Florence

by Christopher Hibbert

  Gas lamps appeared in the streets and, on the night of their introduction, the Grand Duke himself joined the crowds of citizens who went out into Via Maggio and unfolded their newspapers to assure themselves that the light, as they were promised it would do, enabled them to read the Gazetto di Firenze at a distance of seventeen arms' lengths from the lanterns. By then the dreaded and unsavoury prison, the Stinche, had been demolished and the site purchased by Girolamo Pagliano, an enterprising entrepreneur, who, having failed as a singer and a banker, and having been for a time a fashionable tailor, made a fortune as the manufacturer of a popular emetic. On the site of the Stinche he constructed houses, shops and a riding ring, which, with money made from a syrup for sore throats and hoarseness, he later converted into the Teatro Pagliano.

  Like his father, the Grand Duke Leopold took a close interest in the draining of the marshlands of the Tuscan Maremma, on which some five thousand labourers were employed; and, as a token of his appreciation of the value of this reclamation of so extensive an area of waste land, he imported a stock of prize merino sheep from Saxony to graze there, thus giving a valuable impulse to the Tuscan wool industry.

  In Florence itself he encouraged the development of areas outside the city centre and the improvement of existing streets and buildings. Via Calzaiuoli was widened; the Lungarno Amerigo Vespucci was completed, and the Piazza del Duomo enlarged. Housing for over three hundred poor families was built in the area between San Marco and the Fortezza da Basso. Statues of numerous Tuscan notabilities, from Giotto and Dante to Michelangelo, Alberti, Cellini and Petrarch, were installed in the ground-floor arcades of the Uffizi.

  By the summer of 1830 – when he presided over a splendid fiesta in the Boboli Gardens, walking through the large assembly and talking amicably to his guests – the Grand Duke Leopold had become almost as popular as his father, though he did not create so favourable an impression upon foreign visitors to Florence. James Fenimore Cooper found him agreeable enough when he was granted an audience at the Pitti Palace. ‘He gave me a very civil reception,’ Fenimore Cooper recorded. ‘I paid my compliments and made an offering of a book which I had caused to be printed in Florence. This he accepted with great politeness… At length he rose and I took my leave of him… When we separated, he went quietly to his maps; and, as I turned at the door to make a parting salute, I found his eyes on the paper, as if he expected no such ceremony.’

  Other foreign visitors, however, were far from being so taken with him. Fenimore Cooper's fellow American, Sophie Hawthorne, later described him as looking ‘like a monkey, most ugly and mean [with] that frightful, coarse, protruding underlip, peculiar to the court of Austria’; while Thomas Adolphus Trollope considered his manner ‘about as bad and unprincely as can well be conceived. His clothes never fitted him and he always appeared to be struggling painfully with the consciousness that he had nothing to say. When strangers would venture some word of compliment on the prosperity and contentment of the Tuscans, his reply invariably was, “Sono tranquilli (they are quiet).”’ Besides, his guests at the Pitti Palace were allowed to ‘behave abominably’:

  The English would seize the plates of bonbons and empty the contents into their coat pockets. The ladies would do the same with their pocket handkerchiefs. But the Duke's liege subjects carried on their depredations on a far bolder scale. I have seen large portions of fish, sauce, and all, packed up in a newspaper and deposited in a pocket. I have seen fowls and ham share the same fate, without any newspaper at all. I have seen jelly carefully wrapped in an Italian countess's laced mouchoir!

  Tranquil as the Florentines may have seemed to the Grand Duke in the summer of 1830, they were not long to remain so; for, little more than a fortnight after that grand fiesta in the Boboli Gardens, there were demonstrations and uprisings in Paris, Brussels and Warsaw which were eventually to lead the way to his downfall. At first it seemed that he might weather the gathering storm. Although he appeared to listen more attentively to the pro-Austrian faction at court than to the moderate Count Fossombroni, when he was advised that it might be necessary to call for Austrian troops to suppress outbreaks of violence in the Grand Duchy, he decided against such a provocative step, following instead Fossombroni's advice and recreating the Guardia Urbana to defend the government and keep the peace. The Guardia was accordingly paraded in the Boboli Gardens on 17 April 1831, the Grand Duke himself taking the salute amidst a great display of public enthusiasm.

  Scarcely had the new force been formed, however, than the Grand Duke, under pressure from Austria and in the first of several sudden changes of policy, dissolved it, to the great satisfaction of the officers of Tuscany's small army, who considered their authority to be under threat, but to the chagrin of Fossombroni, who wrote from his home town of Arezzo to a friend in Florence expressing his wish to retire from his thankless office.

  There was a brief resurgence of the Grand Duke's popularity with the people of Florence the following year, when the Grand Duchess, who had given birth to three daughters, died after a painful illness; and Leopold, following a period of sincere mourning in which his subjects shared, married for the second time at the age of thirty-five. His eighteen-year-old bride was the Neapolitan Princess Maria Antonia, the short, plump, ill-educated sister of King Francis I. She spoke with a pronounced southern accent, and was later said to be bossy and rather mean; but for the moment the Florentines were captivated by her youthful prettiness and apparent good nature. The welcome given to her in the city was as enthusiastic as that given to her predecessor as Grand Duchess fifteen years before. The church bells rang, cannon were fired from the forts, regimental bands paraded through the splendidly decorated streets with drums beating and trumpets blaring as crowds of spectators cheered and clapped their hands.

  The Grand Duke used the occasion of his marriage to increase the goodwill which it had evoked. To the surprise of his bride – whose parsimonious brother would never have been so open-handed in Naples – he announced his intention of making a distribution of gifts among his subjects, of redeeming many pawned goods and returning them to their owners, and of distributing charity to the needy, as well as providing dowries for poor girls whose parents could not afford them. The birth of a daughter and then of an heir to the Grand Duchy, both events being celebrated with characteristic exuberance in Florence, added to the parents' popularity. So did the dismissal of the widely disliked Presidente del Buon Governo, the resolutely pro-Austrian minister responsible for the police and prisons.

  Yet disturbances and unrest elsewhere in Italy helped to persuade the Grand Duke that he could not afford to allow the liberals too much freedom to express their views; and soon after the dismissal of the Presidente del Buon Governo – which was noisily welcomed by hundreds of demonstrators shouting abuse outside his house – a number of prominent liberals or republicans were detained or imprisoned. Francesco Guerrazzi, the historical novelist, colleague of Mazzini and founder of the suppressed political journal, Indicatore livornese, was exiled to the island of Elba; Vincenzo Salvagnoli, a Florentine anticlerical lawyer living in Leghorn, was incarcerated in the fortress there; other outspoken critics of Austria were imprisoned in Florence itself. In protest at these arrests, Count Fossombroni at last retired from political life, as did his fellow liberal, Neri Corsini, the minister for foreign affairs, both of whom died soon afterwards.

  The situation was transformed in 1846 by the election as Pope of the kindly, polite, good-looking and, until then, little-known Cardinal Mastai Ferretti. A man of sensitivity and generosity, virtuous and simple with a charming self-deprecating humour, it seemed at first that Pius IX, as he chose to be known, would prove to be what Metternich, the Austrian state chancellor, condemned as a contradiction in terms, a reforming Pope. Immediately after his election he formed a council to watch over all branches of the administration and to investigate proposals for modernization and change. He promised to support scientific congresses, appointed a commission on railways and on the civil
and penal codes, and granted an amnesty for political offences. Metternich was horrified. ‘We

  Homage paid at the tomb of the Florentine hero, Francesco Ferrucci, during a street demonstration in 1847.

  were prepared for everything but a liberal Pope,’ he said, appalled at what was happening, ‘and now that we have one, who can tell what may happen?’ It was ‘the greatest misfortune of the age’. ‘A new era’ was approaching.

  Devoutly Catholic as he was, the Grand Duke could not fail to be influenced by the Pope's actions, nor to ignore his lead. He conceded a limited freedom of the press in Florence, where the newspaper L'Alba (‘Dawn’) soon appeared, edited by the Sicilian revolutionary, Giuseppe La Farina, later secretary of the influential nationalist movement, the Società Nazionale Italiana. The Grand Duke also reinstated the Guardia Civica, and appointed a well-known liberal, who had once been his tutor, as head of a new council of ministers.

  The next year, 1848, revolutions broke out all over Europe; and Tuscany did not escape the general agitation. There were insurrections in Pisa and Leghorn, followed by rumours of an imminent uprising in Florence; and the Grand Duke decided he must grant a constitution to Tuscany as the King of Naples had already done and as the Pope had promised to do in Rome and King Charles Albert in Turin. Leopold also placated the liberals by the appointment as Gonfaloniere in Florence of Baron Bettino Ricasoli, the proud, austere, patrician advocate of moderate reform, later to be the earnest promoter of the union of Tuscany with Piedmont.

  In March, news reached Florence of astonishing events in Milan: insurgents had driven the Austrian garrison out of the city and forced the withdrawal of the formidable Marshal Radetzky, who had brought in troops to restore order. Emboldened by this success, Charles Albert, the self-tormenting and indecisive King of Sardinia-Piedmont, at last made up his mind to set out with his army to try to drive the Austrians out of Italy once and for all. In Florence the response to what became known as the Five Days of Milan was immediate. Excited students, members of the Guardia Civica, soldiers of the Tuscan army and numerous civilian volunteers, including Carlo Lorenzini (Carlo Collodi, the future author of Le avventure di Pinocchio), all flocked to the colours to enrol themselves under the aged General D'Arco Ferrari. Over six thousand men were soon enlisted in two corps to fight alongside the Piedmontese army and were marched off to face the Austrians. Most of the volunteers enrolled in Tuscany fought bravely; but they were no match for the well-trained professional troops of Marshal Radetzky. Sustaining heavy casualties, they were overwhelmed at Curtatone, then at Montanara; while at Custoza, near Verona, the army of King Charles Albert was also defeated, as it was again, this time decisively, at Novara in March 1849.

  Baron Bettino Ricasoli (1809 – 80), appointed Gonfaloniere of Florence in 1848; he succeeded Cavour as premier in 1861.

  These disasters, and the consequent abdication of King Charles Albert in favour of his son, Victor Emmanuel, greatly heartened the pro-Austrian faction at court in Florence. At the same time the radicals, determined that the many lives lost in the cause of Italian unity should not have been given in vain, called for the dismissal of the Grand Duke's ineffective government and the appointment as his chief minister of Francesco Guerrazzi, the Mazzinian firebrand, who had been exiled to Elba. The Grand Duke countered by appointing a man whom he hoped would be an acceptable compromise candidate, the sensible and much-respected Florentine, Marchese Gino Capponi. Capponi, however, in failing health and all but blind, was not acceptable to the radicals; so, yielding to pressure, Leopold called upon Giuseppe Montanelli, a professor of law at Pisa University and a known activist in progressive politics, to head a new administration. Montanelli in turn asked the extremist, Guerrazzi, to collaborate with him in government; and, between them, these two radicals persuaded the Grand Duke to allow a number of deputies from the Tuscan assembly to attend a constituent assembly in Rome in accordance with a plan formulated by Mazzini and his followers.

  But by now the Pope, alarmed by the consequences of his early example, had become a very bulwark of conservatism. He threatened to excommunicate the members and supporters of any constituent assembly which might meet in Rome, so alarming the Grand Duke Leopold – who was already convinced that the political situation was slipping beyond his control – that he decided to send his family from Florence to Siena where, in early January 1849, he joined them. A few weeks later he left Siena in secret for the coast and then, disguised as a woman, sailed south for Gaeta in the Kingdom of Naples where the Pope had also sought a haven from the violence in Rome.

  In Florence a provisional government was established by the triumvirate of Guerrazzi, Montanelli and Giuseppe Mazzini; but, unable to offer the people any protection against the Austrians, this government soon collapsed and the Commune, fearing a complete breakdown of order, formally invited the Grand Duke Leopold to return to Florence. He did so at the end of July 1849, having first arranged to have the city occupied by an Austrian army of occupation, mostly Hungarians and Croatians, who took to stamping through the streets in high black boots and shakos, while their officers in tight white uniforms with bright yellow-tasselled waistbands lounged outside the Caffè Doney in Via Tornabuoni or in the Casino dei Nobili almost opposite.5

  These were miserable months for Florence, only recently recovered from one of the worst floods in her history, when the waters of the Arno, ‘extending in one turbid, yellow, swirling mass’, poured across a third of the city. ‘The streets, once thronged with gay groups intent on pleasure or hastening from gallery to gallery, are now filled with beggars,’ wrote a foreign resident of Florence in 1845. ‘Burglaries and street robberies take place in open day… Thrice within one week the diligence from Bologna was stopped and the passengers robbed of everything, and in one instance, for some imprudent expression of anger, severely beaten.’

  The Grand Duke, by turning his back on his moderate past and behaving as though perfectly content with Austrian occupation, had by now lost all the esteem he had ever possessed with the people. On the Emperor Franz Josef's birthday he reviewed a ceremonial parade of Austrian troops in the Cascine park; and, on the occasion of an imperial visit to Italy, he not only travelled to Milan to welcome the Emperor but also accepted the honorary command of a newly raised Austrian regiment known as the Grand Duke of Tuscany's Dragoons. He approved the appointment of an Austrian general to the supreme command of the Tuscan army, withdrew the constitution he had granted earlier, reimposed press censorship, and imprisoned several leading Tuscan patriots.

  Yet despite many setbacks and defeats, the general progress of the Risorgimento was inexorable; and in July 1858 it received a new and forceful impetus when Count Camillo Cavour, the great Piedmontese statesman who was to be largely responsible for uniting Italy under the House of Savoy, crossed the French frontier, wearing dark glasses and carrying a passport in the name of Giuseppe Benso, to meet the Emperor Napoleon III at Plombières. As the two men drove about in a phaeton in the hot sun they decided the fate of Italy.

  Some excuse for war should be found and then 200,000 French and 100,000 Piedmontese troops would invade Lombardy and drive the Austrians across the Alps. Italy would then become a federation of allied states under the apparent leadership of the Pope and the actual protection of France. The Kingdom of North Italy would include Piedmont, Lombardy, Venetia and the Papal States east of the Apennines; Central Italy would be formed out of Tuscany and Umbria; the Pope would retain Rome; and the Kingdom of Naples would be reformed or else handed over to Lucien Murat, the son of Napoleon I's sister Caroline. King Victor Emmanuel would be asked to give his daughter, Clothilde, in marriage to the French Emperor's cousin Prince Jérôme. Savoy and Nice would be ceded to France.

  The matter-of-fact, calculated simplicity of it all made it seem not merely practicable but almost ordained. There were serious difficulties in its execution, though, as Cavour well knew, not least the difficulty of persuading the fifteen-year-old Princess Clothilde to agree to marry Princ
e Jèrôme, the unattractive ‘Plon-Plon’, a fat and pompous satyr who was rumoured to horse-whip his mistresses and who was older than her father. She would surely not welcome the suggestion; and, indeed, when it was made to the poor girl she burst into tears.

  This marriage was an important part of the secret pact, for the French Emperor was not only concerned to link his family with the old and venerated royal House of Savoy, but he also envisaged a day when his cousin, with such a wife, might occupy the throne of the projected state of Central Italy with its capital in Florence. The reluctance of the princess to oblige him and her father made him inclined to suggest that without a marriage there would be no war, while Victor Emmanuel shrank from compelling his daughter to marry a man she found so repulsive. But, her father reminded her, she had not met him yet, and perhaps when she did she would not find him so impossible after all. At length, to Cavour's intense relief, the princess gave way. She told her father that she would agree to meet Prince Jérôme and that if she did not find him actually repellent she would marry him. The marriage took place at Turin Cathedral on 30 January 1859.

  A few weeks before the marriage, Napoleon III had said to the Austrian ambassador in the hearing of all the other ambassadors in Paris, ‘I regret that our relations are not so good as in the past.’ And ten days later Victor Emmanuel had opened parliament in Turin with a speech in which he referred to the ‘grido di dolore’ – a phrase suggested by the French Emperor himself – ‘the cry of pain’ that came to him ‘from so many parts of Italy’.