Marie Caroline of the Two Sicilies was a strong-minded woman who led an eventful life. A member of the branch of the Bourbon dynasty which ruled Naples, in 1816 she accepted an offer of marriage from Charles Ferdinand, the Duc de Berry and nephew of the King of France, Louis XVIII. Her new sister-in law Marie Therese, duchess of Angouleme and daughter of the executed King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, was proposed as the younger woman's mentor, but Caroline was an independent spirit who soon asserted herself at the French court, becoming with her husband a significant patron of the arts. In 1820, when they were attending the opera, an assassin fatally knifed the Duc de Berry, a kind man who spent his last hours pleading for clemency for his murderer and requesting Caroline to take care of his English mistress Amy Brown and her two daughters. Caroline was two months pregnant at the time and gave birth to a son, Henri, who then became the heir to the French throne through the direct Bourbon line. Following the death of Louis in 1824, his successor Charles X was deposed and the Orleans branch of the family seized the throne under Louis Philippe I. From her exile in England, where in previous years she had sat for the celebrated portrait by Lawrence, Caroline returned to Naples and launched an abortive coup, spending time on the run disguised as a man, with her whereabouts in hiding being finally betrayed by her close counsellor, Simon Deutz. Deutz was the son of a rabbi who had briefly converted to Catholicism, travelling to New York to open a Catholic bookstore. Here he made acquaintance with aristocratic Bourbon-supporting "legitimists" and on returning to Europe soon became the Duchess's confidante. The author argues that his much-publicised betrayal was the beginning of the wave of antisemitism that swept France and further afield in the 19th century. 398pp, illus.
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