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’,48 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.49
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.50
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’.51 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.’52 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 guillo
tine.53 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 29e Légion de Gendarmerie de Florence, who were both trained soldiers and an arm of the judicial police. The 29e 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.54
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:
Our approach to this holy spot was known before hand by that worthy sister of Buonaparte, the soi-disante Grand-Duchess of Tuscany, who had the insidious and malignant courtesy to send a message to the Holy Father… to ask whether there was anything he wanted… To so unexpected and artful a message, the Pope only answered with his customary heroism: ‘I do not know this lady of whom you speak, and I have no need of her services for anything.’55
In the morning, since the grand duchess had no intention of taking him in, the captive’s involuntary journey restarted. He was taken over the Alps to Briançon and thence, after a change of orders, to indefinite house arrest at Savona on the Riviera.
Meanwhile, the fortunes of the ex-queen-regent were equally sliding from bad to worse. After her expulsion from Florence, she had travelled to Milan for a meeting with Napoleon. He promised her compensation in the dual form of the Principality of Northern Lusitania in Portugal (which he did not control) and marriage to his brother Luciano (who was already married). Unsurprisingly, she rejected both propositions. From Milan, she travelled to her family home at Aranjuez in Spain, which she reached in the wake of her father’s abdication. She eventually caught up with her parents and brother on their way into exile: ‘I knew nothing of what had been going on, and almost the first words which my father addressed to me on my arrival were: “You must know, my daughter, that our family has for ever ceased to reign.” I thought I should have died at the intelligence… I took leave of my parents and retired to my chamber more dead than alive.’56
Yet her ordeal deepened. She plotted to escape with her children to England, but was trapped by the French police, summarily tried, deported to Rome and incarcerated:
I remained two years and a half in this monastery, and a whole year without seeing a soul, without speaking to a creature, and without being allowed to write or to receive news, even of my son… Exactly a month after my entry into the convent, M. Janet, intendant of the treasury, paid me a visit and took from me the jewels I had brought with me… Once a month only, General Miollis brought my parents and son to see me, but I was not allowed to kiss the dear child more than once.57
*
As the ex-queen-regent languished in detention, the French masters of her son’s former kingdom were losing the will to stamp their mark on a reluctant population. General Menou left in 1809; General Radet did not return; and the drive to build imperial institutions and to enforce the imperial law gradually lost momentum. ‘Quiet reigned in Tuscany,’ writes one historian of the years 1809–13, ‘but it was the quiet of exhaustion and fear.’58 Despair set in when many of the recruits and conscripts failed to come home. Food prices soared, bread riots erupted and hunger stalked the countryside. The news from Russia in 1812 was bad, and from the Battle of the Nations at Leipzig in 1813 catastrophic. The Empire was crumbling; its servants lost heart, and the bandits grew bold. Faced by a powerful brigand called Bonaccio, the increasingly impotent prefect of the Arno proposed that he and his band of deserters be offered an amnesty if only they would volunteer to be transported to Spain. In Florence, the prefect only had one depleted Croat regiment at his disposal. Yet his superiors in Paris overruled him. ‘All wrongdoers must be captured,’ they wrote indignantly, ‘or driven beyond the borders of the empire.’59 By that time, no one in Florence knew where the borders were.
The final act of Tuscany’s anni francesi, the sad ‘French Years’, was delivered in the spring of 1814 by a man who had once been present at their launch. Marshal Murat, as he now was, the ‘king of Naples’, had abandoned Napoleon after Leipzig and changed sides; the Austrians put him in charge of a mixed army of imperial regulars and captured Italians. At their head, he traversed half of Italy, heading for Rome and Naples, and liberating towns and cities from his French compatriots. As his men entered Florence on 23 February, Princess-Grand Duchess Elisa fled, the administration dissolved, the residue of the garrison surrendered and negotiations started almost immediately for the restoration of Grand Duke Ferdinando.
Ex-Queen-Regent Maria-Luisa was already free, liberated on 14 January 1814 when Neapolitan troops drove the French from Rome. Reunited with her royal parents, she took up residence in the Quirinale Palace, where she was among the dignitaries who welcomed Pope Pius VII in May following his release. During the weeks of waiting, she was writing her memoir in the hope that it would help her to reach England. It ends with a defiant declaration:
Such is the calamitous history briefly told, which I could spin out into volumes… I have been the unhappy victim of the blackest treachery, the football of a tyrant who made sport of our lives and properties… I trust that England, the asylum of unfortunate princes, will not refuse to take under her protection an unhappy widow and mother, with two children… all three without any support; although we have undisputable rights as sovereigns to the states of Parma, Piacenza and
Guastalla as well as Etruria…60
*
At that very time, Napoleon was himself being forced to abdicate. For many months since Leipzig, he had conducted a fighting retreat from Germany. But every victory was pyrrhic; every week his armies dwindled, and every day his supporters grew wearier. Despite dazzling manoeuvres in north-eastern France, he proved incapable of defending Paris. Finally, he bowed to the demand of his generals, and on 11 April 1814 signed an act of unconditional abdication. Though he never revisited Florence as he had promised, he did return to the former Kingdom of Etruria, and in the most unforeseen of circumstances. In return for his agreeing to abdicate, the tsar of Russia insisted that he be given the island of Elba as his private, sovereign domain, and he landed there on 4 May, disembarking from the appropriately named British warship the Undaunted. He was allowed to keep 500 officers in his retinue, and 1,100 soldiers for his guard; his house at Portoferraio was dubbed the imperial palace. Prior to his arrival, the populace were said to have burned him in effigy, protesting at the heavy taxes and military conscription still in force; but when they saw him in person, they took him to their hearts, hoping that he could better their lot. They led him in procession to the harbour church, sang a Te Deum and presented their petitions.
During the 297 days that Napoleon spent on Elba, he conducted himself with exemplary energy and initiative, setting a shining example for all sovereigns of small states and accomplishing considerably more in those ten months than the Bourbon-Parmas had done in Etruria in six years. He was following in the footsteps of the island’s Renaissance ruler, Cosimo I de’ Medici, who had founded the town of Cosmopolis (now Portoferraio) in 1548. He designed a flag, issued a constitution, built roads, repaired the harbour, organized plantations and irrigation schemes, reviewed his troops, opened a hospital, reorganized the iron mines and the granite quarry, introduced running water and drainage, and grandly restored three of the island’s villas. He was helped, of course, by a generous Allied pension. Despite the close attentions of his mother, ‘Madame Mère’, he even managed to smuggle in his favourite mistress, Maria Walewska, for a two-day tryst. (His wife, daughter of the Austrian emperor, and his son were in Vienna.) Much of the time, though, was passed in playing the game of spies and counter-spies, in duping his British guards wherever possible, and in seeking information about the growing crisis in France. His entourage of generals, Bertrand, Drouot and Cambronne, was probably more anxious than he.61
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