Marriage with Archduke Joseph Background The family policy of
Maria Theresa, Holy Roman Empress was intended to strengthen the relationship between the
Bourbons and the
Habsburgs. Influenced by
Madame de Pompadour, Louis XV decided to shift alliances and join Austria against
Britain and
Prussia in the
Diplomatic Revolution. The Empress' eldest son,
Joseph, was unenthusiastic about marriage because of his low opinion of women, and relied on the advice of his mother in choosing a bride. His betrothal to Isabella's cousin,
Maria Luisa of Spain, was broken off with the excuse that he had fallen in love with Isabella, although the decision was a political one made by his mother. On the bride's side,
negotiations were led by Madame Infante. The contract was finalised in the summer of 1759 in Versailles. Shortly after, aged thirty-two, Madame Infante died of
smallpox, devastating her daughter. Isabella might have become convinced at this time that she was to die within four years. She was reported to repeatedly say that she would die before turning twenty-two. After the
betrothal, the parties decided to wait so that the young couple could mature. The death of Élisabeth further delayed the plans. Isabella started to learn
German, devoting seven hours a day to it. She was anxious to please her future mother-in-law the Empress. Isabella prepared methodically for her future, studying the political situation of the
Habsburg monarchy and following its
ongoing war with Prussia. To please her new family, she was ready to pretend and manipulate. Meanwhile, Joseph wrote to a friend that he would try to win his bride's 'respect and trust'. He considered it impossible to be 'agreeable, to pose as a lover', as that went against his 'nature' which had never understood romantic love. Thoughts of his approaching wedding made him 'tremble' and feel melancholic.
Wedding Following a
marriage by proxy, Isabella was sent to Vienna with
Joseph Wenzel I, Prince of Liechtenstein in late 1760. While she was sad to say goodbye to her family, she was happy to leave Parma. Maria Theresa refused to let anyone of her former staff accompany her. Publicly, Isabella disguised her sadness, but cried in private with her father, siblings, confessor, and
aya. She travelled from Parma through the
Alps and was greeted at the border by her
Oberhofmeisterin, the
widowed
Countess
Erdődy, Antónia
Battyhány. They reached a castle near Vienna on 1 October, where they were received by Isabella's father-in-law
Francis I, Holy Roman Emperor. The Emperor accompanied Isabella to
Laxenburg castles to meet the rest of the imperial family. Her fiancé, who had declared multiple times that he was more afraid of marriage than of battles, reportedly turned red upon seeing her and could not wait for the wedding. While this might be an exaggeration, she quickly seduced Joseph by her obedience and letting him feel intellectually superior to her. Maria Theresa declared that Isabella was 'perfect', and it was generally agreed that she surpassed expectations. The only person who disliked her was the eldest archduchess,
Maria Anna, who had been the second lady of the court but was now displaced by Isabella. She was jealous of her popularity, while she had always been slighted by her family. depiction of the wedding procession by Martin van Meytens. The square shown here did not exist, and existing houses were left off the picture to showcase the procession.|alt=Countless carriages and horsemen are marching in front of a Viennese landscape. The wedding was celebrated in the
Augustinekirche by
Nuncio Vitaliano Borromeo on 6 October. At night, there was a display of decorative lighting with almost three thousand
lanterns burning between the
Hofburg and the
Stephansdom and the same amount of white
wax candles in two lines, complete with
torches in the courtyard of the palace. In the
Hofburg, there was a public
banquet where the pure golden
tableware from Isabella's
dowry was used. Festivities lasted for days and were commemorated in a series of paintings by
Martin van Meytens, which can be viewed in the Hall of Ceremonies in
Schönbrunn Palace as of 2024. This was organised despite the ongoing
Seven Years' War draining the
treasury, as Maria Theresa wished to distract attention and display the wealth of her empire.
Married life and relationship with her husband Joseph fell in love with Isabella and behaved attentively, but she did not reciprocate the extent of his feelings. It was considered her duty to produce an heir as quickly as possible, and she became pregnant in late 1761. This caused her anxiety, but she was relieved that she did not cause disappointment. She worried that she would be unable to endure the pain of childbirth, but behaved in the expected way, with 'no sensitivity nor grimacing' according to Maria Theresa . Her pregnancy was difficult with many physical symptoms, depression, and a
fear of death. This was worsened by her husband not understanding her problems. On 20 March 1762, she gave birth to Archduchess
Maria Theresa (named after her paternal grandmother). How Isabella felt about her child is unknown, but she only mentioned her once in her intimate correspondence and never in her private writings; a friend commented that her love for her child 'did not show much on the exterior'. She
miscarried in August 1762 and in January 1763. Maria Theresa advised Joseph to wait for six months before trying for a son again so that Isabella could recover. The second miscarriage was kept secret, but Maria Theresa and Joseph were 'in great distress' according to the French ambassador. He wrote that Isabella was 'in good health' but had been bedridden for days. Her miscarriages worsened her depression and eroded her will to live. Her death anxiety was aggravated by the risks of childbirth. In early March 1763, was reported in France that she was psychologically unwell, still grieving her last miscarriage, and displaying physical symptoms: she was 'extremely thin', had an 'almost constant' 'dry cough', and pain in her sides. It was concluded that her health was 'seriously threatened' and that her 'soul' needed to be 'calmed'. Meanwhile, the love of her husband and mother-in-law for her grew, and it seems that Isabella found a maternal figure in the Empress. She appears to have hidden her independence and revolutionary opinions well, being submissive towards both her husband and her mother-in-law. Biographers describe her as living a 'double life' as both a 'liberated intellectual' and a 'submissive young wife'. Despite her personal doubts, contemporaries considered her to behave as expected, and she had an 'acute sense of duty' in her role as a princess.
Relationship with Archduchess Maria Christina from 1765.|alt=A young woman in a simple white dress with a black apron and a white cap is sitting before a background of small paintings. She is weaving on a small loom. Her sister-in-law, Archduchess
Maria Christina (known as Marie) was Isabella's best friend and only confidante in
Vienna. Marie was the third surviving child of the imperial couple, less than five months younger than Isabella, and the favourite child of the Empress. She was intelligent and artistically inclined. The two quickly developed a close relationship, spending so much time together that they earned a comparison with
Orpheus and Eurydice. Despite living in the same palace, they exchanged letters and small notes daily, which Freyermuth connects to the popularity of intimate correspondence and
epistolary novels at the time. Two hundred pieces of correspondence by Isabella survived (those by Marie were burned after her death). It seems that Isabella soon became romantically and perhaps also sexually attracted to Marie. The latter's feelings developed more gradually and remained more reserved. She was recovering from her love for
Louis Eugene of Württemberg, whom Maria Theresa considered inferior to an archduchess. Soon after Isabella's arrival, in October or November 1760, she started to playfully
court Marie, writing that 'love, that cruel god, torment[ed]' her and that death would be 'surely sweet', except for not being able to love Marie anymore. In the beginning of their relationship, she addressed Marie formally, calling her 'my lady my dear Sister', but soon started calling her 'my dear angel', 'my most precious treasure', or 'my consolation'. Marie's regular
nicknames were
mon Alte ('my old [one]') and
mon âne, mein Engerl, or
Eserl (all words meaning
donkey). She once asked Isabella to call her
baadwaschl, Viennese
slang for
washcloth, an object with
erotic connotations. Isabelle regularly portrayed the two of them as a heterosexual couple, for example, Marie as
Eurydice and herself as
Orpheus, or using the names of couples from contemporary comedies. She called herself the 'lover'
(amant) of Mimi. Isabella combined the superlatives fashionable in letters between close friends with genuine signs of her obsession and adoration for Marie. The two women agreed to meet in hidden places and Isabella wrote short notes to Marie during
mass. They gifted each other
close stools, and Isabella commented that she hoped Marie would think of her each time she used it. If the weather prevented Joseph from going on a
hunt, the sisters-in-law cancelled their meeting in hurried, disappointed notes. They were worried to keep their relationship a secret; in March 1761, Isabella reminded Marie of her 'given word' to never talk about something (she does not specify what), because 'there is nothing in the world as shameful as going against nature'. Marie seems to have been more reserved than Isabella, but she did return her feelings. Their shared perception of
homosexuality as sinful led to feelings of guilt. Isabella felt ashamed for not reciprocating the love of her husband, failing to fulfill her 'wifely duty'. This worsened her depression and convinced her that the only solution was her death. She wrote to Marie that 'only the Almighty knows how gladly I would part with this life, in which grievance is inflicted upon Him daily'. After Marie's death, a
miniature of Isabella and her daughter was found in her
prayer book. On its back, she had written the date and cause of Isabella's death, calling her the 'best and truest friend' who had 'lived as an angel and died as [an angel]'. Before her death, Isabella told her mother-in-law that 'not everything was viewable' for Joseph among her papers. The Empress asked Countess Erdődy, Isabella's
Oberhofmeisterin, to burn Isabella's writings; it is unknown why this did not happen. The letters Isabella had written to her remained among Marie's papers. Her husband,
Albert Casimir, Duke of Teschen, understood them as proof of an 'exceptional friendship' between his wife and an 'unpararelled princess'. As of 2024, the letters are in the
National Archives of Hungary. They were partially published by
Alfred Ritter von Arneth, archivist of the Habsburg papers, in the late 19th century. Another censored edition was included in Joseph Hrasky's 1959 . In 2008,
Élisabeth Badinter published the full preserved correspondence with
annotations.
Appraisal of relationship by scholars While earlier historians dismissed the language of the letters as a fashionable expression of friendship, later it became consensus that the two had a romantic, possibly sexual affair. Badinter argues that possessive desires, feeling pain over being separated, an 'obsession with the beloved', jealousy, and dependency—seen as characteristics of romantic-sexual relationships both in the 18th century and since then—were apparent in their correspondence. Supporting the idea that Isabella did not experience heterosexual attraction is her statement in the
Traité sur les hommes that while no man can live without women, any woman could live without men. Freyermuth argues that most of the expressions employed by Isabella were regular in sophisticated correspondence at the time, and highlights that the expression
aimer à la rage, to love to the point of madness, is used both for Marie and for her
Oberhofmeisterin. She nevertheless agrees with other biographers that the letters convey a 'visceral need' for intimate proximity and an 'exclusive passion', especially by their frequency (often multiple letters a day) and through 'ambiguous' phrases. Isabella used a mix of words denoting platonic and romantic love to disguise her attraction, neutralising verbs referring to sexual or romantic feelings by following them with ones appropriate in friendship, such as in 'I yearn ''[je languis d']
for love [amour]
, for friendship [amitié]'', as you wish, and forever'. She relied on the
French pronoun on ('one'), to make her declarations impersonal: 'when one sees you
[on vous voit], one can no longer be
[on ne plus peut être] occupied by anything but your charms'. Freyermuth argues that even though Europeans in the 18th century discussed symptoms considered 'disgusting' more freely than in the 21st century, the comfortable way in which Isabella described her
diarrhea after giving birth ('I shat
[chié] all over [my
chemise]') suggest that they had been physically, probably sexually intimate with each other.
Relationship with Archduchess Maria Anna While most of her family loved her, her relationship with her eldest sister-in-law, the Archduchess
Maria Anna (known as Marianne), only deteriorated. Isabella was seen as beautiful, while Marianne was considered the least attractive archduchess; Isabella was popular, while Marianne was ignored by her mother and siblings. The Infanta was intelligent and educated, and studying sciences had been Marianne's refuge from her lonely and contentious family life, an interest that connected her with her father, who now also adored Isabella. Isabella was also considered a better singer and violinist than the Archduchess. Motivated by jealousy and feelings of inferiority, Marianne viewed Isabella as a rival even before she arrived in Austria and received her coldly. Isabella responded with distrust. She described Marianne as 'duplicitous' and '
hypocritical', and wrote a short dissertation titled about her. The two nevertheless exchanged embraces, kisses, and compliments in public. Marianne seems to have been the only person to suspect the affair between Isabella and Marie, and she spied on them. Isabella often warned Marie to keep their letters safe from Marianne. Their coldness, turning into hostility, worsened the already distant relationship between Marianne and Joseph, and he never forgave his sister for antagonising his wife. Later, as head of the family, he used his power to isolate her and deprive her financially ==Death and aftermath==