposition was cold and retiring. His habits were simple to the verge of sordidness, though he could display splendour on occasion, and he could not help offending those of his subjects who had profited by the abuses of the Medicean régime
In 1790, on the death of Peter Leopold's childless brother, Joseph II, Maria Louisa's husband inherited the Habsburg lands in Central Europe, and was shortly thereafter elected Holy Roman Emperor. Taking the name of Leopold II, the new Emperor moved his family to Vienna, where Maria Louisa took on the role of imperial consort. Leopold died scarcely two years later, dying on 1 March 1792. Maria Luisa followed her husband to the grave in less than three months, not living long enough to see her eldest son Francis elected as the last Holy Roman Emperor.
Mozart's opera La clemenza di Tito was commissioned by the Estates of Bohemia as part of the festivities that accompanied the coronation of Maria Louisa and her husband Leopold as king and queen of Bohemia in Prague on September 6, 1791. In musical circles, Maria Louisa is famous for her putative denigration of Mozart's opera as "German swinishness" ("una porcheria tedesca"), however no claim that she made this remark pre-dates the publication in 1871 of Alfred Meissner's Rococo-Bilder: nach Aufzeichnungen meines Grossvaters, a collection of stories about cultural and political life in Prague in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
[edit] Children
Over the course of twenty-one years, between 1767 and 1788, Maria Louisa bore her husband sixteen children, of whom all but two survived to adulthood. These were:
 Grand Duchess Maria Louisa and Grand Duke Leopold with their family in Florence (1776) |
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- Archduchess Maria Theresia Josepha Charlotte Johanna (1767–1827), who married the future King Anton of Saxony.
- Archduke Francis Joseph Charles (1768–1835), who would become Holy Roman Emperor as Francis II and later the first Emperor of Austria as Francis I.
- Archduke Ferdinand Joseph Johann Baptist (1769–1824), who would succeed his father as Grand Duke of Tuscany.
- Maria Anna (1770–1809)
- Archduke Karl (Charles) Ludwig Johann Josef Lorenz (1771–1847), who would become a famous general during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.
- Archduke Alexander Leopold Johann Joseph (1772–1795), who served as Palatine of Hungary
- Albert (1773–1774)
- Maximilian (1774–1778)
- Archduke Joseph Anton Johann (1776–1847), who succeeded his brother as Palatine of Hungary
- Archduchess Maria Clementina Josepha Johanna Fidelis (1777–1801), who married her first cousin Francis, Duke of Calabria, later King Francis I of the Two Sicilies
- Archduke Anton Victor (1779–1835), briefly Archbishop-Elector of Cologne and later Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights
- Maria Amalia (1780–1798)
- Archduke John (1782–1859), also a general and later Imperial Vicar of the short-lived German Empire of the Frankfurt Parliament in 1848.
- Archduke Rainer Joseph Johann Michael Franz Hieronymus (1783–1853), who became Viceroy of the Lombardo-Venetian Kingdom
- Archduke Louis Joseph Anton Johann (1784–1864), effective regent of the Austrian Empire during the reign of his mentally disabled nephew Ferdinand I.
- Archduke Rudolf Johannes Joseph Rainie (1788–1831), Prince-Archbishop of Olmütz and Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church.
[edit] Ancestry
[edit] Titles and Styles
- 24 November 1745 - 10 August 1759 Her Royal Highness Princess Maria Lusia of Naples and Sicily
- 10 August 1759 - 16 February 1764 Her Royal Highness The Dona Maria Luisa, Infanta of Spain
- 16 February 1764 - 20 February 1790 Her Imperial and Royal Highness the Grand Duchess of Tuscany, Archduchess of Austria, Princess Imperial of Hungary etc
- 20 February 1790 - 15 May 1792 Her Imperial and Royal Majesty the Empress of Austria Queen of Hungary, Bohemia etc
[edit] External links
Media related to Infanta Maria Luisa of Spain at Wikimedia Commons
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