Although there are a few constitutional
monarchies in Europe, many of the great dynastic families
of the past are now defunct (at least as dynasties; the
descendants, still known as “Prince This-or-That,”
perhaps, are private citizens like anyone else).*note 1Sometimes,
the end was violent and quick, such as the French Bourbons
(1793) or the Romanovs (1918); sometimes it was long and
drawn out by war and subsequent demise by abdication, such
as the Hapsburg's (1918) and the Savoys (1946). Some hang
around for a while and try to stave off the inevitable.
Such was the case with the Bourbon dynasty of Naples.
Garibaldi landed in Sicily in May of 1860 to start
his conquest of the Kingdom of Naples (The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies).
By September, he was in the city of Naples; the king,
queen and residual royalist forces retreated to the
fortress at Gaeta for their “last stand,” a siege that
lasted from November 1860 to February 1861. In December
1860 the last US ambassador to the Kingdom of Naples,
Joseph Chandler, was informed by U.S. Secretary of State,
Lewis Cass, that “…In view of the political events that
have lately transpired in Italy…you will now consider your
mission terminated, and yourself at liberty to return to
the United States.”
On February 14, 1861, after the surrender of the fortress
at Gaeta, King Ferdinand and Queen Maria Sophia left
aboard the French vessel, Mouette. On that ship as well as on
another French vessel, Brandon,
the entire Bourbon court of diplomats, family members, and
high-ranking military officers left with them. They were
received at the Quirinale palace in Rome where the Queen
Mother (the king’s step-mother (note 2),
consort of the recently deceased Ferdinand
II) had already taken refuge in November with her
own entourage of family and members of her court.
King Francis II The new
Kingdom of Italy (The Savoy kingdom of
Piedmont-Sardinia plus the ex-Kingdom of the Two Sicilies)
was proclaimed on February 18, 1861, and recognition by
many nations was quick in coming. Among nations that did not
immediately recognize the new kingdom of Italy were
France, Spain, Bavaria (still a separate kingdom at that
point) and Austria. There were two main reasons for this:
one, there was still a strong “legitimist” sentiment in
those countries that resisted the overthrow of established
monarchies; two, while they may have realized the
inevitability of the new “Italy,” they were Catholic
nations and were repulsed by the idea that they also had
to accept the dissolution of the thousand-year-old Vatican States (or Papal
States), most of which territory had already been gobbled
up by the forces of Piedmont-Sardinia by late 1860; Rome,
itself, would hold out for another 10 years. It meant the
end of the so-called “temporal power of the Church.”
The royal family of
Naples moved into Rome where they were guests of the Pope.
Naples and the Vatican had generally been on good terms
over the years. Naples had even sheltered the Pope in Gaeta in 1848/49 during the crisis
of the Roman Republic when the pontiff had been forced to
flee the revolutionaries. In Rome, the royal family stayed
in the Quirinale palace —the Papal residence (today, the
residence of the president of Italy— and then in 1863
moved into the Farnese
Palace, a magnificent building from the 1500s,
designed by San Gallo and Michelangelo (illustration, here).
The king “held court” in exile, surrounded by
Bourbon hangers-on, journalists, and no doubt a few
legitimists who truly believed that just as the earlier
Neapolitan Republic of 1799, and then Napoleon, and then
the Roman Republic had come and gone, this thing called
“Italy” wouldn’t last and the “legitimate” crowned heads
of Europe would once again return and the Kingdom of the
Two Sicilies restored. Social life went on; the Pope,
himself, even performed marriages among the group. (For
example, he performed the rites for one of King
Ferdinand’s sisters, Maria Annunziata, to Karl Ludwig
Hapsburg-Lorraine, a union that produced a son, archduke
Ferdinand, whose assassination touched off WWI.)
Queen
Maria Sophia
The government in exile was
headed by Count Pietro
Calà Ulloa (1801-1879), who had been the last
prime minister of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. He was
born in Naples and became a judge in Sicily in his early
career. (The term “mafia” crops up, apparently for the
first time, at least officially, in one of his legal
briefs from 1838.) He was known to favor an Italian union,
a confederation with the north, as a solution to the
problem of “Italy”; he resisted to the end the idea that
the south should just be annexed by the north. He remained
the King’s prime minister in Rome during the period of the
“court in exile.”
After the conquest by Italy of the Austrian kingdom of
Lombardy-Venetia in 1866 in what is called the “third war
of Italian independence,” the new nation solidified
through added territory in the north, and it became clear
that "Italy" was here to stay. Before that date, many
members of the Bourbon entourage in Rome had encouraged
military expeditions from Rome into the ex-kingdom of
Naples to promote insurrection. (Queen Maria Sophia is
said to have encouraged this “banditry”
—to use the northern term— and many volumes have been
filled on the subject.) After the events of 1866, the
Bourbon court dissolved itself and many returned to
Naples. Members of the royal family stayed in Rome. In
1867, the Pope declared the apostolic legation in Naples
defunct.
The French were ambiguous. They recognized the new kingdom
of Italy, but expressed affection for the last king of
Naples and even tried to set him up as the last emperor of
Mexico. (They finally decided on Maximilian, the brother
of Emperor Franz Josef. (Max was captured by the forces of
Benito Juarez and executed in 1867, so maybe Francis did
well to turn down the offer.)
Francis was now resigned and tried to bargain with the new
rulers of Italy for the return of his seized monies and
property so he could at least keep those who were staying
with him. Maria Sophia spent some time in Bavaria. The
Queen Mother died in 1867 in Rome, and Maria Sophia’s only
child by her husband died in infancy in Rome in March,
1870. By the time the forces of Italy took Rome in
September, 1870, the Bourbon court and all who had
accompanied it had left. The queen returned to Bavaria,
the king wandered for a while and settled in Paris, where
he was rejoined, at least for a while, by his wife. The
king became diabetic and sought treatment at various
Italian clinics, always registering under a false name. In
1894, he saw his wife in Bavaria for one last time and
then went to Arco in Trentino for the climate and
treatment. He died there on December 27, 1894. Locals were
surprised when they learned the true identity of “Signor
Fabiani.” His wife died in Bavaria in 1925.
-di Somma del
Colle, Carlo. (2006) Album della fine di un regno. Electa.
Naples. -Marraro, Howard A. (1952)
Diplomatic Relations Between the United States and the
Kingdom of the Two Sicilies,
vol. 1 & 2. S.F., Vanni
(Ragusa), New York.