Death of Louise Marie Thérèse d’Artois – Mademoiselle of France
Louise Marie Thérèse d’Artois lived a life marked by murder, revolution and exile.
She was born a French princess of the Bourbon line, and spent the majority of her years away from France.
When she finally obtained a kingdom in the form of the Duchy of Parma, it was torn from her by war.
Louise Marie Thérèse d’Artois, was born on 21st September 1819 at the Élysée Palace in Paris.
She was the oldest living child of Charles Ferdinand, Duke of Berry, and Maria Carolina, daughter of the King of the Two Sicilies.
Her great-uncle Louis XVIII, was king of France and her grandfather, the Count of Artois, was heir to the French throne.
Louise would remember her great-uncle King Louis XVIII as an invalid who could not move from his chair. He suffered from gangrene and died in 1824, five days before Louise’s fifth birthday.
Louise’s grandfather then became King Charles X.
Had Louise been a boy, she would have been in line for the crown herself.
Louise did not have the chance to get to know her father.
She was only five months old when the Duke of Berry was assassinated while leaving the Paris Opera, by Louis Pierre Louvel – a Bonapartist whose goal was the “extinction of the house of Bourbon”.
Her mother The Duchess of Berry, was not the most attentive, so Louise spent a lot of time with her childless aunt, Marie-Thérèse, the Duchess of Angoulême.
The two were devoted to each other.
On 10th November 1845, Louise married her cousin Ferdinando Carlo, the hereditary Prince of Lucca Schloss Frohsdorf.
The groom was four years younger than Louise, and not keen on the idea.
His father – who had an eye on Louise’s substantial dowry – threatened to cut off his allowance if he didn’t go through with the wedding.
Louise and Ferdinando actually got on extremely well, and had four children: Margherita, Roberto, Alicia and Enrico.
Louise and Ferdinando went into a brief exile in England in 1848-49, owing to a revolution in Parma. Ferdinando’s father then abdicated.
Ferdinando and Louise became the Duke and Duchess of Parma.
Any happiness they may have had was short-lived.
On 26th March 1854, while Ferdinando was walking on the street in Parma, an anarchist stabbed him in the stomach with a dagger.
The mortally wounded Duke died the next day.
Louise then served as regent for her young son Roberto, until the family was ousted during the Second Italian War of Independence in 1859.
Louise was again compelled to leave Parma.
She and her children moved to Venice, under Austrian protection.
Any hope of regaining their kingdom disappeared the following year, when all of central Italy was annexed by Piedmont.
Louise lived out the remainder of her life in exile.
Louise Marie Thérèse d’Artois died of typhus fever on 1st February 1864 at the age of 44 in Venice.
She was buried in the Bourbon crypt of the Church of the Annunciation of Mary, in the Kostanjevica Monastery in Nova Gorica, Slovenia.
Louise has many descendants.
Her son Robert had an astonishing 24 children, including Zita, the last Empress of Austria-Hungary.
Louise Marie Thérèse d’Artois, Duchess of Parma with three of her children c.1849
by Raffi Prosper
