Skip to main content

Isabel de Farnesio Biography

Isabel de Farnesio

(Parma, present-day Italy, 1692-Aranjuez, Spain, 1766) Queen of Spain (1714-1746).Daughter of Edward III, Duke of Parma, in 1714 she became the second wife of Philip V.Endowed with great culture and undoubted attractiveness, despite suffering the consequences of smallpox, she knew how to win the king's will and impose his own criteria in court.Thus, he managed to exert great influence on Spanish politics: he removed pro-French elements from the court and sponsored the rise of Giulio Alberoni and Johan Willem Ripperdá.His foreign policy was centered, above all, in Italy, where he struggled to locate his children.In this way, Carlos (the future Carlos III of Spain) obtained Naples, and Felipe, Milan and Parma.After the death of her husband, she managed to maintain her influence in Italian politics, and came to exercise the Spanish regency when her stepson Fernando (Fernando VI) died without succession in 1759, waiting for her son Carlos to arrive from Naples to occupy the throne.

Isabel de Farnesio

Isabel de Farnesio was twenty-one years old when in 1714 she married Philip V by proxy in Parma.moved by sea to Spain, where he had to arrive by Alicante.But showing signs of initiative, he stopped in Genoa and decided to change his plans and travel by land, stopping to pay a visit in his French retirement to his aunt Doña Mariana de Neuburg, the widow of Carlos II of Spain.In Pau, in November, the two queens met.Later, in Pamplona, ​​Isabel de Farnesio would meet Alberoni.The king was waiting for her in Guadalajara and the hitherto very influential Marie-Anne de la Trémoille, princess of the Ursinos, came forward to Jadraque to welcome her.

On the night of December 23, at the old castle of Jadraque, the long-awaited meeting between the princess of the Ursinos and Isabel de Farnesio took place.It is not known what happened between the two ambitious women in their first and last interview that took place alone, but the end was stormy.According to the account of Louis de Rouvroy, Duc de Saint-Simon, "the queen immediately began to say offensive things, to shout, to call, to ask for the officers of the guard to come and to order Madame of the Ursinos, in an insulting way, to remove himself from their presence.The princess wanted to speak and defend herself from the reproaches she received; the queen, redoubling her fury and threats, began to shout to throw that crazy woman out of her presence and your home ".And so it was done immediately."At eleven o'clock at night, amid frightful snow, wind and cold," as the princess herself recalled, she was taken without further delay to the French border, with a strong armed escort.

That one abrupt and fulminating end had the immense power that the princess of the Ursinos had enjoyed in Spain during the crucial years of the beginning of the reign of Felipe V.Isabel de Farnesio was not willing to tolerate rivals.The Marquis of San Felipe attributed the decision to the queen's "ambition to rule", and Finance Minister Jean Orry wrote: "This action must be considered simply as the queen's decision to take advantage of the first opportunity to exercise her dominion.about the king."

Isabel de Farnesio left Jadraque for Guadalajara to meet Felipe V, who was waiting for her in the beautiful Plateresque palace of the Dukes of Infantado, impatient to celebrate Christmas Eve with his royal wife.As Saint-Simon wrote: "The king, having shaken hands with the queen, led her at once to the chapel, where the weddings were expeditiously ratified.From there to his room, where they immediately got into bed before six o'clock in the afternoon, so as not to get up except for the mass of the rooster ".

Felipe V was satisfied in everything with the provisions of his wife.The princess of the Ursinos dismissed, her misfortune dragged her collaborators.On February 7, 1715, Orry's mission at the head of the Hacienda ended.On the same day, Melchor Rafael de Macanaz was removed from office and sent into exile.Father Robinet was replaced as royal confessor by Father Daubenton.The only survivor of the fallen government was the Marquis de Grimaldo.

On the other hand, characters previously out of favor with the court regained their position, as happened with Cardinal Giudice, a friend of Alberoni.The cardinal took advantage of his new influence to take revenge on his old enemy.In August 1715 he ordered Macanaz to be prosecuted by the Inquisition, who was in exile in Paris.In October 1716 he was convicted and his property confiscated.The Macanaz trial was one of the most scandalous examples of the Inquisition's political use.If Macanaz's was an expressive case of how slippery power is, Giudice would soon experience again the fickleness of fortune.Giudice was exiled in 1717 and Macanaz remained outside of Spain until in 1748 he was ordered to return, but not to improve his lot, but to be imprisoned, until in 1760 he regained his freedom.

Felipe V had two obsessions, sex and religion.Giulio Alberoni expressed it with humor, affirming that the only thing the king needed was "a prie-dieu and a woman." The woman was first María Luisa Gabriela de Saboya and, from Christmas Eve 1714, Isabel de Farnesio.Felipe V gave himself to her without limit or measure.The French ambassador Saint-Aignon wrote in 1717: "The monarch is visibly destroying himself because of his excessive use of the queen.He is completely exhausted."

It was through this weakness of the king that the queen became powerful and influential, in the bedroom and in the kingdom.Isabel de Farnesio used pleasure in the service of her power design, of her ambition to command.But this control he exercised over the king, and through him over the power and government of the monarchy, to be even more effective, had to be exclusive, and thus he put into practice another typical device, isolating the monarch from all other possible influence..Queen Elizabeth, assisted by Giulio Alberoni, was also a master of the art of monopolizing Philip V, "keeping King Philip entirely to themselves and making him inaccessible to everyone else," as Saint-Simon observed.

This is how the king ruled in Spain and the queen in the king.Isabel de Farnesio, without possessing great political talent, enjoyed great power during the long years of her husband's reign.Energetic, willful, ambitious, her figure presides over half a century of the history of the Spanish monarchy.Queen Elizabeth had personality, but although some criticized her, others, like the Duc de Saint-Simon, who was a true expert on royalty, praised her: "She was really charming [...] with an air of grandeur and a majesty that they never left her."

Around the queen other characters influenced and participated in power.It was fundamental from 1715 Alberoni, who had the confidence of the queen and who acted as a true prime minister, with decisive influence on the orientation of Spanish foreign policy immediately after the treaty of Utrecht.Also important was the royal confessor, Father Daubenton, to whom the king constantly turned to consult him about his infinite religious scruples and also to ask him for advice on the most varied matters of state, because if in an absolute monarchy of divine right it is always difficult to distinguish the temporal realm of the spiritual realm, in the insecure and indecisive conscience of King Felipe V was almost impossible.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Elias james corey Biography

Elias James Corey (Methuen, 1928) American chemist.Corey is the creator of the so-called retrosynthetic synthesis that allows the reactions necessary to produce a certain molecule to be deduced in reverse.In addition to obtaining numerous substances of pharmacological interest, it has obtained others, called queenzymes, which accelerate synthesis reactions.His discoveries were recognized in 1990 with the award of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Coming from a family of Lebanese emigrants dedicated to trade, he was educated by his maternal uncles due to the premature death of his father when he was only two years.In 1945 he began studies in science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where laboratory work eventually led him to specialize in organic chemistry.In 1948 he graduated, two years later his doctorate, and in 1951 he became a laboratory assistant at the University of Illinois. His first investigations dealt with the orbital molecular theory.From 1953 to 1955 he was...
Post a Comment
Read more

Enrico Caruso Biography

Enrico Caruso (Naples, 1873-id., 1921) Italian tenor considered the best of his time and one of the greatest in history.Enrico Caruso made his debut in his hometown in 1894, although it was in Milan that he achieved his first great success in 1898 with the interpretation of the opera Fedora , by Umberto Giordano. Enrico Caruso His tours took him around the world, with performances in Saint Petersburg, Rome, Lisbon and Monte Carlo, where he excelled in his magnificent interpretation of La bohème by Giacomo Puccini, accompanied by Australian soprano Nellie Melba.With his fame firmly established, he made his debut in 1902 at London's Covent Garden with Rigoletto by Verdi, an opera that he also performed at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York in 1903, with extraordinary success.The beauty and strength of her voice won over the Metropolitan audience. His cheerful and outgoing character, his dramatic talent on stage and an almost perfect tenor voice, with a superb powe...
Post a Comment
Read more

Gregorio Romero de Larrañaga Biography

Gregorio Romero de Larrañaga (Madrid, 1815- id ., 1872) Spanish writer.He was secretary of Bretón de los Herreros.A fervent romantic, in his lyrical poems he imitated Espronceda and in those of an orientalist or legendary court, Zorrilla ( Tales, legends and traditions , 1841; Las ferias de Madrid , 1845).He is also the author of historical and chivalric dramas ( Jimena de Ordóñez , 1838; Felipe el Hermoso , 1845) and of the novel La cruz y la media luna .His fondness for historical themes is clearly manifested in the work Spanish chivalric histories (1843), a prose work where the author offers us a series of national legends. The The poetic work of Gregorio Romero de Larrañaga appeared in the volume Poesías , published in 1841.Among his compositions, "The Tempest Night", "The Frontier's Demand", "The Adventurer", "The my mother's grave "," My lonely forest "and" A dream from another dream ".The poetry of...
Post a Comment
Read more

Hans thoma Biography

Hans Thoma (Bernau, Duchy of Baden, 1839-Karlsruhe, 1924) German painter.After a trip to Paris, and inspired by the Barbizon school and especially by G.Courbet, his painting drifted towards a lively naturalism.He painted compositions, landscapes and also some portraits.
Post a Comment
Read more

Ferdinand lassalle Biography

Ferdinand Lassalle (Breslau, present-day Poland, 1825-Geneva, Switzerland, 1864) German politician and thinker.Born into a family of Jewish merchants, he studied in Breslau and Berlin.After a brief stay in Paris, which allowed him to learn about the French socialist movement, in 1845 he joined the League of the Just.During his participation in the German revolution of 1848, for which he was imprisoned, he befriended Karl Marx. Ferdinand Lassalle That same year, he became one of the Maximum exponents of German socialism, he founded the General Association of German Workers, the first socialist movement of any significance in the country.He enjoyed high regard among the workers, but his ideology, although influenced by Marx, developed positions opposed to Marxism on revolutionary strategy and did not make great theoretical contributions to socialist thought. Lassalle, who did not understand the principles of historical materialism, defended German unification and Otto von Bismar...
Post a Comment
Read more

Anthony Hopkins Biography

Anthony Hopkins (Port Talbot, 1936) British actor.He studied at the Academy of Art in London (1961-1963).After settling in the US, he made his Broadway debut with Equus .It has focused on the interpretation of complex and sinister characters.His most notable films are, among others, The Two Lives of Audrey Rose (R.Wise, 1977), The Elephant Man (D.Lynch, 1980), The Silence of the Lambs (J.Demme, 1990), Return to Howard's End (J.Ivory, 1992), Surviving Picasso (J.Ivory, 1996), The challenge (L.Tamahori, 1997), Friendship (S.Spielberg, 1997), The mask of the fox ( M.Campbell, 1998), Instinct (J.Turteltaub, 1999) and Titus (1999).In 1996 he directed and performed August .
Post a Comment
Read more

Ferdinand Carré Biography

Ferdinand Carré (Moislains, 1824-Poncet, 1900) French engineer.He invented and manufactured a series of devices related to refrigeration, devised the first compression refrigerator and built the facilities that allowed the first transport of frozen meat by ship.
Post a Comment
Read more

John osborne Biography

John Osborne (London, 1929-Shropshire, UK, 1994) British playwright.The first book of his autobiography, A Better Class of Person (1989), describes his childhood in the suburbs, his brief experience as a journalist and his years as a provincial actor, during which he began to write his first plays, the first being staged in 1950. He made his name with Looking back with anger (1956), which was followed by Epitaph for George Dillon (1957), written in collaboration with Anthony Creighton. The Host (1957) starred Laurence Olivier in the role of Archie Rice, a withered survivor of the great Music Hall era. Looking back with anger was the founder of a new theatrical trend that critics called the school of angry young men ( angry young man ) for the vitality, satire and realism of his proposal, which expressed a reaction against the old values ​​and the social order established in the postwar period.Osborne was precisely one of the most important and well-known playwrights o...
Post a Comment
Read more

Guillermo Cabrera Infante Biography

Guillermo Cabrera Infante (Gibara, Cuba, 1929) Cuban writer, nationalized British.In 1951 he founded the Cuban Cinematheque, of which he was director until General Batista ordered its closure, a work that he combined with his articles on film criticism for the magazine Carteles, which he published under the pseudonym G.Caín (1954-1960).He also directed the literary magazine Monday of Revolution, banned in 1961 by Castro.In 1966 he published his first renowned novel, Tres tristes tigres, whose experimental nature lies in the ingenious use of language in its most colloquial register and the constant play of winks and references to other literary works.He was a diplomat in Brussels, until he definitively broke with the Castro regime and settled in London.He has written other outstanding novels, such as Vista delmanecer en el tropico (1974), Exorcismos de esti (l) o (1976) and essays such as Vidas para leerlas (1998).In 1998 he received the Cervantes Prize.
Post a Comment
Read more