of Spain who, after the death of her consort, reigned at Florence
on behalf of her young son, Charles Louis, from her kingdom of
Central Italy.
Etruria to the little principality of Entre Douro e
Minho which he proposed to carve out from the north
of Portugal. Etruria reverted to the French empire,
but the Spanish princess and her son did not receive the promised
indemnity. Elisa Bonaparte and her husband, Bacciocchi,
rulers of Lucca and Piombino, became the heads of the administration
in Tuscany, Elisa showing decided governing capacity.
The last part of the peninsula to undergo the Gallicizing influence was the papal dominion. For some time past the relations between Napoleon and the pope, Pius VII., had been severely strained, chiefly because the emperor insisted on controlling the church, both in France and in the Napoleon and the Papacy. kingdom of Italy, in a way inconsistent with the traditions of the Vatican, but also because the pontiff refused to grant the divorce between Jerome Bonaparte and the former Miss Patterson on which Napoleon early in the year 1806 laid so much stress. These and other disputes led the emperor, as successor of Charlemagne, to treat the pope in a very highhanded way. “Your Holiness (he wrote) is sovereign of Rome, but I am its emperor”; and he threatened to annul the presumed “donation” of Rome by Charlemagne, unless the pope yielded implicit obedience to him in all temporal affairs. He further exploited the Charlemagne tradition for the benefit of the continental system, that great engine of commercial war by which he hoped to assure the ruin of England. This aim prompted the annexation of Tuscany, and his intervention in the affairs of the Papal States. To this the pope assented under pressure from Napoleon; but the latter soon found other pretexts for intervention, and in February 1808 a French column under Miollis occupied Rome, and deposed the papal authorities. Against this violence Pius VII. protested in vain. Napoleon sought to push matters to an extreme, and on the 2nd of April Annexation of the Papal States. he adopted the rigorous measure of annexing to the kingdom of Italy the papal provinces of Ancona, Urbino, Macerata and Camerina. This measure, which seemed to the pious an act of sacrilege, and to Italian patriots an outrage on the only independent sovereign of the peninsula, sufficed for the present. The outbreak of war in Spain, followed by the rupture with Austria in the spring of 1809, distracted the attention of the emperor. But after the occupation of Vienna the conqueror dated from that capital on the 17th of May 1809 a decree virtually annexing Rome and the Patrimonium Petri to the French empire. Here again he cited the action of Charlemagne, his “august predecessor,” who had merely given “certain domains to the bishops of Rome as fiefs, though Rome did not thereby cease to be part of his empire.”
In reply the pope prepared a bull of excommunication against those who should infringe the prerogatives of the Holy See in this matter. Thereupon the French general, Miollis, who still occupied Rome, caused the pope to be arrested and carried him away northwards into Tuscany, thence to Savona; finally he was taken, at Napoleon’s orders, to Fontainebleau. Thus, a second time, fell the temporal power of the papacy. By an imperial decree of the 17th of February 1810, Rome and the neighbouring districts, including Spoleto, became part of the French empire. Rome thenceforth figured as its second city, and entered upon a new life under the administration of French officials. The Roman territory was divided into two departments—the Tiber and Trasimenus; the Code Napoléon was introduced, public works were set on foot and great advance was made in the material sphere. Nevertheless the harshness with which the emperor treated the Roman clergy and suppressed the monasteries caused deep resentment to the orthodox.
There is no need to detail the fortunes of the Napoleonic states in Italy. One and all they underwent the influences emanating from Paris; and in respect to civil administration, law, judicial procedure, education and public works, they all experienced great benefits, the results of which Character of Napoleon’s rule. never wholly disappeared. On the other hand, they suffered from the rigorous measures of the continental system, which seriously crippled trade at the ports and were not compensated by the increased facilities for trade with France which Napoleon opened up. The drain of men to supply his armies in Germany, Spain and Russia was also a serious loss. A powerful Italian corps marched under Eugène Beauharnais to Moscow, and distinguished itself at Malo-Jaroslavitz, as also during the horrors of the retreat in the closing weeks of 1812. It is said that out of 27,000 Italians who entered Russia with Eugène, only 333 saw their country again. That campaign marked the beginning of the end for the Napoleonic domination in Italy as elsewhere. Collapse of Napoleon’s rule. Murat, left in command of the Grand Army at Vilna, abandoned his charge and in the next year made overtures to the allies who coalesced against Napoleon. For his vacillations at this time and his final fate, see Murat. Here it must suffice to say that the uncertainty caused by his policy in 1813–1814 had no small share in embarrassing Napoleon and in precipitating the downfall of his power in Italy. Eugène Beauharnais, viceroy of the kingdom of Italy, showed both constancy and courage; but after the battle of Leipzig (October 16–19, 1813) his power crumbled away under the assaults of the now victorious Austrians. By an arrangement with Bavaria, they were able to march through Tirol and down the valley of the Adige in force, and overpowered the troops of Eugène whose position was fatally compromised by the defection of Murat and the dissensions among the Italians. Very many of them, distrusting both of these kings, sought to act independently in favour of an Italian republic. Lord William Bentinck with an Anglo-Sicilian force landed at Leghorn on the 8th of March 1814, and issued a proclamation to the Italians bidding them rise against Napoleon in the interests of their own freedom. A little later he gained possession of Genoa. Amidst these schisms the defence of Italy collapsed. On the 16th of April 1814 Eugène, on hearing of Napoleon’s overthrow at Paris, signed an armistice at Mantua by which he was enabled to send away the French troops beyond the Alps and entrust himself to the consideration of the allies. The Austrians, under General Bellegarde, entered Milan without resistance; and this event precluded the restoration of the old political order.
The arrangements made by the allies in accordance with the treaty of Paris (June 12, 1814) and the Final Act of the congress of Vienna (June 9, 1815), imposed on Italy boundaries which, roughly speaking, corresponded to those of the pre-Napoleonic era. To the kingdom of Sardinia, now reconstituted under Victor Emmanuel I., France ceded its old provinces, Savoy and Nice; and the allies, especially Great Britain and Austria, insisted on the addition to that monarchy of the territories of the former republic of Genoa, in respect of which the king took the title of duke of Genoa, in order to strengthen it for the duty of acting as a buffer state between France and the smaller states of central Italy. Austria recovered the Milanese, and all the possessions of the old Venetian Republic on the mainland, including Istria and Dalmatia. The Ionian Islands, formerly belonging to Venice, were, by a treaty signed at Paris on the 5th of November 1815, placed under the protection of Great Britain. By an instrument signed on the 24th of April 1815, the Austrian territories in north Italy were erected into the kingdom of Lombardo-Venetia, which, though an integral part of the Austrian empire, was to enjoy a separate administration, the symbol of its separate individuality being the coronation of the emperors with the ancient iron crown of Lombardy (“Proclamation de l’empereur d’Autriche, &c.,” April 7, 1815, State Papers, ii. 906). Francis IV., son of the archduke Ferdinand of Austria and Maria Beatrice, daughter of Ercole Rinaldo, the last of the Estensi, was reinstated as duke of Modena. Parma and Piacenza were assigned to Marie Louise, daughter of the Austrian emperor and wife of Napoleon, on behalf of her son, the little Napoleon, but by subsequent arrangements (1816–1817) the duchy was to revert at her death to the Bourbons of Parma, then reigning at Lucca. Tuscany was restored to the grand-duke Ferdinand III. of Habsburg-Lorraine. The duchy of Lucca was given to Marie Louise of Bourbon-Parma, who, at the death of Marie Louise of Austria, would
