MARIE AMELIE DE BOURBON, Queen of the French, wife of king Louis Philippe, 1782-1866; b. in Sicily; daughter of Frederick IV., king of the Two Sicilies; reared and educated in Sicily, Naples, and Venice. Louis Philippe, duke of Orleans, while ban ished from France, met her, and they were married Nov. 25, 1809. She bore him a large family of children, most of whom have been eminent for talents and high charac ter. On the accession of Louis XVIII. they returned to Paris, and resided in France or in England until the French revolution of 1830, when Lafayette and Lafitte selected her husband as the best available leader of the liberal monarchic party, and made him king. She exhibited a repugnance to the elevation, fearing to have her husband considered a trespasser on the rights, which she seemed to respect, of the elder branch of the Bourbons. As queen she was a model of abstention from political intrigues, of every •domestic virtue, and of the highest influence over ber husband to good ends. Her home virtuas, sympathetic nature, and public charities, made her dear to the French people, and prolonged the duration of a reign the duplicity and selfishness of which WRS in marked contrast to the disinterested beneficence of her own life and influence. When
Louis T'hilippe was dethroned in 1848, she bore the fall with dignitv and calmness quite in contrast with the hurried fear of her royal consort. She joinea him at Claremont, England, where, under the name of the comptesse de Neuilly, she passed the remainder of her life, and closed the eyes of her husband in 1850, after 40 years of noble companion ship and mutual fidelity. In her last years she sought to bring about tt reconciliation with the elder branch of the Bourbon family. Five sous and three daughters were the fruit of her marriage. The eldest son, the duke of Orleans, died in 1842; the eldest daughter, a promising sculptress, died in 1839; the other sons bave the titles of duke de Nemours, prince de Joinville, duke d'Aumale, duke de Montpensier. The princess Louise became queen of Belgium, and the princess Clementine married the prince of Saxe-Cobourg. M. Trognon has published a Vie de Marie Am4lie,1?eine des Francais, 1871.