Vanished Kingdoms: The Rise and Fall of States and Nations (96 page)

The Grand Duchy of Tuscany, including Florence and Elba, was restored in 1815 to Ferdinando III of Habsburg-Lorraine, who returned to the Pitti Palace after an absence of fifteen years and found it in much better condition than when he had left it. He and his descendants reigned in Florence until 1859–60, when the French came back and the second Kingdom of Italy was formed (see
Chapter 8
). The former grand duchess of Tuscany, Elisa Buonaparte-Bacciochi, pregnant and still only thirty-eight, was arrested in March 1814 and spent some months in detention in Austria; she took up residence near Trieste, where she died prematurely from a contagious disease, predeceasing her imperial brother. Her husband, Félix Bacciochi, survived her by twenty-one years, but was buried alongside her in the Basilica of St Petronius in Bologna. Her daughter, Elisa Napoleone Bacciochi Levoy (1806–69), sometime princess of Piombino, became the duchess of Camerata by marriage, and her eldest brother, Giuseppe, sailed away to make a new life in the United States.
⁷⁰
Her ex-royal brother-in-law, Joachim Murat, who changed sides for a second time in 1815, ended up being executed by the post-war Neapolitan authorities. Fearless to the last, he put himself in command of the firing squad that killed him. ‘
Soldats, faites votre devoir
,’ he ordered; ‘Soldiers, do your duty. Aim straight at the heart, and spare the face. Fire!’
⁷¹

The
dramatis persona
of the story who recovered against the greatest odds was the ex-queen and ex-queen-regent of Etruria, Maria-Luisa. Resisting multiple misfortunes, she secured a future both for her children and for herself. The Congress of Vienna rewarded her with the Duchy of Lucca, where she replaced the deposed Bacciochi, and where a memorial now stands in the palace that was grandly restored under her guidance. She developed the port of Viareggio, and founded seventeen monasteries. Sadly, she lost the affection of her son, Charles-Louis/Carlo-Luigi (1799–1884), once the boy-king of Etruria and known after 1815 as the ‘prince of Lucca’, who claimed to have been ruined by her ‘physically, morally and financially’. Despite strenuous efforts, she failed to find a new spouse for herself, but arranged her son’s marriage to a princess of Savoy, and that of her daughter, Marie-Louise-Charlotte (1802–57), to a prince of Saxony. She died of cancer in Rome in 1824, and her body was taken to the Escorial for burial beside her late husband. She is not short of biographers.
⁷²
Twenty-three years later, her thankless son succeeded to the Duchy of Parma after Napoleon’s ex-empress, and lived to a ripe old age.

Of the people who had worked with her in Florence, Count Fossombroni resumed his earlier career as chief adviser to Grand Duke Ferdinando. Jean-Gabriel Eynard stayed on after 1807 to work for Grand Duchess Elisa. He then settled in Geneva, and became a pioneer of daguerreotype photography and one of Europe’s leading philhellenes; he was a co-founder of the Bank of Greece. General Clarke rose to be Napoleon’s minister for war; the Marquis de Beauharnais headed several Napoleonic embassies. General Menou died in service on leaving Florence. General Radet was made a baron of the Empire for his exploits in Italy, only to be court-martialled during the Restoration and to serve a four-year sentence of imprisonment.

After Napoleon’s death, the surviving Buonaparti felt much more comfortable in Italy than anywhere else. ‘Madame Mère’ went from Elba to Rome with her daughter, Paolina Borghese, whom she outlived, and died at an advanced age in 1836, never having learned a word of French.
⁷³
Her personality was described by an English art collector, who met her in 1817, when he called to examine her brother’s pictures:

The mother of Napoleon… resides with her brother, Cardinal Freschi, in the Palazzo Falcone. She was even said to have become a devotee… She affects none of the reserve of Lucien in certain matters, but speaks with tears in her eyes about the ex-emperor, displays the feeling of a mother in her language, and laments that he has not written since being on St Helena, fondly cherishing the hope that the English government would finally set him at liberty… Madame has evidently been a very fine woman; she still looks well with the aid of her toilette, and her manners are ever dignified. She appears a queen, and refutes those notions, so easily accredited in Britain, [about] the vulgar manners of the Bonaparte family.
⁷⁴

The same art collector also records seeing ‘Papa Chiaromonti’, Pius VII, General Radet’s former prisoner:

We have often met his Holiness taking his favourite walk near the Coliseum. His morning dress is a scarlet mantle, a scarlet hat with a very broad brim edged with gold, and scarlet stockings and shoes. When he is met by the Romans, they invariably fall on their knees, and he gives them his blessing. The British stand and take off their hats, and their bows are graciously returned… His Holiness’s carriage, which is a plain, crazy-looking machine drawn by six horses with riders in purple livery, always follows him.
⁷⁵

Paolina, in contrast to her mother, became extravagant in her later years, insisting, it was said, on being carried to her bath by African slaves.
⁷⁶
Luciano, prince of Canino, the ex-Jacobin, also chose Rome, devoted himself to Etruscan archaeology and died in Viterbo in 1840.
⁷⁷
His son, Charles-Lucien Bonaparte (1803–57) became a zoologist and ornithologist of international fame, and compiled the first major survey of Italy’s natural fauna.
⁷⁸

Camillo Borghese, the Roman prince, chose Florence over Rome. Long separated from Paolina, he spent seventeen peaceful years living by the Arno with his mistress and dabbling in Bonapartist plots. For a brief period, when Paolina was mortally sick, Pope Leo XII persuaded him to take in his dying wife. He never left Florence, and both he and Paolina were laid to rest in the Borghese Chapel at the Roman church of Santa Maria Maggiore. Carolina Buonaparte-Murat, the ex-queen of Naples, was the subject of scandalous rumours during the Congress of Vienna about her alleged dalliance with Prince Metternich. It is more certain that Talleyrand said of her, ‘she has Cromwell’s head on the shoulders of a pretty woman.’ (‘Cromwell’s head’ presumably meant ruthless brains.) She moved to Florence in 1830 with her second husband, Francis Macdonald, residing in the Palazzo di Annalena on the Via Romana. A cenotaph in her memory stands by the Murat family tomb in the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris.
⁷⁹
Giuseppe, the eldest brother and sometime king of Naples and of Spain, sailed back from the United States to settle in Florence too, and died there in 1844.
⁸⁰
Girolamo Bonaparte, the youngest brother and erstwhile king of Westphalia, lived in Florence with his third wife until 1853 before moving to Paris as a ‘prince imperial’ under the Second Empire.
⁸¹
Luigi, the ex-king of Holland, who was expelled from his much-loved kingdom by Napoleon and dispossessed by the Restoration, formally renounced French citizenship and spent the second half of his life abroad. But he, too, found his way to Tuscany and died in Livorno.
⁸²
Ironically, it was Luigi’s son, Charles Louis-Napoleon (1803–73), who finally inherited the Bonapartist mantle, climbed the political ladder and emerged as the Emperor Napoleon III.
⁸³
Except for his aunt Carolina, who had once sought brief asylum in Ajaccio when Murat was on the run,
⁸⁴
no single member of the Buonaparte clan ever returned to Corsica.

Nabuleone, Giuseppe and Girolamo were buried in the Parisian Invalides. They were joined in 1940 by the
Aiglon
, whose remains were sent to Paris from Austria with the compliments of Adolf Hitler. In some people’s eyes, as veterans of the French service, they rightly belong there. Yet they and their kin were all, in essence, outsiders – as the French might say unkindly,
des intrus
, or as their mother would have said,
intrusi
.

III

So who cares to remember the Kingdom of Etruria? Not the Italians, for whom it occurred during a period of national humiliation. It barely gets a mention in the Museo Napoleonico in Rome.
⁸⁵
Not the French either, for whom it was a far-away, dead-end episode; nor the Spaniards, for whom the Napoleonic era is both painful and embarrassing. And certainly not the Florentines, who have so many more uplifting things to remember. The answer, therefore, is ‘not many’. Historians who study Italy in the early nineteenth century do so to ‘the almost total exclusion of the direct and indirect impact of the French Revolution’.
⁸⁶
One interested party (one imagines) is the Bourbon family, which has survived intermittently on the throne of Spain and whose followers maintain a thriving genealogical industry.
⁸⁷
Apart from them, there is only the occasional Bonapartist pilgrim, and the faithful readers of nonconformist historians. Elba is for ever associated with Napoleon. Florence is not.

Yet a ‘Napoleonic Tour’ of Florence and Tuscany might prove a worthy addition to those already operating. Day 1 could start at the Piazza della Signoria, to see if anyone among the admirers of Michelangelo’s
David
has heard of the
Albero della Libertà
or of
Napoleon as Mars the Peacemaker
. An extended stop at the Pitti Palace, where Napoleon met the grand duke of Tuscany, could concentrate on the contrasting management styles of the queen-regent of Etruria and of Grand Duchess Elisa Bacciochi. A short trip out to the beautiful Certosa di Galluzzo, where two popes were held prisoner, would serve as a reminder of the ingrained coercion of Napoleonic regimes. In the evening, there is time to drive down the Val d’Arno to the ruined castle at Fuccechio and the church at San Miniato, whose hillside perches face each other across the valley. San Miniato del Tedesco, to give its full name, once an imperial residence on the pilgrim route to Rome, where Napoleon met the Abbé Filippo Buonaparte, is a good place to stay overnight. The Torrione Tower was the scene of the suicide of Pier della Vigna, secretary to Emperor Frederick II, as recounted in Dante’s
Inferno
;
⁸⁸
the Palazzo Buonaparte still stands in the town square and a copy of Napoleon’s death mask is on display nearby.
⁸⁹
The best time to visit is mid-November, when one can combine historical explorations with the
Mostra Mercato Nazionale del Tartufo Bianco
(‘National Commercial Fair of the White Truffle’).
⁹⁰
Truffle-based recipes can be sampled at the
Ristorante Accademia degli Affidati
on the Piazza Napoleone.
⁹¹

Day 2 starts with a gentle downhill trip to Lucca, where the palace is stocked not only with more memories of Elisa and Maria-Luisa but with many art treasures. In the afternoon, one sails across the strait on the ferry from Piombino to Portoferraio on Elba, admires the Villa San Martino and finishes with the steep climb above Marciana to a well-deserved rest at La Madonna del Monte. Sunset over the sea, as viewed from the
Sedia de Napoleone
, provides the finest of settings for thoughts on the fickleness of fortune both for individuals and for kingdoms.

On this issue, both Dante and Machiavelli have much to say. Machiavelli regards Fortune as the creator of opportunities, which some men exploit to their advantage and others neglect at their cost. The important thing is for a ruler to be flexible, adaptable and enterprising. ‘It is better to be bold than timid and cautious,’ he wrote, ‘because Fortune is a woman, and the man who wants to control her must treat her roughly.’
⁹²

Dante, like most of his educated contemporaries, was heir to the classical tradition where the Goddess Fortuna dispenses good luck and bad luck by turns. As a reader of Boethius, he was familiar with the image of Fortuna’s Wheel, whose four axes were marked with the words
regno
(‘I reign’),
regnavi
(‘I have reigned’),
sum sine regno
(‘I am without a kingdom’) and
regnabo
(‘I shall reign’). In the
Inferno
, he put his views into the mouth of his guide Virgil, whose exposition nevertheless assumes unexpected Christian overtones. Dante held that what unbelievers might call Chance is really the work of Divine Providence, whose dispensations govern the Wheel of Fortune no less than the motions of the universe. Lady Fortuna is praiseworthy, therefore, and men are foolish to ‘crucify her’ simply because the causes of her actions are not fully understood:

per ch’una gente impera e l’altra langue