Maria Cristina of Bourbon-Two Sicilies

María Cristina de Borbón-Two Sicilies (Palermo, April 27, 1806 - Sainte-Adresse, August 22, 1878) was queen consort of Spain by her marriage to King Ferdinand VII of 1829 to 1833, and Regent of the Kingdom between 1833 and 1840, during most of the minority of his daughter Elizabeth II. She secretly married shortly after the death of Fernando VII with the young member of the Guardia de Corps Fernando Muñoz, who would become the Duke of Riánsares. The couple conducted all kinds of businesses, including the African slave trade and sugar mills in Cuba, whose workforce was slave.

Marriages

His parents were Francisco I of the Two Sicilies (1777-1830), second King of the Two Sicilies between 1825 and 1830, and his second wife the Infanta María Isabel de Borbón (1789-1848), daughter of King Carlos IV of Spain and his wife Princess Maria Luisa of Parma. She married her maternal uncle Fernando VII on December 11, 1829, becoming queen consort of Spain. Shortly after her husband died (1833), she married Agustín Fernando Muñoz y Sánchez, 1st Duke of Riánsares, for the second time. big in Spain

Regency

Portrait of María Cristina de Borbón-Dos Sicilias

Her husband Ferdinand VII died in 1833. The King had named her Governor of the Kingdom in his will, a position in which she would be confirmed by the Constituent Cortes in 1836. After becoming a widow, she fell in love with a sergeant of her bodyguard, Agustín Fernando Muñoz y Sánchez, declaring himself to himself on December 18, 1833 in the royal villa of Quitapesares and contracting a secret morganatic marriage in the Royal Palace of Madrid. The newly ordained priest Marcos Aniano González, a friend of the groom, celebrated the wedding and remained closely linked to the family for almost three decades as chaplain of the Palace and sole confessor of María Cristina. This new marriage of the queen governor was not well received by the society of the time. His daughter and heir to the throne was only three years old, so he acted as regent of the Kingdom for the next seven years, until 1840. During this time he made necessary social contributions, such as the help he provided to the Huelva coast in 1834 after a cholera epidemic. In gratitude, the city council of the Real Isla de la Higuerita requested and obtained the change of its name to Isla Cristina. In the international arena, during her regency, the independence of Mexico was formally recognized through the Treaty of Santa María-Calatrava, being the first document to recognize the emancipation of an American territory after the Spanish-American wars of independence.

He also had enemies, the most famous of which was his uncle and brother-in-law Carlos María Isidro de Borbón, who, refusing to abide by the Pragmatic Sanction of 1830, claimed to be the legitimate heir to the throne and initiated what is known as the First Carlist War that ended in 1839 with the Embrace of Vergara.

Exile

María Cristina de Borbón-Dos Sicilias by Franz Xaver Winterhalter in Paris in 1841

After various failed attempts to reconcile political tendencies between progressives and moderates and various corruption scandals during her regency, María Cristina was forced to cede the regency to Baldomero Espartero and go into exile. She left the country on October 17, 1840 on the steamer Mercury . Even so, she from Marseilles announced that she had been forced to resign and moved to Rome, where the then Pope Gregory XVI gave his blessing to her morganatic marriage. She settled in Paris, thanks to the financial support of Francisco, Count of Luzárraga, and from there she intrigued —along with her most faithful— against the Esparterista government until her overthrow and subsequent appointment of her daughter at age 13 as Queen Isabel II.. One of the most important issues during this period was the education of the princesses, in a struggle between the staff of the Royal House imposed by Espartero and the rest, prone to the regent, such as the Marquise of Santa Cruz. In February 1844 she returned to Madrid (although she would leave again for a brief period in 1847) and settled in the Palacio de las Rejas, from where she attempted to control her daughter's politics. In 1846, the queen herself participated in an attempt to restore the monarchy in Ecuador at the express request of President Juan José Flores. This two-phase plan consisted, first, of his son Agustín Muñoz y Borbón becoming prince of Ecuador and, later, restoring the Spanish monarchy in Peru and Bolivia, uniting the three countries under a single nation to which they would call the United Kingdom of Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia. When everything was organized, the attempt was denounced and the plans fell apart. He remained in France for the rest of his life and only returned to Spain when his grandson Alfonso XII took the throne, although with the limitation of not being able to install your permanent residence in the country. Neither her daughter nor her grandson had a good relationship with her, because they did not look favorably on her second marriage.

Business

Together with her second husband, the 1st Duke of Riánsares, Agustín Fernando Muñoz y Sánchez, she started businesses related to salt, the stock market, the railway —in which Narváez also participated—^{[citation required ]} and, the most lucrative, slavery. It was said that "there was no lucrative business that she did not try to control". The marriage between the Duke of Riánsares and María Cristina de Borbón operated in Madrid, Paris, London and Havana from 1835 to 1873, the year of her husband's death. Their businesses were channeled through the firm "Agustín Sánchez y Cia", established on September 14, 1844, by Riánsares and Antonio Juan Parejo, who represented the economic interests of the regent queen. The main benefit it was the sale of slaves. They also did business with the politician and slave trader Julián Zulueta when such practice was already illegal. The slave business of the Riansares-Borbón couple with Zulueta focused on trafficking between 1845 and 1849, a period who handled "two deep-draft vessels" for the transatlantic transport of human goods.

As a consequence of corruption to receive money from ministers and contractors and plundering of the royal patrimony, in 1854 she was expelled from Spain and the life pension that the Cortes had granted her was withdrawn.

Death

He died in Sainte-Adresse in 1878. His corpse was taken to Spain and buried in the Pantheon of Kings of the Monastery of El Escorial.

Offspring

First marriage

From her first marriage, to King Ferdinand VII, she had two daughters:

• María Isabel Luisa de Borbón, future "Isabel II of Spain" (1830-1904), queen of Spain.
• María Luisa Fernanda de Borbón (1832-1897), an infant of Spain, married to the Duke of Montpensier.

Second marriage

From her second marriage, to Agustín Fernando Muñoz y Sánchez, 1st Duke of Riánsares and 1st Marquis of San Agustín, she had eight children, to whom Queen Isabella II granted noble titles between 1847 and 1849:

• María de los Desamparados Muñoz y Borbón, I condesa de Vista Alegre (1834-1864)
• María de los Milagros Muñoz y Borbón, I marquesa de Castillejo (1835-1903)
• Agustín María Raimundo Fernando Longinos Muñoz y Borbón, I duque de Tarancón grande de España, I vizconde de Rostrollano y pretendeiente a king of Ecuador (1837-1855)
• Fernando María Muñoz y Borbón, II Duke of Great Riánsares of Spain, II Duke of Tarancón grande de España, II Marquis de San Agustín, I Count of Casa Muñoz, II Viscount of Rostrollano, I Viscount of the Alborada and II Duke of Montmorot Par de France (title not recognized in Spain) (1838-1910)
• María Cristina Muñoz y Borbón, I marquesa de la Isabela, I vizcondesa de la Dehesilla (1840-1921)
• Juan María Muñoz y Borbón, I count of remembrance, I vizconde de Villarrubio (1844-1863)
• Antonio de Padua Muñoz y Borbón (1842 - 1847)
• José María Muñoz y Borbón, I conde de Gracia, I vizconde de la Arboleda (1846-1863)

Honorary Distinctions

• Lady of the Order of the Noble Ladies of Queen Mary Louise (Reino de España, September 29, 1833).
• Grand Master of the Order of the Noble Ladies of Queen María Luisa (Reino de España, December 11, 1829-29, September 1833)
• Big Cross Lady of the Order of Our Lady of the Conception of VillaviciosaPortugal, 23 June 1833)
• Lady of the Order of the Queen Saint Elizabeth (Kingdom of Portugal)
• Big Lady of the Order of Our Lady of the Conception of Villaviciosa.Kingdom of Portugal)
• First class Lady of the Order of the Starry Cross.Austrian Empire February-March 1830)
• Big Lady of the Order of Saint Catherine. (Russian Empire)

Ancestors