Full name | |
---|---|
Italian: Francesco Gennaro Giuseppe |
Royal styles of Francis I of the Two Sicilies |
|
---|---|
Reference style | His Majesty |
Spoken style | Your Majesty |
Alternative style | Sir |
Francis I of the Two Sicilies (Italian: Francesco Gennaro Giuseppe; 19 August 1777 – 8 November 1830) was King of the Two Sicilies from 1825 to 1830.
Francis was born the son of Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies and his wife Archduchess Maria Carolina of Austria in Naples. He was also the nephew of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI, the last King and Queen of France before the first French Republic.
At the death of his older brother Carlo, Duke of Calabria, Francis became the heir to the throne and Duke of Calabria, the traditional title of the heir apparent to the Neapolitan throne.
In 1796 Francis married his double first cousin Archduchess Maria Clementina of Austria, daughter of Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor. When she died, he married his first cousin María Isabel, daughter of King Charles IV of Spain.
After the Bourbon family fled from Naples to Sicily in 1806, and Lord William Bentinck, the British resident, had established a constitution and deprived Ferdinand of all power, Francis was appointed regent (1812).
On the fall of Napoleon I, his father returned to Naples and suppressed the Sicilian constitution, incorporating his two kingdoms into that of the Two Sicilies (1816); Francis then assumed the revived title of duke of Calabria. While still heir apparent he professed liberal ideas, and on the outbreak of the revolution of 1820 he accepted the regency, apparently in a friendly spirit towards the new constitution.