Etruria, Kingdom of / King Louis I

Louis I was the first of the two kings of Etruria. Louis was the son of Ferdinand, Duke of Parma, and Maria Amalia of Austria. He was also born in 1773, when his great-Grandfather, King Louis XV of France, was still alive.

While Louis was staying in Spain, the Duchy of Parma had been occupied by French troops in 1796. Napoleon Bonaparte, who had conquered most of Italy and wanted to gain Spain as an ally against England, proposed to compensate the House of Bourbon for their loss of the Duchy of Parma with the Kingdom of Etruria, a new state that he created from the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. This was agreed upon in the Treaty of Aranjuez.

Louis had to receive his investiture from Napoleon in Paris, before taking possession of Etruria. Louis, his wife and his son traveled incognito through France under the name of the Count of Livorno. Having been invested as King in Paris, Louis and his family arrived at his new capital Florence in August 1801.

In 1802, both Louis and his pregnant wife traveled to Spain to attend the double-wedding of Maria Luisa's brother Ferdinand and her youngest sister Maria Isabel. Offshore at Barcelona, Maria Louisa gave birth to her daughter Marie Louise Charlotte. The couple returned in December of that year, after having been notified of the death of Louis's father.

Back in Etruria, Louis's health worsened, and in May 1803, he died at the age of thirty, possibly due to an epileptic crisis.

He was succeeded by his son, Charles Louis as King Louis II of Etruria, under the regency of his mother Maria Louisa.