Queen Maria Luisa of Spain.
Maria Luisa of Parma (1751 - 1819) was Queen Consort of Spain from 1788 to 1799. She was the youngest daughter of Duke Philip of Parma, who was the younger brother of King Charles III of Spain. In 1765 she married her first cousin, the heir to the Spanish throne, the future King Charles IV. She became Queen Consort when her husband succeeded to the Spanish throne on 14 December 1788.
Unlike her husband, Maria Luisa had all of their grandmother Elisabeth Farnese's intelligence and ambition, and she soon became the dominant member of the couple. Although her uncle/father-in-law Charles III tried to keep the couple from interfering in state affairs, Maria Luisa became the leading figure in a circle of favorites who opposed Charles' policies.
After her husband succeeded to the Spanish throne in 1788, Maria Luisa became a regular member of the Spanish ruling council. She was rumored to have a number of lovers, including her court favorite, Manuel Godoy. Godoy was already a favorite of both Charles and Maria Luisa when they succeeded to the throne, and within four years of their accession he had become First Minister.
Maria Luisa and Godoy reversed Charles III's focus on reforming Spain's colonial empire. This allowed the Jefferson settlement in the Tejas province of New Spain to grow rapidly in population in the 1790s without interference by the Spanish authorities. As a result, when the Jeffersonians rebelled against Spanish rule during the Habsburg War, the government of New Spain was unable to put down the rebellion.
Maria Luisa and Godoy had hoped to maintain Spain's neutrality in the Habsburg War, but pressure from France's Marie Antoinette, who served as regent for her underage son King Louis XVII, led to a formal military alliance between the two countries on 12 April 1795. Queen Maria I of Portugal found the Franco-Spanish alliances alarming, and she appealed to Prime Minister Sir Charles Jenkinson of Great Britain for military assistance. Jenkinson declared war on France and Spain on 23 August, and Spain was thus drawn into the Habsburg War.
Military defeat for France and Spain in the fall of 1798 led to the negotiation of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, which was ratified by Spanish diplomats on 1 March 1799. Under the terms of the treaty, King Charles and Maria Luisa were deposed in favor of the elderly uncle of King Frederick William III of Prussia, who ruled Spain as Ferdinand VII.