Vanished Kingdoms: The Rise and Fall of States and Nations (94 page)

Napoleon’s growing problems in Spain were compounded by yet another showdown with the ruling Bourbons. Charles IV and Maria-Luisa, parents of the Etrurian queen-regent, had reigned since 1788. The king was rated ‘despotic, sluggish and stupid’, a former wrestler who spent his time hunting; the queen, ‘coarse, passionate and narrow-minded’, acted as their political manager. Together, they were the most reactionary couple still seated on a European throne. Through the 1790s, they had been unswerving opponents of the French Revolution, and during the negotiations at San Ildefonso they had fought hard to uphold Bourbon interests. In the following years, however, they sought an accommodation with France. Their one-time chief minister, Godoy, duke of Alcudia, who contrived to be both the king’s favourite and the queen’s lover, was restored to power by the first consul, and set out to satisfy French demands.
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Spain undertook to pay France a monthly tribute of 6 million francs and to prevent Portugal from breaking the continental blockade. Neither obligation was fulfilled. Godoy was deeply unpopular, and the heir apparent, Ferdinand, led an abortive plot against him.

In 1806–7 the crisis in Iberia slipped out of control, until in November 1807 Marshal Junot was ordered to march through Spain with a French army and to punish the Portuguese. He only succeeded in provoking a general Spanish collapse amid what became the Peninsular War. In March 1808 the Spanish king abdicated and took refuge in France at Bayonne. Napoleon toyed for a while with his son, Ferdinand (in royalist eyes Ferdinand VII), before luring him to join his father in France. There he was arrested, and, like the rest of the Spanish royals, pensioned off. Ex-King Charles and ex-Queen Maria-Luisa were packed off to Rome, while ex-King Ferdinand was imprisoned for six years at
Talleyrand’s castle of Valençay. Napoleon coolly sent his brother Giuseppe to Madrid to take the prisoners’ throne, and Murat replaced Giuseppe on the throne in Naples.

These degrading events can only have been followed in the Pitti Palace with dismay. The queen-regent of Etruria was the daughter of the abdicated Charles IV, the sister of the imprisoned Ferdinand VII, and grand-niece of the deposed king of Naples. By the autumn of 1807, increasingly isolated, she was the last of the Bourbons in power. The marquis de Beauharnais was posted to Spain and replaced by a less congenial ambassador to Etruria, Count Hector d’Aubusson de la Feuillade, the Empress Joséphine’s chamberlain; the queen-regent suspected the newcomer of intriguing with the Princess-Duchess Elisa. Long before the final scene, she must have trembled at the way the drama was unfolding.

In Paris, too, doubts must have been raised about the Kingdom of Etruria’s future. Though more docile than the Kingdom of Naples, it had failed to become a bastion of French influence and had turned instead into the last Bourbon outpost. Florence was again serving as a haven for anti-French refugees, and Etruria’s ports were acting as ready loopholes for British goods. Although one British historian states confidently that the queen-regent of Etruria ‘was abruptly removed for failing to enforce the Continental blockade’,
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the explanation is insufficient; very little time had elapsed to assess whether the ‘Continental System’ was working or not. It seems more likely that Napoleon had made up his mind during his dealings with the Bourbons in Bayonne, and was simply waiting for a convenient moment to act.

The causes of Etruria’s demise, therefore, must be sought in a wider context; the breaching of the ban on British trade was important, but so too were the perception of Etruria’s deepening disaffection and Napoleon’s escalating dispute with the papacy. Pius VII and his chief minister, Consalvi, had tried repeatedly to find a modus vivendi with France. But in 1806 he had declined to grant a divorce to the emperor’s youngest brother, Girolamo, who had rashly married an American woman called Betsy Patterson; and in 1807, reacting to Napoleon’s insistence on the removal of Consalvi, he refused to give public support to the Continental System. The Papal States and their neighbour, Etruria, together looked set to become a theatre for anti-French activities in Italy, and the emperor baulked. As part of the settlement with the Spanish Bourbons, a legal but little publicized decree signed by the emperor late in 1807 at Fontainebleau announced the abolition of the Kingdom of Etruria. The following February a column of troops was despatched to reoccupy Rome. The pope protested. The emperor joined the four remaining Papal States to his Kingdom of Italy. The pope thereon excommunicated the emperor, and the emperor gave orders for the arrest and deportation of the pope.
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The queen-regent of Etruria would later claim that she had been taken by total surprise:

On the 23rd November 1807, while I was at one of my country residences [at Castello], the French Minister, D’Aubusson la Feuillade, came to inform me that Spain had ceded my kingdom to France;… and that the French troops ordered to take charge of my dominions had arrived. I immediately despatched a courier to the King [of Spain], my father, to ask for an explanation… The answer which I received… was that I must hasten my departure, as the country no longer belonged to me, and that I must find consolation in the bosom of my family… At the moment of our departure the French published a proclamation in which they released our subjects from their oath of fidelity… In this manner, at the worst season of the year, I took leave of a country where my heart has remained ever since.
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In contemplating the dissolution of Etruria, French bureaucrats would certainly have weighed the advantages and disadvantages of two solutions. On the one hand they would have pondered the replacement of the Bourbon-Parmas by an alternative client ruler. On the other, they would have discussed the benefits of annexing the kingdom to the French Empire. In the event, they decided to do both. The kingdom’s territory was divided into three, and added to the Empire as the
départements
of the Arno, Mediterranée and Ombrone. Shortly afterwards, the Princess-Duchess Elisa was given the additional resuscitated title of grand duchess of Tuscany. Maria-Luisa di Borbone, ex-queen-regent of Etruria, vacated the Pitti Palace with her children on 10 December 1807. As she left, the kingdom expired, after an existence of less than seven years.

For the next eighteen months the territorial and administrative reorganization of the former kingdom was accompanied by widespread civil disobedience and in the countryside by the rise of banditry. Pending the arrival of their new grand duchess, who had fallen seriously ill, the three new imperial
départements
were subordinated to a military general-government, which also oversaw the island of Elba. Civil prefects were appointed: Jean-Antoine, baron Fauchet for the Arno at Florence, Ange Gandolfo for the Ombrone at Siena, and Guillaume Capelle for La Mediterranée at Livorno; each of the
départements
was divided into sub-prefectures on the French model (Elba was transferred from Lucca to La Mediterranée in 1811 as the Arrondissement of Portoferraio). All these territories were put under the supreme command of a
Giunta
or ‘Joint Command’ headed by the governor-general, Jacques-François de Menou (1750–1810).

Menou was one of most colourful characters of revolutionary France; he has also been characterized as ‘probably the hardest man in Napoleonic Europe’.
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As the baron de Boussay, he had been a noble deputy to the Estates-General of 1789. Later, he made his name as the Republic’s enforcer in the horrific war of the Vendée, and rose to be general in chief of the Army of the Interior. Surviving a treason trial, he accompanied Napoleon to Egypt, where he converted to Islam and, after the assassination of General Kléber, accepted the overall command of the expeditionary force. In line with his newfound faith, he changed his first name to Abdullah, and named his infant son Suleyman after Kléber’s assassin. Forced to capitulate by the defeat at Aboukir, Menou returned to France, served on the
Tribunat
and then moved to Turin as administrator-general of militarized Piedmont. There, for his private devotions, he built himself a golden-domed mosque beside the Chapel Royal.

‘When Menou went to Florence, he left his wife behind, took up with the lead dancer at the Milan opera, staged stunning equestrian shows for the public, and threw lavish parties in the beautiful Pitti Palace.’
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Yet the emperor had sent Menou to Tuscany to restore discipline and to combat the anticipated reaction to the introduction of universal male conscription – one of the necessary consequences of being incorporated into the Empire. In 1808 he oversaw the formation of several new Tuscan regiments, among them the 29th Division of
Veliti
, the famous ‘Vélites de Florence’, a quick-marching infantry unit that distinguished itself all over Europe. The Tuscans, however, had repeatedly shown their displeasure at heavy French taxation, requisitioning and military recruitment, and conscription meant a further tightening of the screw. Men placed on the military register were likely to abscond, to take to the woods and to live from brigandage; if forced into uniform, they were likely to desert and to take their arms with them. As a veteran of some of the toughest fighting of the last twenty years, Menou believed their insubordination could only be countered by terrorizing the population that gave the bandits and deserters sustenance. His chosen technique was to organize ‘flying columns’ that took recalcitrant villages by surprise, destroyed farmsteads, seized hostages and meted out summary executions. The hallmark tool of his trade was the mobile guillotine.
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His name is listed on the Arc de Triomphe.

Menou’s right-hand man in Tuscany was General Étienne Radet (1762–1825), a comrade-in-arms since the pacification of the Vendée. Radet was by now inspector-general of the Gendarmerie, his task to expand the service into the Empire’s new
départements
; he supervised the creation of the 29
^e
Légion de Gendarmerie de Florence, who were both trained soldiers and an arm of the judicial police. The 29
^e
Légion sought to be ubiquitous, being formed into units of six, which occupied posts for surveillance and control in every suburb, every valley and every district. They lived in the heart of bandit country, directly confronting the brigands, smugglers and deserters. They were largely made up of French veterans, since the proposal to mix Frenchmen with locals proved impractical. Two successive conscriptions in 1808 and 1809 kept them very busy.

In the summer of 1809, Radet received the most important order of his life: on the emperor’s direct authority, he was told to take 1,000 men to Rome and to kidnap the pope. On the night of 5 July they scaled the walls of the Quirinal Palace, where Radet raced round the darkened corridors until he burst into the pontiff’s private rooms. ‘
Saint-Père
,’ he began, ‘Holy Father, I come in the name of my sovereign, the emperor of the French, to tell you that you must renounce the temporal domains of the Church.’ ‘
Je ne le puis
,’ Pius VI is said to have replied, ‘
je ne le dois pas, je ne le veux pas
’ (‘I can’t do it, I oughtn’t to do it and I don’t want to do it’). So the raiding party bundled their prisoner into a carriage; Radet locked the door, and climbed on top beside the coachman. Before dawn, they were racing along the northern road out of Rome.

Despite the political tensions and the social unrest, Princess-Duchess-Grand Duchess Elisa Bacciochi thrived. Separated from her husband, she applied herself to the administration and adornment of her extended realms, showing signs of her brother’s flare and energy. Her pet project was the complete refurbishment of the Pitti Palace and Boboli Gardens, which she raised to the condition which has distinguished them ever since, and where she prepared a lavish apartment for Napoleon’s use on the return visit which he promised to make. She also placed herself at the heart of Florentine artistic life. A painting commissioned from Pietro Benvenuti, now at Versailles, may be regarded as her manifesto: entitled
Elisa Bonaparte entourée d’artistes à Florence
, it shows Elisa wearing a tiara and a dazzling white Empire dress looking down from an elevated throne onto an adoring company of equally resplendent courtiers, soldiers, painters, sculptors and craftsmen. In the foreground, wearing a cocked hat, Antonio Canova is presenting the grand duchess with his latest marble bust,
Elisa en Polymnie
.
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Late in July 1809, soon after the grand duchess was installed, the Florentines hardly noticed an incident that was hidden from public view. After a prolonged and nightmare journey from Rome, during which the captive pontiff suffered acute gastric attacks and General Radet was injured when their carriage overturned, Pius VII was brought in the night to the Certosa di Galluzzo, the self-same monastic house at which his late predecessor had resided ten years before. One of his attendants later published an account of their experiences: