Marriage
Against her will, Amalia was married to Ferdinand of Parma (1751–1802). The marriage was supported by the future Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II, whose first beloved wife had been Ferdinand's sister, Princess Isabella of Parma. The Archduchess's marriage to the Duke of Parma was part of a complicated series of contracts that married off Maria Theresa's daughters to the King of Naples and Sicily and the Dauphin of France. All three sons-in-law were members of the House of Bourbon.
She left Austria on 1 July 1769, accompanied by her brother, Joseph II, and married Ferdinand on 19 July, at the Ducal Palace of Colorno. Two years after her arrival in Parma, Maria Amalia secured the dismissal of Du Tillot, her husband's minister, and replaced him with a Spanish appointee, Jose del Llano, who was highly recommended by Charles III of Spain. Duke Ferdinand also did not like Du Tillot and the two already had strained relations even before his wife reached Parma. A letter of Louis XV to his grandson dated May 1769 attests to this, wherein he counseled his grandson not to despise the minister who served his parents well; moreover, there was no one to replace him, said the French king.
Amalia would remain largely estranged from her mother, except for a brief reconciliation in 1773 when her son was born, despite the latter's repeated efforts at reconciliation. The duchess resisted her mother's efforts to control her from afar. When her sister Archduchess Marie Christine, known to the family as Marie or Mimi, visited Parma in 1775, she reported to their mother that Amalia lost much of her beauty and glamour and was also less gay and discriminating. Maria Theresa commissioned a portrait of her grandchildren in Parma by Johann Zoffany.
Maria Amalia was in touch with her sisters, Queen Marie Antoinette of France and Queen Marie Caroline of Naples and Sicily for most of their married lives. The three sisters exchanged letters, portraits and gifts. In fact, one of Marie Antoinette's last letters during her imprisonment was secretly written to her sister Maria Amalia.
When Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Italy and her husband died, Maria Amalia was appointed Head of the Regency Council in Parma by the dying Ferdinand but the regency lasted only a few days. On 22 October 1802 the French expelled her from Parma and she established her residence in Prague, particularly at Prague Castle, where she died in 1804. Her body was interred at the royal crypt of the St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague while her heart was taken to Vienna and placed inside an urn (number 33) at the family's Herzgruft (heart crypt).
Read more about this topic: Archduchess Maria Amalia Of Austria
Famous quotes containing the word marriage:
“Worst, when this sensualism intrudes into the education of young women, and withers the hope and affection of human nature, by teaching that marriage signifies nothing but a housewife’s thrift, and that woman’s life has no other aim.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“And what if my descendants lose the flower
Through natural declension of the soul,
Through too much business with the passing hour,
Through too much play, or marriage with a fool?”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“the mother lies down on her marriage bed
and eats up her heart like two eggs.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)