HM Charles of Bourbon

Carlo di Borbone, Re di Napoli
e di Sicilia (1716-1788)

Reprinted from Western Exile @westernexile

Born the heir to thrones lost in war, when he became a man he set forth, for duty to his father, lineage and country, to reclaim the kingdoms of his ancestors in Italy, venturing well beyond comfort to do so. Finding and forging his courage across victorious battlefields of the Peninsula, he triumphed over the armies of Austria and entered Naples to popular adulation in 1734 and Palermo thereafter, reuniting the southern crowns once more.

As King, he displayed vision, ever tempered by the humility to consult and to delegate, and in fifty three years never lost sight of his calling to better the lives of his subjects. He found the South an outpost of empires past. He left her a realm proud once more of her ancient roots, yet the enlightened cradle too of the neoclassical world, buoyed by his enthusiastic patronage that would see Pompeii and Herculaneum rediscovered and revealed to the world.

Under his rule, the poor of Naples were fed, clothed, sheltered and educated, medieval dwellings became palaces and painters and musicians found ready patronage. Yet when Providence then bestowed upon him the throne of Spain, he, forgoing personal ambition and desiring peace in Europe, entrusted his beloved Naples and Sicily to his third son Ferdinand as kingdoms independent of his own, asking only that he be kept abreast of new discoveries of archaeology, as he turned then to build a second nation. So fundamental and sweeping would his deeds in Spain be that the very flag and anthem of that nation are still today his own.

To his realms he gave his industry and his honour. Yet above all, he gave them and their subjects dignity, and even three centuries later, he is remembered as one of the greatest of the Bourbons, and the very model of kingship.