Queen Maria Sophia of Naples, a Forgotten Heroine

A Bavarian princess becomes Queen of Naples, and then history intervenes. When Giuseppe Garibaldi and his Redshirts march south in 1860 to annex the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, most of the court flees. Maria Sophia stays. She organizes defenses, distributes weapons, and stands beside her young husband King Francis II as the kingdom crumbles around them. This is the story of a queen who refused to abandon her people or her crown, who was seen riding through besieged Naples with a pistol at her saddle, whose beauty was legend and whose courage was greater. Written in the early twentieth century, this account rescues Maria Sophia from the margins of history, illuminating a woman who became the last hope of a vanishing world and a symbol of resistance to the forces of Italian unification. It is tragedy and romance woven together: a kingdom lost, an exile endured, and a forgotten heroine whose defiance deserves to be remembered.