As de facto ruler of her husband's kingdoms, Maria Carolina oversaw the promulgation of many reforms, including the revocation of the ban on Freemasonry, the enlargement of the navy under her favorite, Sir John Acton, and the expulsion of Spanish influence.

[4] Anxious to save the Austro-Spanish alliance, Charles III of Spain, father of Ferdinand IV, requested one of Maria Josepha's sisters as a replacement.

[11] From Terracina, she and her remaining suite, comprising her brother, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, and his wife Maria Luisa of Spain, ventured to Poztella, where she met her husband, whom she found "very ugly".

In total, Maria Carolina bore Ferdinand eighteen children, of whom seven survived into adulthood including his successor, Francis I, the last Holy Roman Empress, a Grand Duchess of Tuscany, the last Queen of the French, and a Princess of Asturias.

[citation needed] Ferdinand, having received a lacklustre education from the Prince of San Nicandro, lacked the ability to rule, relying completely on his father Charles III of Spain's[note 1] counsel, communicated by Bernardo Tanucci.

[22] The appointment of Tanucci's successor, the Marquis of Sambuca, Maria Carolina's powerless puppet, represented the end of Spanish influence in Naples, hitherto virtually a province of that country.

[26] Acting on her brother the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II's advice, Maria Carolina and Acton revamped the Neapolitan navy, then neglected, opening 4 marine colleges and commissioning 150 ships of various sizes.

[28] Maria Carolina once again replied using a letter written by the king, expounding to Charles III that Acton, the son of a French woman, was not English and that he was appointed before Spanish hostilities with Britain broke out.

[28] Acton's reforms were not restricted to the expansion of the navy; at the same time, he cut the expenditure of his department by 500,000 ducats and invited foreign drill-sergeants and officers to fill vacancies in the army.

[31] Maria Carolina patronised German-Swiss artists, foremostly Angelica Kauffman, who famously painted the queen's family in an informal garden setting in 1783, and gave her daughters lessons in drawing.

[41] The death of the queen's nephew Crown Prince Francis of Austria's wife, Duchess Elisabeth of Württemberg, afforded her an opportunity to fulfil her marital ambitions.

[42] Her daughters Maria Theresa and Luisa married Crown Prince Francis and Ferdinand III, Grand Duke of Tuscany, respectively, during the Neapolitan royal family's visit to Vienna in 1790.

[43] Maria Carolina was anxious to improve Neapolitan-Papal relations, which had deteriorated owing to arguments with Pope Pius VI over ecclesiastical laws and the investiture and choice of bishops.

[45] To emphasise their desire to see him, the king and queen arrived in Rome, en route to Naples from Vienna, earlier than expected, where they were greeted by Pius VI in a private audience.

[48] Alarmed by developments in France, especially in regards to her favourite sister, Marie Antoinette,[note 3] Maria Carolina ended her experiment in enlightened absolutism and started on a reactionary course.

[59] John Acton, now Prime Minister of Naples, allayed Maria Carolina's fervent desire to go to war with France and tried to placate Mackau until he could rely on British military support.

[60] When France started making preparations for war in November to avenge this insult, the king and queen finally capitulated and begrudgingly recognized Mackau and the Republic.

[61] The queen's decision to accede to Latouche's demands earned her the criticism of some Neapolitan historians, like General Colletta, who overlook the fact that Naples was unable to mount a defence at the time as the navy was not mobilised.

[61] Maria Carolina's preventatives against Jacobinism were rendered useless in the face of the subversive actives of Latouche's fleet, which was obliged to return to Naples shortly after leaving by a storm.

[62] Upon Latouche's departure, on 29 January 1793, Maria Carolina launched an ineffective offensive against Neapolitan radicals, allowing the most dangerous schemers to escape justice.

[64] In August 1793, following the Siege of Toulon, Naples joined the First Coalition, comprising Great Britain, Russia, Austria, Prussia, Spain, Portugal and Savoy-Sardinia, against France.

[67] Maria Carolina was so horrified by that event that she refused to speak French, "that monstrous language", and banned the "inflammatory" philosophical works of Galanti and Filangeri, who had hitherto enjoyed the queen's patronage.

[68] In 1794, following the discovery of a Jacobin plot to overthrow the government, Maria Carolina ordered Medici to suppress the Freemasons, of which she was once an adherent, believing they were partaking in treasonable activities with the French.

[70] The cessation of Franco-Spanish hostilities in the summer of 1795 gave Napoleon Bonaparte, a Corsican general in the French army, the opportunity to focus on France's Italian Campaign.

[76] War council meetings, comprising the queen, the king, Mack, Sir William Hamilton, the English ambassador, and Admiral Nelson, the victor of the Nile, were held in the Palace of Caserta.

The chosen name (after Parthenope, an ancient Greek colony which existed on the site of the future city of Naples) was an attempt by the French to obtain the support of the Neapolitan people.

[citation needed] In June 1800, Maria Carolina traveled with her three unmarried daughters, her younger son Leopoldo, and accompanied by William and Emma Hamilton and Nelson over Livorno, Florence, Trieste and Laibach to Vienna, where she arrived two months later.

In their exile, the refugees relied on the help of Great Britain, but after the death of Admiral Nelson in the Battle of Trafalgar (21 October 1805), the British developed more and more aversion to Maria Carolina.

After a long journey through Constantinople, Odessa, Lviv, and Budapest, Maria Carolina finally arrived in Vienna in January 1814, where she began negotiations with Prince Metternich and her nephew, Emperor Francis I of Austria, for the restoration of her husband and herself to the Neapolitan throne.

However, this never happened: Maria Carolina died on 8 September as a consequence of a stroke, without seeing the final defeat of Napoleon and the restoration of her husband by the Congress of Vienna.