By then, however, other rioters had decided to attack the Jews in the Ghetto.10 But, after buying time by sending out delegates with bags full of money to distribute to the mob, the Jews sent for help to the merchants in the Mercato Vecchio; and the merchants, believing that they might well soon be attacked themselves, responded promptly to this request. Seizing such arms as they could lay their hands on, they marched off to the Ghetto, where the more spirited of the Jews were already fighting the invaders. The merchants were soon followed into the Ghetto by a young nobleman, well-liked and persuasive, Alamanno de' Pazzi, who bravely rode through the narrow entrance and succeeded in persuading most of the rioters to follow him back to the Pazzi Palace in the Via del Proconsolo, while an equally public-spirited young citizen, Orso D'Elci, a former officer in the militia, organized squads of vigilanti to patrol the streets. So, the uprising collapsed as suddenly as it had begun. Over a hundred men and women were arrested and several were sentenced to imprisonment or exile or to a life in the galleys of Sicily.
The Grand Duke was appalled and characteristically expressed his anger in a stream of letters to the incompetent Regency Council, which, having summoned the officers of Orso D'Elci's hastily formed national guard to a reception, relieved them of their commissions, thus disbanding the force that had helped to save Florence from anarchy.
Approachable, affable and engagingly enthusiastic, the Grand Duke Peter Leopold had been well enough liked in the earlier years of his reign, despite the unpopularity amongst certain interested classes of some of his policies, such as the imposition of free trade and the abolition of the ancient arti, which were replaced by a Chamber of Commerce. When he and the Grand Duchess had been carried down the Arno on their frequent visits to the other main cities of Tuscany, they had been loudly cheered by the people crowded along the river banks. Towards the end of his reign in Florence, however, criticisms of his regime had become commonplace. It was pointed out that his much-trumpeted reforms were not as radical as they had seemed: it was all very well to boast, for instance, of an elected Commune but all of the electors were taxpayers and many if not most of them were substantial landowners. Indeed, during the Grand Duke's time, although stripped of various archaic privileges, the aristocracy remained as influential as they had been a generation before, while the discontented clergy had become a significant force in the opposition, and the liberal intelligentsia, once keen supporters of the Grand Duke's reforms, had become increasingly influenced by events in France. The Florentines' new sovereign, Peter Leopold's second son, who became the Grand Duke Ferdinand III in June 1791, had an unenviable inheritance.
20
NAPOLEONIC INTERLUDE 1796 – 1827
‘Over there, beyond the mountains, are stores, food, clothes, guns, horses and money to reward us.’
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE
On the last day of June 1796, the Grand Duke Ferdinand III received in Florence an impatient and intense young guest, Napoleon Bonaparte. Less than three months before, the Directory in Paris, well aware that the brilliant and unscrupulous general would not hesitate to replenish their empty coffers with treasure looted from defeated enemies, had appointed him to the command of the French Army of Italy. Their confidence in him was not misplaced. Although they were ill-equipped, some of them without boots and many without pay for months, his soldiers responded eagerly to his call: ‘You have had enough of misfortunes and privations. I shall put an end to that. Over there, beyond the mountains, are stores, food, clothes, guns, horses and money to reward us. We shall cast aside everything that keeps us from our enemies. Let us advance and stick our bayonets into their bodies.’ Promised ‘rich provinces, great cities… honour, glory and wealth’, the French army – having imposed a separate peace upon the Piedmontese and forced them to cede Savoy and Nice to France – stormed the wooden bridge across the River Adda at Lodi, drove the Austrian defenders from the far bank and took 1,700 prisoners. A few days later Bonaparte entered Milan and occupied the palace from which the Austrian archduke had fled. ‘The tricolour flies over Milan, Pavia, Como and all the towns of Lombardy,’ he reported to the Directory. It was soon flying also over the castles of the Papal States as far south as Ancona and over Parma and Modena, from whose rulers immense sums of money, supplies of cattle and corn, and numerous works of art had been exacted. Bonaparte had then advanced upon Leghorn in Tuscany to deny the port to British shipping.
From Leghorn he had galloped over to Florence to assure the Grand Duke that Tuscany's declared neutrality would be respected. After making a quick tour of the city, walking briskly round the Boboli Gardens, and momentarily enjoying the splendid view from the windows of Zanobi del Rosso's recently erected Kaffeehaus,1 he galloped off again, back to his army.
The neutrality he had promised to respect was, however, difficult for the Grand Duke to maintain, since Bonaparte's policy in Italy was to establish vassal republics in conquered territories, and surely Tuscany would soon be forced to become one too. A Cisalpine Republic had been established to govern the former territories of Venice, Lombardy, Mantua, Modena, Ravenna, Bologna and Ferrara; a Ligurian Republic with its capital at Genoa was proclaimed in December 1797, a Roman Republic in February 1798. The creation of this last republic on his northern frontier induced King Ferdinand of Naples to attempt the liberation of Rome from the French and to send six thousand troops to Leghorn to threaten the invaders from the north.
Concerned that this Neapolitan move upon Leghorn would damage his uneasy relations with France, the Grand Duke Ferdinand asked the Neapolitans to withdraw from Leghorn. They agreed to do so; but by then the Directory had seized upon the excuse to march into Tuscany. Their troops, commanded by General Gauthier, did so on Easter Sunday, 24 March 1799, with sprigs of olive fixed to their bayonets as a token of their peaceful intentions.
While his troops arrested the Florentine guards at the Porta San Gallo and imprisoned them in the Fortezza da Basso, General Gauthier established his headquarters, first at Palazzo Medici-Riccardi, then in Palazzo Corsini, and he had a guard, accompanied by a band, mounted at the Pitti Palace. The next day he and the French minister in Florence, Charles Reinhard, called at the Pitti Palace to see the Grand Duke, who received them in the Meridiana pavilion.2
They were perfectly polite; but they made it quite clear to him that he would have to leave Florence within twenty-four hours. He left before dawn on 27 March; and on that same day there appeared in Piazza Santa Croce and Piazza Santa Maria Novella those trappings of Jacobinism which were set up in all the newly invaded cities of Italy, the Trees of Liberty. A week or so later, Charles Reinhard, by then styled Civil Governor of Florence, invited the citizens to an official ceremony in which an exceptionally spectacular Tree of Liberty was to be planted in the Piazza della Signoria, now renamed the Piazza della Nazione.
On the appointed day, 9 April, the Palazzo Pitti was festooned with flowers and banners displaying the colours of the French flag; beneath the vault of the arcade entrance there appeared a majestic figure of Liberty wearing a Phrygian cap and carrying a spear in her right hand; and on a pedestal beneath were two paintings of female figures, the one a demure and submissive Etruria, the other a triumphant French Republic. The Palazzo della Signoria was similarly adorned, French flags and tricolours fluttering from the battlements and from every window. Below them the Loggia dei Lanzi was decorated with tapestries and a guard of honour was drawn up on parade around a specially erected amphitheatre in the middle of the piazza.
General Gauthier and his staff marched into the piazza, followed by regiment after regiment of French soldiers, to the obedient cheers of the populace. The French commanders took their seats on a tribune by the palace steps to watch the arrival of the immense Tree of Liberty mounted on a carriage and accompanied by a troop of bridegrooms in formal clothes and brides in white dresses. The brides held doves, the birds' legs attached to long tricolour ribbons which they released into the sky. They then exchanged wedding rings with their grooms, while
workmen in their best clothes raised the Tree of Liberty into position beside the amphitheatre.
As night fell the city was illuminated by flambeaux; banquets were given outside in the warm spring air; toasts were offered to ‘the bright new life which lay ahead‘; and in Piazza Santa Maria Novella and Piazza Santa Croce, where the first Trees of Liberty had been raised, dancing went on far into the night, the French soldiers having no trouble in finding partners.
The friendly relations between citizens and invaders did not, however, last long. The Florentines soon grew exasperated by the number of French edicts and regulations which, headed by the Civil Commissioner's admonitory words, Nous voulons, led to the citizens calling their unwelcome visitors Nuvoloni, ‘Cloud of Locusts’; and they were outraged when it became known that the French were not only requisitioning private property and expropriating church valuables, especially gold and silver altar vessels, but were also packing up treasures for dispatch to the Louvre in Paris, including, eventually, the Medici Venus, a most desirable companion piece, so Bonaparte had decided, for the Belvedere Apollo which had been removed from the Vatican after the French invasion of Rome. There were angry demonstrations against the occupying forces; Trees of Liberty were desecrated and pulled down; French posters and proclamations were defaced and torn from the walls; French soldiers were insulted in the streets.
The upper classes remained aloof. ‘The members of high society in Florence live very sad and isolated lives,’ commented a French official. ‘They get up at midday, usually have lunch at two o'clock, then take a siesta until six when they dress in order to drive out in their carriages to the Cascine Park. Then to the theatre from nine o'clock till eleven and so home to supper and bed. This is what they do invariably from the first day of the year to the last.’ Their ‘supreme satisfaction' was doing nothing, ‘surrounded by fine pictures, sculpture and furniture, attended by numerous servants in livery’, and in ‘parading the magnificence of their horses, harnesses and carriages in the public promenades’. Their education was ‘superficial, without any real knowledge of science or the arts, of agriculture or, indeed, of any useful subjects of study’.
Having approved the construction of a monumental column in Santa Croce and a ‘Napoleon Forum’ on confiscated land to the north of the city – neither of which was built – Bonaparte returned to Paris where, in November 1799, after his invasion of Egypt, he staged his coup d'état which brought the Directory to an end and established himself as the first of a triumvirate of Consuls.
In his absence the French armies in Italy suffered severe reverses and anti-French insurrections broke out on all sides. Among the most violent of these uprisings were those in Tuscany, most particularly that in Arezzo, where a large band of patriots and rebels, mostly peasants, gathered to march upon the French garrisons of Siena and Florence. They were led by Captain Mari, a former officer in the Grand Duke Ferdinand III's dragoon guards, and a limping, hard-swearing Capuchin friar who had appointed himself chaplain to the force. Also with them was the daughter of a butcher from Montevarchi, Cassandra Cini, dressed half as a woman and half as a soldier, who became Captain Mari's wife. This bizarre army of undisciplined insurgents liberated Siena, which they pillaged brutally, and then moved on to Florence as the French forces retreated northwards from the city.
In Florence the French flags and emblems had been torn down from the Palazzo della Signoria and, together with the crumpled-up manifestos and proclamations issued by the Civil Commissioner, had been burned in the Piazza. General Gauthier had thought it as well to gallop out of the city for Leghorn, escorted by a troop of cavalry, taking with him several hostages, who were threatened with execution should anyone in Florence who had displayed French sympathies be killed. None was killed but a number were beaten and imprisoned.
After Gauthier's departure, a provisional government was established, and representatives were sent to negotiate with Captain Mari and the hungry insurgents from Arezzo who had arrived on the outskirts of the city on 7 July. It was agreed that they might pass through the gates, which they did the next day when the Hon. William Frederick Wyndham, the English chargé d'affaires in Florence, offered his services as intermediary.
Wyndham's presence and tact, however, were of little use in dealing with Captain Mari's unruly rabble, which immediately set about plundering Florence as thoroughly as they had recently pillaged Siena, so that the Florentines welcomed with relief the arrival of a force of Austrian and Cossack troops sent to the city by the Austrian commander-in-chief whose army had helped to drive the French from Italy a few months before. They were even prepared to tolerate good-humouredly the sight of Cossacks demonstrating their skill with the lance as they galloped through the Mercato Vecchio spearing the rolls of salami on display on the butchers' stalls.
Having proclaimed the renewed sovereignty of the Grand Duke Ferdinand III, the Austrian and Russian troops left Florence at the end of July 1799 in the care of the city's provisional government, which struggled to restore its finances by vainly appealing for voluntary contributions from the citizens, by attempting to levy a forced loan upon the Jewish community and by imposing fines upon those who had collaborated with the French invaders. Meanwhile, the Grand Duke remained in Vienna, awaiting a more favourable moment to return.
Determined to restore his hold on Italy, Bonaparte marched an army of 40,000 men across the St Bernard Pass in May 1800; and, on 14 June, defeated the Austrians at Marengo in Piedmont. Later that year the French reoccupied Florence; and Tuscany was transformed from a client state of Austria to a client state of France. This Bonaparte achieved by creating a new Kingdom of Etruria and by placing upon its throne the twenty-eight-year-old son of the Bourbon Duke of Parma, who was married to the Infanta Maria Luisa, the lively, proud, ill-educated daughter of King Charles IV of Spain.
Louis of Parma, who thus suddenly found himself King Louis of Etruria, arrived in Florence on 10 August 1801 in a convoy of forty-six Spanish carriages. The citizens were not impressed. He was quite good-looking, tall and very fair, in contrast to his small, dark Spanish wife, but his face bore a vacant look. His dress was untidy; his coat was crumpled; his long hair was tied by a black ribbon into a pigtail; he was said to be frightened of horses and to suffer from epilepsy.
His behaviour in Florence during his brief residence here did nothing to mitigate his unprepossessing appearance. He was ill much of the time and had to leave business to his wife who, bossy, tactless and incompetent, greatly displeased the Florentines by her evident approval of the reintroduction of the Inquisition and of a new atmosphere of religious intolerance. There was, therefore, much apprehension in the city when King Louis died and the Prime Minister announced that his four-year-old son, Carlo Ludovico, would succeed him as King of Etruria, with the child's mother as Regent.
The Regent did her best to ingratiate herself with the Florentine people. She entertained guests lavishly at the Pitti Palace, holding splendid receptions for artists and writers as well as for the aristocracy and government officials. She gave a celebrated party in the Loggia dei Lanzi for two hundred small boys and girls from working-class families, who were allowed to take their plates and glasses, spoons and napkins home after the banquet as the Regent watched complacently from a platform erected outside the Palazzo della Signoria and bands played and cannon boomed from the Forte di Belvedere. But Maria Luisa never gained much liking or respect in Florence and few regretted her departure when, curtly informed by the French ambassador that Tuscany had been annexed to the French Empire, she was sent back to Spain.
Portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte by Andrea Appiani the Elder.
Bonaparte had had himself crowned Emperor in Paris in December 1804. He had been proclaimed King of Italy the following year, and, after his brilliant victory over the Austrians and Russians at Austerlitz, had begun dividing Europe up amongst his family. His eldest brother, Joseph, had become King of Spain. A younger brother, Louis, had been placed upon the throne of Holland; another brot
her, Jérôe, became King of Westphalia. His brother-in-law, Joachim Murat, an innkeeper's son, was proclaimed King of Naples. His sister, Elisa, married to an easy-going Corsican army officer, Felice Bacciochi, was created Princess of Piombino and Lucca; and in March 1809 joint sovereignty of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany was conferred upon her and her husband.
Like her predecessor, the new Grand Duchess went out of her way to establish good relations with the Florentines, in so far as the directives transmitted to her by her imperial brother would allow. She gave grand levees at the Pitti Palace, which was redecorated with money granted to her by Napoleon; she saved various religious houses from extinction and gave valuable aid to a number of charitable institutions. She permitted the general public the use of the Cascine, where, wearing clothes of a distinctly military cut, she took pleasure in reviewing her troops. But, as also with her predecessor, she was never much liked in Florence and her reign there as Grand Duchess came to a sudden end, for in January 1814 yet another army was marching on Florence. This was a Neapolitan force commanded by Joachim Murat who, having lost confidence in Napoleon after the defeat of the Grand Army at Leipzig, had made a treaty with the Austrians by which he undertook to ensure peace in Italy. With their agreement he marched north to occupy Rome and Florence and restore Pope Pius VII and the Grand Duke Ferdinand III to their respective thrones. He entered Florence on 31 January; and the next day, Elisa Bacciochi left it, soon to be followed by the French troops, whose parades and manoeuvres she had taken such pleasure in watching.
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