Created by decree of King Joachim Napoleon Murat, on November 5, 1808, and abolished in 1919 by King Ferdinand the First, the Royal Order of the Two Sicilies was restored in the form of a dynastic decoration this March 25, 2017 in an elegant ceremony in Paris.
The Eighth Prince Murat, grand master of the Order and descendant of King Murat, presided over the ceremony in which he awarded 23 French personalities and four other countries, with the presence of Princess Murat and other members of his family.
In the inaugural speech, Prince Murat declared that the Order of the Two Sicilies will distinguish with a "borderless" criterion the action of people in the field of Napoleonic history, of Murat, of the past of Naples, or in other charitable actions, etc, recognized by the Council of the Order, so that the preservation of the memory of Joachim Napoleon Murat is an international reality.
The Royal Order of the Two Sicilies had been created as a chivalric order by the Kingdom of Naples and later the Two Sicilies, in 1808.
When Napoleon First named his brother Joseph Bonaparte King of Naples, he created the Ordine reale delle Due Sicilie, on February 24, 1808, to reward those who had helped the Emperor's troops to liberate that city-region. The Order was of three classes: Dignitaries, Commanders and Knights. Shortly after, upon abdicating to take the crown of Spain, Joseph Bonaparte was replaced, on August 1, 1808, by the Marshal of the Empire Joachim Murat, Grand Duke of Berg and Cleves, Napoleon's brother-in-law by his marriage to Caroline Bonaparte.One of King Murat's first acts was to slightly reform the Order through a decree of November 5, 1808: he included the phrase “Joachim Napoleono Sicil Rex” on the medal and replaced the Neapolitan trinaclio with the portrait of King Joachim.
After the fall of the Napoleonic regime in southern Italy, and the capture and death by firing squad of King Joachim Napoleon Murat, in Pizzo, Calabria, on October 13, 1815, King Ferdinand the First returned to Naples and suppressed it, four years later.
A dynastic order is an order of chivalry that has been abrogated by the authorities of the State of origin but that continues to exist thanks to the right that the family of the former sovereign retains to grant it to other people.
In this case, S.A.I.R. (His Imperial and Royal Highness) Prince Murat, head of the family, decided to revive the Order and award it to persons nominated by the Order's three-member council.
Eighth Prince of the dynasty, S.A.I.R. Prince Murat presided over the respective ceremony on March 25 in a splendid hall of the Cercle de l'Union Interalliée, at the Faubourg Saint-Honoré in Paris. He chose that date to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the birth of his famous ancestor King Murat, who was born on March 25, 1767 in Labastide-Fortunière, today Labastide-Murat.
The father of the current J Prince Murat did not have time to relaunch the Order of the Two Sicilies. Resistant and young officer of the French Army during World War II, Joachim Prince Murat, seventh of the dynasty, died at the age of 24, on July 20, 1944, at the hands of an SS commander of the Hitlerite army during the occupation of France. He was posthumously awarded the Legion of Honor.