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.