María Amparo Muñoz, 1st Countess of Vista Alegre

María Amparo Muñoz and her husband, Władysław Czartoryski

Doña María Amparo Muñoz y Borbón, 1st Countess of Vista Alegre (17 November 1834 – 19 August 1864) was the daughter of María Christina of the Two Sicilies, queen dowager and regent of Spain, and her morganatic second husband, Agustín Fernando Muñoz (afterwards Duke of Riánsares). Her full title was María de los Desamparados Muñoz y de Borbón, condesa de Vista Alegre.

Her mother, María Christina, had been the third queen consort of Ferdinand VII of Spain, a maternal uncle with whom she had had two daughters; the elder, Infanta María Isabel Luisa, was proclaimed Queen Isabella II of Spain at the age of three upon her father's death on 29 September 1833. His widow, María Christina (then regent), married a sergeant from the guard a few months later, on 28 December 1833, and María Amparo was their first child, born in Madrid in 1834. In 1840 María Amparo went with her parents into exile in France. In 1842 her mother purchased the Château de Malmaison, where María Amparo and her siblings grew up.

On 1 March 1855, María Amparo was married at Malmaison to Władysław Czartoryski, a Polish prince living in exile in France. They lived at the Hôtel Lambert, the Czartoryski family's base of operations during the Second French Empire. She and Prince Władysław had a son, August Franciszek Czartoryski, born on 2 August 1858.

Death

María Amparo contracted tuberculosis, which unfortunately passed to her son when he was six. She died shortly thereafter on 19 August 1864, aged 29, in Paris. Her remains were buried in the tomb of three of her brothers in the cemetery at Rueil-Malmaison. A year later her husband moved them to his family mausoleum in Sieniawa.

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