High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! María Manuela Enriqueta Kirkpatrick de Closbourn y de Grevigné, Countess of Montijo (February 24, 1794 in Malaga - November 22, 1879 in Carabanchel) was the mother of Eugénie, the Empress of the French. Dona Manuela was born the daughter of an expatriate Scotsman, William Kirkpatrick, a wine merchant and Consul of the United States of America in Malaga, Spain, and his Liège-born wife, Françoise de Grevigné, whose sister Catherine married the French diplomat, Matthieu de Lesseps. Maria Manuela was brilliant, vivacious and talented. In 1817 she married Don Cipriano de Palafox y Portocarrero (1785 - 1839), Count de Teba, and later Count de Montijo, Marquis de Algava, and Duke of Peñaranda, a grandee of Spain, a Bonapartist, and veteran of the Napoleonic Wars. They had two daughters, and a son, Paco, who died young. Their daughters were María Francisca de Sales, generally known as Paca (1825-1860), who inherited most of the family honours, and Eugénie, born one year later. In the 1830s Manuela and the girls moved to Paris for their education.