page_title: Maria Luisa, Duchess of Lucca
section_title: Duchess of Lucca
hierarchical_section_title: Maria Luisa, Duchess of Lucca / Duchess of Lucca
caption_attribution_description: English: Maria Luisa of Spain, Duchess of Lucca, monument in Lucca Deutsch: Maria Luisa von Spanien, Denkmal in Lucca Italiano: Maria Luisa di Borbone-Spagna, monumento a Lucca
context_page_description: Maria Luisa of Spain was a Spanish infanta, daughter of King Charles IV and his wife, Maria Luisa of Parma. In 1795, she married her first cousin Louis, Hereditary Prince of Parma. She spent the first years of her married life at the Spanish court where their first child, Charles, was born.
  In 1801 the Treaty of Aranjuez made her husband King of Etruria, a kingdom created from the former Duchy of Tuscany in exchange for the renunciation of the Duchy of Parma. They arrived in Florence, the capital of the new kingdom, in August 1801. During a brief visit to Spain in 1802, Maria Luisa gave birth to her second child. Her husband's reign in Etruria was marred by his ill health. He died in 1803, at the age of 30, following an epileptic crisis. Maria Luisa acted as regent for their son. During her government in Florence, she tried to gain the support of her subjects, but her administration of Etruria was cut short by Napoleon Bonaparte, who forced her to leave with her children in December 1807. As part of the Treaty of Fontainebleau, Napoleon incorporated Etruria to his domains.
context_section_description: When Maria Luisa arrived in Lucca, she was already thirty-five years old. Ten years of endless struggles had taken their toll: her youth was gone and she had gained a lot of weight. Nevertheless, she set her sights on a new marriage. She first addressed Ferdinand III, Grand Duke of Tuscany, who was a widower, and also her first cousin, possibly with the idea of securing her position in Lucca and gaining a foothold in Florence. After this failed, she tried Archduke Ferdinand of Austria-Este but this failed as well. After the assassination of Charles Ferdinand, Duke of Berry, in 1820, there were plans to marry her to his father, the future King Charles X of France. 
  Maria Luisa's firm intention was to obliterate every trace of the government Elisa Bonaparte, who had ruled Lucca from 1805 to 1814 and who nominally succeeded Maria Luisa in Tuscany in 1808. As duchess, she promoted public works and culture in the spirit of enlightenment and during her government the sciences flourished. Between 1817 and 1820, she ordered the complete renewal of the inner decorations of the Palazzo Ducale, completely redecorating the building into its present form, making the Palazzo one of the finest in Italy. Maria Luisa, a religious woman, favored the clergy. In her small state, seventeen new convents were founded in the six years of her reign. Among the projects she accomplished were the building of a new aqueduct and the development of Viareggio, the port of the Duchy.
  Politically, Maria Luisa disregarded the constitution imposed on her by the congress of Vienna and governed Lucca in an absolutist fashion, though her government was not very reactionary and oppressive. When the Spanish liberals imposed a constitution on her brother, King Ferdinand VII, she opened up to the idea of accepting a constitution, but the resurgence of Spanish absolutism in 1823 ended her intentions. In 1820, she arranged the wedding of her twenty-year-old son's with Princess Maria Teresa of Savoy, one of the twin daughters of King Victor Emmanuel I of Sardinia. The relationship with her son had turned sour and later he complained that his mother had "ruined him physically, morally and financially".
caption: Statue of Maria Luisa at Piazza Napoleone in Lucca by Lorenzo Bartolini.[72]
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