Ambrogio Caracciolo, the prince of Torchiarolo

Ambrogio Caracciolo , The Prince of Torchiarolo (Atripalda, January 26, 1699-Vienna, 23 February 1746), was an Italian prince and military, among the main supporters of the Habsburg government in Naples (1707-1734).

Ambrogio Caracciolo was born in Atripalda (secondary fief of his house), son of Marino III Caracciolo, V prince of Avellino and his wife, Antonia Spinola, Marquise of Los Balbases. He was baptized with the name of Ambrogio in honor of a prestigious ancestor of his mother, Ambrogio Spinola, a Genoese general at the service of Spain in Flanders, one of the best known in his time. Very young, during his visit to Rome, Pope Clement XI appointed him his secret waiter.

During the period of the Austrian Vicerame in Naples (1707-1734), he openly sided in support of the Habsburgs and was rewarded by the government of Vienna with the degree of feldmaresse of the imperial army, as well as with the role of the court of Grand Master of the Cacce. In 1725, in recognition of the loyalty shown to the imperial cause and the awareness -raising work he started in Naples to seek more and more supporters of the Habsburg cause, he obtained the recognition of Prince of the Sacro Roman Empire with the treatment of “Serenissima height” (one of the very few Neapolitan nobles to obtain this distinction). The following year, the emperor Charles VI granted him the fiefdom of Torchiarolo. Ostregious by the Neapolitans, in 1728 he returned to Naples from Vienna, where he had taken a stable residence to visit his mother, but had to later reach Trieste, where, met the emperor, with him he returned to the imperial capital in 1729.

Also from abroad, Ambrogio continued his work of raising awareness of the Austrian cause, to the point that his marriage to the Spanish noblewoman María Francesca Afan de Rivera, descending by the ancient kings of León and Navarra, was celebrated at the Imperial Palace of Vienna, In the presence of the emperor Charles VI, who will also be the baptism godfather of the couple’s eldest son, Carlo, born in Vienna in 1730.

In 1730, he decided to return to Naples, but he remained only until 1734 when, with the entry of Charles III of Bourbon as a new sovereign in the city, six days later he decided to return to Vienna. It was at that point that Charles III declared the Prince of Torchiarolo guilty of treason and seized all the assets that his family possessed in Neapolitan territory. The sovereign also lashed out against Ambrogio’s wife, who, remained in Naples, suffered the retaliation of the Bourbons and was first secretly secretly under the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie of Sorrento and then in that of Santa Caterina in Gaeta; Finally he was transferred to the monastery of Santa Maria delle Monache di Capua and was able to return to freedom only following the death of her husband, twelve years later. The emperor Charles VI, in 1739, rewarded him the losses suffered with the order of the golden toson and a rich pension. He returned once again to Italy in 1744, when he collided in the battle of Velletri alongside the imperial troops for the conquest of the South Kingdom, but the victory of Carlo di Bourbon forced him once again to fall back to Vienna.

Returning to reside in the imperial capital, he died there in 1748 and his funerals were paid at the expense of the empress Maria Teresa, who had always admired him and for whom she prepared a burial within the Cathedral of Santo Stefano.

Ambrogio Caracciolo married to Vienna in 1729 the Marquise María Francisca Afan de Rivera, daughter of the Marquis Perafan of Villanueva de Los Torres and his wife, Serafina Bernardo, Marquise of Montenegro. From this marriage the following heirs were born:

• Carlo (1730 – m. Infante)
• Serafina (1731 – 1798), married Pier Nicola Carafa Alvaro della Quadra, IV Prince of San Lorenzo
• Carlo (1732 – m. Infante)
• Camillo (1733 – m. Infante)
• Luigi (1734 – 1756), the Prince of Torchiarolo, the Prince of the Holy Roman Empire, married in 1754 Donna Maria Imara Francone of the principles of Ripa Francone and Pietracupa
• Paolo Matteo (1736 – 1757), celibate

• P. Colletta, History of the realm of Naples , edited by N. Cortese, Naples 1957, vol. II, p. 116
• F. Fabri, The genealogy of the Caracciolo family , edited by A. Caracciolo, Naples 1966