page_title: Maria Amalia, Duchess of Parma
section_title: Duchess of Parma
hierarchical_section_title: Maria Amalia, Duchess of Parma / Duchess of Parma
caption_attribution_description: English: Portrait of Archduchess Maria Amalia of Austria (1746-1804)Français&#160;: L'archiduchesse Marie-Amélie d'Autriche, duchesse de Parme, fille de l'empereur du Saint-Empire François Ier et de l'impératrice Marie-Thérèse.
context_page_description: Maria Amalia was the Duchess of Parma, Piacenza and Guastalla by marriage. Maria Amalia was a daughter of Empress Maria Theresa and Emperor Francis I. She was thus younger sister to Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor and older sister to Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor, Maria Carolina, Queen of Naples and Marie Antoinette, Queen of France.
context_section_description: Maria Amalia left Austria on 1 July 1769, accompanied by her brother, Joseph II, and married Ferdinand on 19 July, at the Ducal Palace of Colorno.
  The Duchy of Parma was by this time ruled more or less as a French puppet state by minister Guillaume du Tillot. Du Tillot kept Ferdinand out of politics, and was favored by the maternal grandfather of Duke Ferdinand, Louis XV of France. A letter of Louis XV to his grandson dated May 1769 attests to this, wherein he counseled his grandson not to despise the minister who served his parents well; moreover, the French King said that there was no one to replace him. The marriage had been arranged by Austria and Spain to end the pro-French policy in Parma and replace it with an Austrian and Spanish one. Upon her arrival, Maria Amalia was expected to submit to the wishes of Du Tillot, who regarded her with suspicion, which immediately caused conflict.
  In 1771, two years after her arrival in Parma, Maria Amalia secured the dismissal of Du Tillot and replaced him with a Spanish appointee, Jose del Llano, who was highly recommended by the paternal uncle of Ferdinand, Charles III of Spain. In 1772, the year after, Maria Amalia fired Jose del Llano and replaced him with an Italian prime minister and a cabinet of native Parmesans loyal to her rather than a foreign ruler. As Ferdinand was of a passive nature and content with occupying himself with his religious duties and raising his children, he left the affairs of state entirely to her, and after the cabinet change, Maria Amalia was therefore the ruler of Parma.
  After her dismissal of Jose del Llano in 1772, Maria Amalia secured that Parma would not become a Spanish puppet state. In 1773, her mother Empress Maria Theresa appointed count Franz Xaver Wolfgang of Orsini-Rosenberg her ambassador in Parma with the task to act as Maria Amalia's adviser. Maria Amalia, however, freed Parma also from Austrian influence as she had from French and Spanish, by telling Rosenberg that she did no longer wish to receive letters from Vienna- nor from Madrid. After this, the diplomatic ties with Austria and Spain were cut.
  As the ruler of Parma, Maria Amalia was referred to by the public as La Signora and La Mata. She defended the independence of the Duchy of Parma from France, Spain and Austria, strengthened its inner sense of nationality, supported art, culture and literature and worked efficiently with her ministerial cabinet. Ferdinand did not have political influence, and she openly changed and contradicted his orders and had him sign official state documents for her, including her name in his orders as if they were co-rulers.
  From the beginning of her stay in Parma, Maria Amalia caused a scandal with her personal lifestyle. She strongly disliked the match, and made no effort to conceal her displeasure with it or with her new circumstances in Parma. She used the economic funds from her mother for her wardrobe, a grand court and parties; she replaced most of her ladies-in-waiting with an entourage of Royal Guards composed of handsome young men, cross-dressed as a male, spent her nights unaccompanied incognito on the streets, gambled her money on the officers' club and, while Ferdinand took mistresses among the peasantry, she herself enjoyed affairs with members of his guard. Her personal life was a cause of worry for her mother, who regarded it as a stain on the position of her sister Marie Antoinette in France that Maria Amalia had become a topic of gossip and scandal in all Europe, and in 1773, it had also been the task of her ambassador Rosenberg to tell her this.
  She never managed to establish a good relationship with Ferdinand, who was of a very dissimilar character to her, although they were both described as loving parents. She was greatly disliked by the Parmesan nobility, who described her as a shameful Messalina who tried to live a life of Imperial Austrian luxury not befitting such a small state, and she disliked them for not being truly useful or benefiting the interests of Parma. She was, however, popular among the public, and known for h
caption: Duchess Maria Amalia of Parma. Portrait by Alexander Roslin.
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