Italian and French Royalty. She was born at the lavish Reggia di Caserta (royal place of Caserta), the eldest daughter of the future King Francis I of the Two Sicilies and his first wife, the former Archduchess Maria Clementina of Austria, a daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II. Caroline's parents were double first cousins and were nephew and niece to Queen Marie Antoinette of France, who had been born an Austrian Archduchess. At the time of Caroline's birth, her grandfather, Ferdinand I, was King of Naples and Sicily. Her grandfather would later adopt the title of King of the Two Sicilies in 1816, following the 1815 Congress of Vienna, uniting his two kingdoms, Naples and Sicily. The childhood of Princess Caroline was dominated by events stemming from the chaos surrounding the French Revolution, notably the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte and the subsequent Napoleonic Wars, a series of major military engagements in which the French Empire and its allies, led by Emperor Napoleon I (the former Napoleon Bonaparte), fought against a changing coalition of opponents. Ferdinand I undertook a vacillating approach to Bonaparte, at times seeking an alliance and peace and at times confronting him militarily. He had made peace with Bonaparte, but unsuccessfully attacked French troops in Rome during Bonaparte's Egyptian campaign, resulting in the French marching on Naples as retaliation. The royal family was forced to flee Naples upon the threat of the French invasion on December 23, 1798 aboard Horatio Nelson's HMS Vanguard, seeking safety in Palermo, Sicily. The French took Naples and established the short-lived Parthenopean Republic. King Ferdinand, with the assistance of the British, was able to retake Naples in May, 1800. Subsequently, the king, while initially proclaiming his kingdom's neutrality, entered the Third Coalition, joining the United Kingdom, the Holy Roman Empire, Russia, and Sweden, in opposing Napoleon and his allies. The French victory at the Battle of Austerlitz on December 2, 1805 allowed Napoleon the freedom to send an army into Italy and the French again entered Naples on February 14, 1806. Ferdinand and his family again fled Naples for Palermo, Sicily, where he was able to maintain his rule over that kingdom with the aid of his British allies. Following the abdication of Napoleon as Emperor of the French, Ferdinand and the royal family returned to Naples and the king formally united his two kingdoms. It was in this atmosphere of uncertainty that Caroline was raised and it instilled in her strong monarchist principles. While her grandfather was still king, a marriage was negotiated between Caroline and her cousin, Charles Ferdinand, Duc de Berry, the nephew of the King of France, Louis XVIII, and younger son of the future King Charles X. They were married in Naples on April 24, 1816 and Caroline then left with her husband for France, where they resided at the Élysée Palace in Paris. Although an arranged marriage, it was a happy one, but came to an abrupt end with the assassination of her husband. He was stabbed on February 13, 1820 by Louis Pierre Louvel, a Bonapartist opponent of the Bourbon monarchy, and died the following day. Caroline was two months pregnant at the time of her husband's death and seven months later, on September 29, 1820, gave birth to their only surviving son, Henri, who was given the title Duc de Bordeaux, but is better known today as the Comte de Chambord. When King Louis XVII died on September 16, 1824, her father-in-law succeeded to the French throne as King Charles X. His accession elevated her position and she played an important role in Bourbon Restoration politics. She was also a notable patron of the arts. Caroline was an art collector, particularly of landscapes, and commissioned porcelain from the Manufacture Nationale de Sèvres. She also enthusiastically supported the dramatic arts and served as the patron of the Théâtre du Gymnase which opened on December 23, 1820 and briefly changed its name to the Théâtre de Madame in her honor. Her life as a principal member of the French royal family was short-lived. Charles X was overthrown in the July Revolution of 1830 and both he and his eldest son, Louis Antoine, Duc d' Angoulême, abdicated on August 2, 1830. Charles X urged his cousin Louis-Philippe, Duc d'Orléans (who was married to Caroline's paternal aunt, Maria Amalia), to proclaim Caroline's son, Henri, as Henri V, King of France. A request was made for Henri to be sent to Paris, but without his mother. Caroline and Charles X refused to send Henri without her escorting him and after seven days the National Assembly instead proclaimed Louis-Philippe as the new King, not of France, but King of the French, on August, 9, 1830. Legitimists, royalists who support the rights of dynastic succession to the French throne for descendants of the eldest branch of the Bourbon dynasty, consider Henri to have been King of France from August 2 through August 9, 1830, but he was never officially proclaimed as such. Caroline and her two surviving children, Louise and Henri, accompanied her father-in-law and his family into exile, living briefly in Bath, England, and in Edinburgh, Scotland. She eventually returned to her native Naples and actively sought a Legitimist restoration of her son to the French throne. Working toward that goal, she landed in Marseille in April, 1832, but found little success and she was eventually imprisoned the following November after having been in hiding for five months. It was while in prison that she gave birth to a daughter on May 10, 1833. She was then forced to admit that she had secretly married an Italian nobleman, Ettore Carlo Lucchesi-Palli, Duca della Grazia. Their marriage was considered a mésalliance and beneath the dignity of a senior member of the French royal family. The revelation resulted in the loss of considerable support from Legitimists and the French nationality she had acquired by marriage to the Duc de Berry was lost, rendering her ineligible to serve as a regent for her young son in the event he was proclaimed king. No longer seen as a threat, she was released in June, 1833. She returned to Sicily with her second husband and later lived for some time in Venice where they acquired a palace on the Grand Canal. The battles for Italian unification necessitated the removal of her family to Brunnsee, in Austria, where she resided until her death.