His sister was Teresa Cristina of the Two Sicilies, Empress of Brazil, wife of the last Brazilian emperor Pedro II.

Progressives credited him with Liberal ideas and, in addition, his free and easy manners endeared him to the so-called lazzaroni, the lower classes of Neapolitan society.

[1] On succeeding to the throne in 1830, he published an edict in which he promised to give his most anxious attention to the impartial administration of justice, to reform the finances, and to use every effort to heal the wounds which had afflicted the Kingdom for so many years.

After similar revolutionary outbursts in Salerno, south of Naples, and in the Cilento region which were backed by the majority of the intelligentsia of the Kingdom, on 29 January 1848 King Ferdinand was forced to grant a constitution, using for a pattern the French Charter of 1830.

In the meantime, Sicily declared independence under the leadership of Ruggero Settimo, who on 13 April 1848 pronounced the King deposed.

After visiting Naples on private business in 1850, William Gladstone the British former government minister and future prime minister, began to support Neapolitan opponents of the Bourbon rulers: his "support" consisted of a couple of letters that he sent from Naples to Parliament in London, describing the "awful conditions" of the Kingdom of Southern Italy and claiming that "it is the negation of God erected into a system of government".

The British government, which had been the ally and protector of the Bourbon dynasty during the Napoleonic Wars, had already additional interests in limiting the independence of the kingdom.