NAPLES’ LAST KING

New Zealand Times, Volume LII, Issue 12181, 4 July 1925, Page 12

NAPLES’ LAST KING

DEATH OF THE WIDOW OVER SIXTY YEARS 3F EXILE. There has just died at Munich, after 65 years of exile, the widow of the last King of Naples, son of an iniquitous king whose barbarities were denounced by Mr Gladstone when Young; Italy was struggling for freedom. Had Queen Maria Sophia reached the throne of the Two Sicilies sooner the course of Italian history might have been very different. Married in Januaty, 1859, when only 17, she and her husband succeeded to the throne, four months later. King Victor Emmanuel 11. was marching to the conquest of Northern Italy from Austria, and had invited the King of Naples to join him. On the advice of his father’s Ministers the now King at first refused, but at his wife’s entreaty he granted his people a Parliament. Had this step been taken sooner it- must have brought him to the side of liberty. But it was too late. His people were already in revolt. Garibaldi had landed in Sicily, which rose to a man in his support. He crossed to the mainland, and the King and Queen retreated before him. There they were besieged for three months while their peon!© voted themselves into United Italy. It was those three months which gave Queen Maria Sophia her place among the heroines of history. She “made the rounds ot the fortifications day by day, exposed to the fire of the enemy, nursing the wounded, giving up to the sick the small luxuries reserved for herself.” and so winning the admiration of friend and foe alike. Then came 65 year;, of retirement, 30 of them in widowhood. She lived to see a yet bigger toppling of thrones than that of 1860, her own, Royal House of Bavaria among them.