House of Bourbon - Later Bourbon Monarchs Outside France

Later Bourbon Monarchs Outside France

Upon the fall of the Napoleonic empire, Ferdinand I was restored to the throne of the kingdom of the Two Sicilies in 1815. His subjects revolted on 2 July 1820 and he was forced to grant a constitution on 13 July. Austria invaded in March 1821 and revoked the constitution. He was succeeded by his son, Francis I, in 1825 and by his grandson, Ferdinand II, in 1830. Another revolution erupted on 12 January 1848 and Ferdinand was also forced to grant a constitution on 10 February. This constitution was revoked in 1849. Ferdinand was succeeded by his son, Francis II, in May 1859.

When Giuseppe Garibaldi captured Naples on 7 September 1860 Francis restored the constitution on 2 July in an attempt to save his sovereignty. He fled to the fortress of Gaeta, which was captured by the Piedmontese troops on 13 February 1861; his kingdom was incorporated in the Kingdom of Italy on 17 March 1861, after the fall the fortress of Messina (surrendered on 12 March 1861), although the Neapolitan troops in Civitella del Tronto resisted until 20 March.

After the fall of Napoleon, Napoleon's wife, Maria Louisa, was made Duchess of Parma. As compensation, Charles Louis, the former king of Etruria, was made the Duke of Lucca. When Maria Louisa died in 1847 he was restored to Parma as Charles II. Lucca was incorporated into Tuscany. He was succeeded by his son, Charles III, and grandson, Robert I, in 1854. The people of Parma voted for a union with the kingdom of Sardinia on 13 March 1860. After Italian unification in 1861 the Bourbon dynasty in Italy was no more.

Ferdinand VII was restored to the throne of Spain after the fall of Napoleon in March 1814. Like his Italian Bourbon counterpart his subjects revolted against him in January 1820 and he was forced to grant a constitution. A French army invaded in 1823 and the constitution was revoked. Ferdinand married his fourth wife, Maria Christina, the daughter of Francis I, the Bourbon king of Sicily, in 1829. Despite his many marriages he did not have a son so on 30 June 1833 he was influenced by his wife to abolish the Salic Law so that her daughter, Isabella, could become queen depriving his brother, Don Carlos, of the throne.

Isabella II succeeded her father when he died on 29 September 1833. She was only three years old and Maria Cristina, her mother, served as regent. Maria knew that she needed the support of the liberals to oppose Don Carlos so she granted a constitution in 1834. Don Carlos found his greatest support in Catalonia and the Basques country because the constitution centralized the provinces thus denying them the autonomy they sought. He was defeated and fled the country in 1839. Isabella was declared of age in 1843 and she married her cousin Francisco de Asis, the son of her father's brother, on 10 October 1846. A military revolution broke out against Isabella in 1868 and she was deposed on 29 September. She abdicated in favor of her son, Alfonso, in 1870, but Spain was proclaimed a republic for a brief time.

When the First Spanish Republic failed the crown was offered to Isabella's son who accepted on 1 January 1875 as Alfonso XII. Don Carlos, who returned to Spain, was again defeated and resumed his exile in February 1876. Alfonso granted a new constitution on July 1876 that was more liberal than the one granted by his grandmother. His reign was cut short when he died in 1885 at the age of twenty-eight.

Alfonso XIII was born on 17 May 1886 after the death of his father. His mother, Maria Christina, the second wife of Alfonso XII served as regent. Alfonso XIII was declared of age in 1902 and he married Victoria Eugénie Julia Ena of Battenberg, the granddaughter of the British queen Victoria, on 31 May 1906. He remained neutral during World War I, but supported the military coup of Miguel Primo de Rivera on 13 September 1923. A movement towards the establishment of a republic began in 1930 and Alfonso fled the country on 14 April 1931. He never formally abdicated, but lived the rest of his life in exile. He died in 1941.

The Bourbon dynasty seemed finished in Spain as in the rest of the world, but it would be resurrected. The Second Spanish Republic was overthrown in the Spanish Civil War, leading to the dictatorship of Francisco Franco. He named Juan Carlos de Borbón, a grandson of Alfonso XIII, his successor on 22 July 1969. When Franco died on 20 November 1975 a Bourbon monarch was restored to the throne of Spain two days later as Juan Carlos I. The new king oversaw the Spanish transition to democracy; the Spanish Constitution of 1978, approved on 28 September 1978, recognized the monarchy.

Though it is not as powerful as it once was under Louis XIV and it no longer reigns in its native country of France, it is by no means extinct, and the House of Bourbon has survived to the present-day world of republics. Since 1964 the Bourbon-Parma line has reigned agnatically in Luxembourg through Grand Dukes Jean and his son Henri. In June 2011, Luxembourg adopted absolute primogeniture, replacing the old Semi-Salic law that might have guaranteed the survival of Bourbon rule for generations. The European phenomenon of absolute primogeniture has doomed the security that the Bourbon monarchs once had.