Duke of Parma

“ Her blonde beauty is of the most ethereal kind, and her dainty person is distinguished by so much aristocratic elegance that no one to look at her would ever dream that her father had begun his career as a mere stable-boy, who, in the service of the last reigning Duke of Parma, was promoted from one post to another until he blossomed forth as a general, a baron, and as Prime Minister of the Duchy of Parma, besides being decorated with the grand crosses of most of the orders of chivalry of Europe. ”

“ Parma was thus governed for several years by Moreau de Saint-Mery and by Junot. At the congress of Vienna, Parma, Piacenza and Guastalla were assigned to Marie Louise (daughter of Francis I. of Austria and Napoleon’s second consort) , and on her death they passed in 1847 to Charles II. (son of Louis of Etruria and Marie Louise, daughter of Charles IV., king of Spain) . The new duke, unwilling to yield to the wishes of his people for greater political liberty, was soon compelled to take flight, and the duchy was for a time ruled by a provisional government and by Charles Albert of Sardinia ”

“ The old duke, a bigoted prince, inimical to all reform, had married his son (a feeble, frivolous young man) to the daughter of his brother, the King of Spain. The kingdom of Etruria was intended for this youthful pair. Napoleon, as yet but thirty years of age, thus found himself forming kingdoms and creating kings. The young couple were in haste to ascend the throne. They could not, however, do this until the Duke of Parma should die or abdicate. The unaccommodating old duke refused to do either. Napoleon, desirous of producing a moral impression in Paris, was anxious to crown them. ”

“ She had set her heart upon converting the Duke of Parma to Protestantism, and he often condescended to controversy with her. One day she thought she had really succeeded, but driving into Lucca town next day, to her horror she met him walking bare-headed in a procession with a lighted candle in his hand. Then and there she stopped her carriage and began to upbraid him. When he returned to the Bagni, he went to see her and to reprove her. "There cannot," he said, "be two sovereigns at Lucca; either I must be Duke or you must be Queen," and ever after she was called the Queen of the Bagni. ”

“ Yesterday we had the funeral oration on the Dauphin; and are soon to have one on Stanislaus. It is a noble subject; but if I had leisure, I would compose a grand funeral oration on the number of princes dead within these six months. What fine pictures, contrasts, and comparisons they would furnish! The Duke of Parma and the King of Denmark reigning virtuously with absolute power! The Emperor at the head of Europe, and encompassed with mimic Roman eagles, tied to the apron-strings, of a bigoted and jealous virago. ”

“ The Duchess, too, travels always, but in a different direction, and the people complain loudly of the desertion. For many years they have now been both absent and parted. The Duke is a member of the royal family of Spain, and at the death of Maria Louisa of 268 Parma, he becomes Duke of Parma, and the duchy goes to Tuscany.
From Lucca we crossed the Appenines, by a road seldom travelled, performing the hundred miles to Modena in three days. We suffered, as all must who leave the high roads in continental countries, more privations than the novelty was worth. ”

“ When once there he found himself overshadowed by William, who had been accepted as leader by Roman Catholics and Protestants alike. But Philip with great exertions had got together an army of twenty thousand veteran Spanish and Italian troops, and sent them to the Netherlands under the command of Alexander Farnese, the son of the former Regent, Margaret Duchess of Parma. The young Duke of Parma was a man of consummate abilities, military and diplomatic, and was by far the ablest agent Philip ever had in the Low Countries. ”

“ Hunt down those who do wrong, but not masses who are innocent. Can you punish Paris and France for the crimes of the sans-culottes? The Bourbons are, it is said, the enemies of freedom; they have been led to the scaffold under the action of a right which I do not acknowledge. The Duke of Parma is weak, and a poltroon,—he will not stir. His people seem to love him, for we are here, and they rise not, they utter no complaint. ”

“ Upon leaving the kingdom of Sardinia Napoleon first entered the states of Parma. The Duke of Parma, who had united with his more powerful neighbors, in the alliance against France, reigned over a population of but about five hundred thousand, and could furnish to the allies but three thousand troops. He was of course powerless, and sent envoys to solicit the clemency of the conqueror. Napoleon granted him an armistice upon his paying five hundred thousand dollars in silver, sixteen hundred artillery horses, and a large supply of corn and provisions. ”

“ Since the death of the Duke of Parma [on the 2d of December, 1592, in the Abbey of St. Waast at Arras, from the consequences of a wound received in the preceding April at the siege of Caudebec] , it seems that deeds of arms have given place to intrigues and contests of words. I fancy that such gentry will never leave me at rest, and will at last, perhaps, attempt my liberty and my life. ”

“ He cursed the Duke of Parma who persisted in retaining his services, although there was no mint in existence in the duchy, and his talents were consequently wasted there.
I listened to all his complaints, and agreed that Louis XV. had been ungrateful in not conferring the Order of St. Michael on him; that Venice had rewarded his services very shabbily; that Spain was stingy, and Naples devoid of honesty, etc., etc. When he had finished, I asked him if he could give me a bill on a banker for fifty sequins. ”

“ Pier Luigi Farnese, Paul III’s bastard, was successively created Gonfaloniere of the Church, Duke of Castro, Marquis of Novara, and finally Duke of Parma and Piacenza in 1545. He was murdered at Parma by his own courtiers in 1547. He was a man of infamous habits, quite unfit for the high dignities conferred on him. ”

“ They proposed to take the three legations just wrung from the Pope, and joining them with the Duchy of Parma, make a principality for the son of the Duke of Parma, who had married a daughter of Don Carlos IV. Although this offer would have given his daughter a splendid position, Charles refused it, because he was too honest a churchman to share in the spoils of the Church. ”

“ In 1586 Alexander Farnese became duke of Parma by the death of his father. He applied for leave to visit his paternal territory, but Philip would not permit him. He could not replace him in the Netherlands; but while retaining him in his command at the head of a formidable army, the king would not give his sanction to his great general’s desire to use it for the reconquest 185 of the Northern Provinces. Never was there a better opportunity than the end of 1586 for an invading army to march through the country almost without opposition. ”

“ Charles of Austria, now emperor, took Milan, Mantua, Naples and Sardinia for his portion of the Italian spoil. Philip founded the Bourbon line of Spanish kings, renouncing in Italy all that his Habsburg predecessors had gained. Discontented with this diminution 43 of the Spanish heritage, Philip V. married Elisabetta Farnese, heiress to the last duke of Parma, in 1714. He hoped to secure this duchy for his son, Don Carlos; and Elisabetta further brought with her a claim to the grand-duchy of Tuscany, which would soon become vacant by the death of Gian Gastone de’ Medici. ”

“ Her affinity to the crown occasioned her many troubles, and was the cause of her almost perpetual confinement. It appears, that she was under a kind of durance in the latter end of Queen Elizabeth's reign. But be this as it may, it is certain that many were forming accusations against her, of which she greatly complained in her letters to her friends.
About this time the pope had a design to raise Arabella to the throne of England, by marrying her to cardinal Farnese, brother to the duke of Parma. ”

“ No sooner did he retire than the king took the field again, recaptured Lagny and Corbeil, and recommenced the siege of Paris, while his cavalry hung upon the rear and flanks of Parma's army and harassed them continually, until they crossed the frontier, where the duke found that affairs had not improved during his absence. ”

“ He would never have forgiven the slightest blame from any one. He wanted to pass for the first captain of his age, and spoke with indecent contempt of Prince Eugene and all the others. The faintest contradiction would have been a crime. The soldier and the subaltern adored him for his familiarity with them, and the licence he allowed in order to gain their hearts; for all which he made up by excessive haughtiness towards whoever was elevated by rank or birth.
On one occasion the Duke of Parma sent the bishop of that place to negotiate some affair with him ”

“ Oxford and Cambridge Club.
Allow me to correct the statement made by your correspondent, that the Duke of Parma represented the Royal House of Stuart. The mother of the late Duke of Parma had an elder sister, Maria Beatrice, who married Francis IV., late Duke of Modena, and upon her death, in 1840, the representation devolved upon her son, Francis V., the present Duke of Modena, who was born in 1819.
P. V.
Allow me to remark on the article of E. S. S. W. (Vol. ix., p. 417.) ”

“ The people of Parma are said to be trembling lest they should fall under the government of the wretched Duke of Lucca, and are thought to be on the point of revolt. [119] The Grand Duke of Tuscany, disturbed by the liberal movement, is harassing the Court of Vienna. The Papacy is said to be in the same position as Tuscany. It seems impossible that Piedmont should escape all this ferment, and this is the fact which interests me most in the whole affair. Apparently there are many assassinations in Italy. ”

“ The countess saw the duke at a ball at the Scala, and thought him very presentable. In one of their last conversations, Mosca thus summed up the matter: “We must take some decisive step if we want to spend our lives happily, and not to grow old before our time. The prince has given his approbation. Sanseverina is really rather attractive than otherwise. He owns the finest palace in Parma and a huge fortune; he is sixty-eight years old, and is madly in love with the Collar of an Order; but there is one great blot upon his life—he bought a bust of Napoleon by Canova, for ten thousand francs. ”

“ Reigning as duke in Parma, Ranuccio strove to inspire his subjects with fear of him, and aroused, instead, their hatred. When apprised of the discontent of the nobles, he feigned belief in a wide-spreading conspiracy, seized on the representatives of the first families of his duchy, and rid himself of their future opposition by secret trials and the block, while he dragged to the gibbet their adherents and vassals. ”

“ It was not on her father’s side only that there was insanity in her house. Her mother was a Bourbon Parma; and about the Bourbons of Parma, Princess Louisa neither has, nor affects to have, any illusions. They are madder than the Habsburgs, and have none of their redeeming qualities. The character sketches which Princess Louisa gives us of her maternal great-grandfather, Duke Charles of Parma, and Lucca, and of her uncle, Duke Robert of Parma, are sketches of lunatics ”

“ I have seen persons who are well affected to the Duke—the cousins at whose house I am staying, and to whose family the Archbishop of Modena belongs, amongst them—and one and all say that a restoration of the fallen dynasty would be a great calamity. Here, in fact—at Parma as well as Bologna—the universal wish is to be united to Piedmont. The organization of the recruits proceeds with the greatest rapidity, and the instructors (old soldiers) are struck by the military qualities displayed by the population. ”

“ If the Grand Duke or his son return to Florence, then, in less than a month, Tuscany will be the head quarters of Mazzini and of the belligerent revolution. Perhaps it will be said that the Duchess or Parma is a strong-minded woman, and is not unappreciated. However this may be, the so hateful remembrances of the father could not be effaced, nor could confidence be inspired in the son. Besides, the system of compensations which some would wish to apply in favour of this branch of the Bourbon family is in direct collision with the sentiments and the ideas which now prevail in Europe. ”

“ Julius, who was anxious to be on good terms with Charles on account of the council of Trent which was then sitting, ordered Farnese to hand Parma over to the papal authorities once more, and on his refusal hurled censures and admonitions at his head, and deprived him of his Roman fiefs, while Charles did the same with regard to those in Lombardy. A French army came to protect Parma, war broke out, and Gonzaga at once laid siege to the city. But the duke came to an arrangement with his father-in-law, by which he regained Piacenza and his other fiefs. ”

“ I spare you the details of the court and its original figures; the Princess who thinks it her duty to be unhappy, because the Prince has his Pompadour; the Heir Apparent who is kept caged; the Princess Isotta, the Chamberlain, the Minister of the Interior, the Governor of the Citadel, Fabio Conti. One cannot afford to take the least thing lightly. If, like the Duchessa, Fabrizio and Mosca, you accept the court of Parma, you play your game of whist and your interests are at stake. ”