On October 15th, in the year 1767, 16 year old Archduchess Maria Josepha of Austria died of smallpox on the day she was supposed to have left Vienna to be married. She was engaged to marry Ferdinand of Naples and Sicily, after her elder sister, Maria Amalia, was rejected for being 5 years older than the groom. The next choice had been another sister, Maria Johanna Gabriela, who was only a year older than the groom, but she died not long after the engagement of smallpox at the age of 12.
Said to be “delightfully pretty, pliant by nature,” Maria Josepha was the same age as Ferdinand and, after her sister’s death, was substituted instead. She was reportedly terrified of catching smallpox after her sister’s death and was understandably reluctant when her mother insisted she go to the Imperial Crypt and pay her respects to her sister in law, Maria Josepha of Bavaria, who had died of the disease five months before, since they shared the same name. It’s often cited that she contracted smallpox from the improperly sealed tomb, but since the rash appeared only two days after her visit and the incubation period before a rash appears is about a week, she sadly was already infected before she went.
The young Archduchess was buried in the Imperial Crypt she’d only recently visited, inside Tomb 43. After Maria Josepha’s death, Maria Theresa then substituted her next youngest daughter, Maria Carolina, as a bride instead.