Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies

• 1. Introduction

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  Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies was born in Naples on the 12th of January 1751, a third son with no obvious future as a king. Yet by the time he died on the 4th of January 1825, he had worn more crowns than almost any ruler of his age, been deposed twice, fled twice by sea, and outlasted Napoleon Bonaparte himself. His story raises questions that run beneath the surface of European history: what does it mean to rule when a more powerful neighbour can simply march in and take your throne? What becomes of a man raised deliberately in ignorance so that others can govern in his name? And how does a king who swore two oaths to uphold a constitution manage to break both of them and remain on his throne? The answers lie in the palaces of Naples and Palermo, in the cannon fire at Rieti, and in a ship caught in a winter storm where a six-year-old prince breathed his last.

• 2. A Boy Left to His Pleasures

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  Charles VII of Naples, Ferdinand's father, ascended the Spanish throne in August 1759 and became King Charles III. Treaty obligations made it impossible for him to hold all three crowns at once. His eldest son Philip had been excluded from succession because of intellectual disability. His second son Charles was the heir to Spain. That left Ferdinand, aged eight, as the new King of Naples and Sicily. A regency council under the Tuscan statesman Bernardo Tanucci was formed to govern in the child's name. Tanucci, by every account an able and ambitious man, took a calculated decision: he kept the government for himself by keeping the king unfit to govern. Ferdinand's education was deliberately neglected. His love of outdoor sports, his idleness, and his appetite for pleasure were actively encouraged rather than curbed. Ferdinand grew up in the shadow of the palaces his father had built across Naples, Portici, Caserta, and Capodimonte, monuments to Bourbon grandeur that the young king could enjoy without having to understand. When his minority ended in 1767, the political consequences of that stunted upbringing would shape everything that followed.

• 3. Maria Carolina and the New Court

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  Ferdinand's first act after coming of age in 1767 was the expulsion of the Jesuits. The following year he married Archduchess Maria Carolina, a daughter of Empress Maria Theresa of Austria. The marriage contract held a clause of considerable political weight: the queen would have a voice in the council of state after the birth of her first son. Maria Carolina moved quickly. She was not slow to use that provision, and her influence over the court grew steadily. Tanucci tried to block her and was dismissed in 1777. The man who rose to fill the vacuum was the Englishman Sir John Acton. Acton was appointed director of marine in 1779 and gained the queen's favour by backing her central political ambition: breaking Naples free from Spanish influence and drawing it closer to Austria and Great Britain. He became, first in practice and then in title, prime minister. His tenure brought efficiency in foreign alignment but something darker in domestic affairs. Acton bore substantial responsibility for building an internal administration that ran on espionage, corruption, and cruelty.

• 4. Flight, Republic, and Revenge

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  Peace was made with France in 1796, but the demands of the French Directory, whose troops already occupied Rome, kept Ferdinand nervous. When Napoleon departed for his campaign in Egypt and Syria, Maria Carolina pressed her husband to seize the moment. Horatio Nelson's naval victories added to the sense of opportunity. Ferdinand marched his army north and entered Rome on the 29th of November, but the campaign unravelled fast. When some of his columns were defeated, Ferdinand hurried back to Naples. As French forces approached the city, he fled on the 23rd of December 1798, boarding Nelson's ship to Palermo. The voyage was brutal. A storm lashed the fleet, and the king's six-year-old son, Prince Alberto, died of exhaustion during the crossing. He died in the arms of Emma, Lady Hamilton, who was Nelson's mistress. The French entered Naples over fierce resistance from the lazzaroni, the city's poor, and with the help of the nobility and the bourgeoisie they established the Parthenopean Republic in January 1799. When French troops were recalled north a few weeks later, Ferdinand sent Cardinal Fabrizio Ruffo at the head of a hastily assembled force. Ruffo, backed by British artillery, the Church, and loyalist nobles, reached Naples in May 1799 and the republic collapsed. Maria Carolina was a sister of the executed Marie Antoinette, and she did not want mercy. She used Lady Hamilton's access to Nelson to press for punishment of the rebels. Several hundred collaborators were eventually executed.

• 5. Napoleon Strips the Crown

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  The War of the Third Coalition changed the map of Europe. Ferdinand signed a treaty of neutrality with France, then, within days, switched sides and allowed an Anglo-Russian force to land at Naples. The French victory at the Battle of Austerlitz on the 2nd of December 1805 gave Napoleon the opening he needed. Ferdinand fled to Palermo on the 23rd of January 1806. On the 14th of February 1806, the French entered Naples for the second time. Napoleon declared the Bourbon dynasty forfeit and named his brother Joseph as King of Naples and Sicily. Ferdinand was left with only Sicily, and it was a peculiar consequence of exile that he became the first King of Sicily in centuries to actually reside on the island. Sicily brought its own politics. Parliamentary institutions of a feudal type had long existed there, and the British minister Lord William Bentinck insisted on a constitutional reform along English and French lines. Ferdinand effectively stepped back from power, appointing his son Francis as regent. At Bentinck's insistence, Maria Carolina was sent to Austria. She died there in 1814, the year before her husband returned to Naples.

• 6. One Kingdom, Broken Oaths

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  Napoleon's fall in 1815 reshuffled the thrones of Europe. Joachim Murat, who had succeeded Joseph Bonaparte as king of Naples in 1808, was dethroned in the Neapolitan War. Ferdinand returned to Naples. He had bound himself by secret treaty not to advance constitutionally further than Austria would permit, and he largely followed Metternich's preference for preserving the existing order. He also kept most of Murat's laws and administrative structures. Then, on the 12th of December 1816, he abolished the Sicilian constitution in violation of his own oath, merged the two kingdoms, and proclaimed the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. He took the title Ferdinand I. An Austrian, Count Nugent, was made commander-in-chief of the army. For four years Ferdinand reigned as an absolute monarch, granting no constitutional reforms. The suppression of liberal opinion fed the secret society of the Carbonari, whose influence spread through large parts of the army. In July 1820, General Guglielmo Pepe led a military revolt. Ferdinand was terrorised into signing a constitution modelled on the Spanish Constitution of 1812. He swore to uphold it. Then he swore again. At the Congress of Laibach in 1821, barely clear of Naples, he repudiated both oaths in letters sent to every sovereign in Europe. Austria needed little persuading to march its army into Naples to restore order. The Neapolitan forces under Pepe offered almost no resistance at the difficult passes of the Abruzzi, and were defeated at the Battle of Rieti on the 7th of March 1821. The Austrians entered the city. Count Charles-Louis de Ficquelmont arrived as Austrian ambassador and took practical control of both the country's administration and its foreign policy.

• 7. A Reign Captured on Film

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  Ferdinand died in Naples on the 4th of January 1825, the last surviving child of Charles III. His long reign left behind a kingdom thoroughly absorbed into the Austrian orbit and a legacy complicated enough to attract filmmakers across different generations. The 1941 film That Hamilton Woman, directed by Alexander Korda, included Ferdinand among its characters, played by Luis Alberni. In 1999, the Italian director Lina Wertmuller brought the story closer to the screen in Ferdinando and Carolina, with Sergio Assisi, Adriano Pantaleo, and Mario Scaccia each portraying the king at different points in his life. Paolo and Vittorio Taviani returned to the same period in the 2004 production Luisa Sanfelice, with Emilio Solfrizzi in the role. Through those productions, the turbulent world of late-eighteenth-century Naples, the Parthenopean Republic, and the alliances connecting Nelson, Lady Hamilton, and the Bourbon court continued to be examined long after Ferdinand himself was gone.