Grand Duchy of Tuscany

“ Tuscany (2,274) , a department of Italy, formerly a grand-duchy, lies S. and W. of the Apennines, fronting the Tyrrhenian Sea on the W.; mountainous in the N. and E., but otherwise consisting of fertile dale and plain, in which the vine, olive, and fruits abound; silk is an important manufacture, and the marble quarries of Siena are noted; formed a portion of ancient Etruria (q. v.) ; was annexed to Sardinia in 1859, and in 1861 was incorporated in the kingdom of Italy. Capital, Florence.
Tusculum, a ruined Roman city, 15 m. SE. of Rome; at one time a favourite country resort of wealthy Romans ”

“ Tuscany enjoys at present a more liberal government than any other part of Italy, and the people are, in many respects, prosperous and happy. The Grand Duke, although enjoying almost absolute privileges, is disposed to encourage every measure which may promote the welfare of his subjects. The people are, indeed, very heavily taxed, but this is less severely felt by them, than it would be by the inhabitants of colder climes. The soil produces with little labor all that is necessary for their support ”

“ At Florence the people caught the general, whose mission had been at Bologna to recall the troops after the revolution of Naples; he succeeded in making his escape, however, but we had a great flare-up in the public place, at midnight, in the burning of his papers and carriage. It was a tumultuous scene; the infatuated mob hissing, groaning, and shouting, and the military with their gleaming bayonets shining, as the flames and cinders rose in the air.
The Grand Duke is much respected by his people, and Tuscany has more liberty than any other part of Italy. ”

“ In the reign of Cosimo III. Siena was annexed (1559) ; the title of grand duke of Tuscany was conferred on that ruler in 1567 by Pope Pius V. and recognized in the person of Francis I. by the emperor Maximilian II. in 1576. Under a series of degenerate Medici the history of Tuscany is certainly not a splendid record, and few events of importance occurred save court scandals. The people became more and more impoverished and degraded, a new and shoddy nobility was created and granted wide privileges, and art and letters declined. Giovan Gastone was the last Medicean grand duke ”

“ A common dearth of attraction marks the annals of most of the despotisms of Italy; and when Tuscany descended to the rank of a duchy, her pre-eminence of splendour survived only in the past, and her modern story sank into the same ignominious obscurity with that of Parma, and Modena, and Mantua. We are reminded only of the existence of the solitary republic which survived in this quarter of Italy, to wonder how Lucca escaped subjugation to the power whose dominions encircled and hemmed in her narrow territory ”

“ The improvements introduced by the French have been preserved and confirmed by the Grand Duke on his return, for he is a man of too much good sense, and has too much love of justice, to think of abolishing the good that has been done, merely because it was done by the French. Tuscany has now a respectable military force of 8,000 men well armed, clothed and equipped in the French manner. ”

“ Our nation is of a genius so vivacious,—we are unhappy, but not stupid, we Italians,—we can learn as much in two months as other nations in twenty years." This seemed to me no brag when I returned to Tuscany and saw the great development and diffusion of thought that had taken place during my brief absence. The Grand Duke, a well-intentioned, though dull man, had dared, to declare himself "an ITALIAN prince" and the heart of Tuscany had bounded with hope. It is now deeply as justly felt that the curse of Italy is foreign intrusion ”

“ Spain withdrew her garrisons from Tuscany, and Austrian soldiers took their place and swore fealty to the grand-duke on the 5th of February 1737. He expired on the 9th of July of the same year. Such was the end of the younger branch of the Medici, which had found Tuscany a prosperous country, where art, letters, commerce, industry and agriculture flourished, and left her poor and decayed in all ways, drained by taxation, and oppressed by laws contrary to every principle of sound economy, downtrodden by the clergy, and burdened by a weak and vicious aristocracy. ”

“ But perhaps the most remarkable and most singular scene of all that rose-water revolution was the Duke's departure from his capital and his duchy. Other sovereigns in similar plight have hidden themselves, travestied themselves, had hairbreadth escapes, or have not escaped at all. In Tuscany the fallen ruler went forth in his own carriage with one other following it, both rather heavily laden with luggage. The San Gallo gate is that by which the hearse that conveys the day's dead to the cemetery on the slope of the Apennine leaves the city every night. ”

“ 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. ”

“ On the death in 1631 of the last duke of Urbino, the pope was allowed to seize the duchy without the slightest opposition on the part of Tuscany. As a natural consequence the pretensions of the Roman curia became increasingly exorbitant; ecclesiastics usurped the functions of the state; and the ancient laws of the republic, together with the regulations decreed by Cosimo I. as a check upon similar abuses, were allowed to become obsolete. On the extinction of the line of the Gonzagas at Mantua in 1627, war broke out between France on the one side and Spain, Germany and Savoy on the other. ”

“ Tuscany, the Duchy of Spoleta, the Marches of Ancona, Bologna, Parma, Placenza, &c., forming part of the legacy bequeathed to the Holy See by the Countess Matilda. From this flagrant humiliation, submitted to by Conrad of Hohenstaufen, the successor of Lothair, and haughtily rejected by Henry the Haughty when he refused to render feudal homage to the Pope, arose the celebrated quarrel of the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, which, from the banks of the Rhine, spread beyond the Alps, and implanted itself in the very heart of Italy. ”

“ A kingdom of justice, goodness and morality, founded upon the free decision of the people, of the nation itself—which is the aim of all free people,—this it is which Tuscan patriots desire for their land and people. And this beautiful Tuscany, remarkable also for the good-heartedness and natural amiability of its people, seems well worthy to be conducted to such a noble fate. ”

“ The modern life of a decayed branch of the Tuscan nobility in the nineteenth century, the process and method of its decadence, the charm of "a local habitation and a name," once identified with the vital power of the old republic, and the sad, effeminate, yet not unromantic sentiment incident to its passing away, through the prosperous encroachments of new men, with whom money is the power once only attached to birth, are most aptly described. The thrifty farmer of the Apennine, and his slow and handsome son, are capital types of the frugal and shrewd fattore and rustic proprietor of Tuscany ”

“ By various luminous strokes, Ward furthered his Sovereign's object without much increasing the taxation, and when matters began to grow complicated, and here, too, a cry was raised for a Constitution (which had been solemnly guaranteed to the people of Lucca at the Congress of Vienna, but had never been heard of since) , he proposed the sale of the Duchy off-hand to Tuscany, with which it would, in any case, be united, when, on the death of the ex-Empress Marie-Louise, the Duchy of Parma devolved on the Duke of Lucca. ”

“ The Tuscans voted annexation to Italy, it is said—not to Piedmont. With Rome unity, without it none. Does the unity of Italy mean the domination of Turin? Are we to accept from the most barbarous portion of Italy laws which are sent down to us written in a jargon which cannot even be called Italian? Tuscany is being fleeced by men so greedy of every little gain, that they supply all the royal offices with paper made only in Piedmont, in order that Piedmontese paper-mills may reap the benefit. ”

“ The lords of the more powerful brought those of the weaker under their sway. The dominion, at first confined to a city, soon included districts containing many cities within their limits. The duchy of Milan, erected by the emperor in favour of the Visconti, represented a sovereignty extending over the whole of the Milanese. Alessandro Medici, duke of Florence, soon merged that title in the higher one, which conferred on him the grand duchy of the Tuscan states. ”

“ Notwithstanding this aid, however, he is barely able to hold his own against the pope in the long run, and he dies just at the middle of the century, worn out in middle life by endless warrings.
During the ensuing half century Italy is little troubled by the emperors; papal authority is at its height, but a disunited Italy consumes its strength in internal dissensions. The developing civilisation has gradually focalised more and more towards the north and now its centre has come to be Tuscany,—the same geographical location which furnished the pre-Roman civilisation of the Etruscans. ”

“ The formation of a Latin empire in the East increased the pope’s prestige; while at home it was his policy to organize Countess Matilda’s heritage by the formation of Guelph leagues, over which he presided. This is the meaning of the three leagues, in the March, in the duchy of Spoleto and in Tuscany, which now combined the chief cities of the papal territory into allies of the holy see. From the Tuscan league Pisa, consistently Ghibelline, stood aloof. Rome itself again at this epoch established a republic, with which Innocent would not or could not interfere. ”

“ That which the true friends of their country here, as well as in Piedmont, and, it may indeed be said, as well as the cultivated Italian community at large, desire above all things, is, for Tuscany, not a realm and a power like those of the middle ages,—that splendid blossom rather of beauty and prosperity than of moral nobility, not unlike the Cathedral of Florence, a work of art in form and outward covering, but imperfect and inwardly empty;—they want not this, for their ideal is one far more inward, far higher ”

“ In 1865, in consequence of the Franco-Italian convention of September 1864, the capital was transferred from Turin to Florence, where it remained until it was removed to Rome in 1871.
Since the union with Italy, Tuscany has ceased to constitute a separate political entity, although the people still preserve definite regional characteristics. It has increased in wealth and education, and owing to a good system of land tenure the peasantry are among the most prosperous in Italy. ”

“ Politically and materially considered, Tuscany is looked upon as the best governed and happiest Italian state, but in some respects this very circumstance has kept back its inhabitants. The foreign power that rules Lombardy exciting undisguised hatred, and the misrule of the Popes being beyond all question quite intolerable—the people of those states are in avowed opposition to government, while in Tuscany there is little to complain of, beyond the torpedo influence of a system of things that undeviatingly tends towards the deterioration. ”

“ But the poor, always the chief sufferers from such a state of things, are wonderfully patient, and I doubt not that the new form, if Italy could be left to itself, would be settled for the advantage of all. Tuscany would soon be united with Rome, and to the Republic of Central Italy, no longer broken asunder by petty restrictions and sacrificed to the interests of a few persons, would come that prosperity natural to a region so favored by nature. ”

“ The conviction is at once forced upon us, that they must have enjoyed a long succession of wise rulers, but, above all, one is struck with the beauty and grandeur which distinguish all the public works and roads and bridges in Tuscany. Everything here is at once substantial and clean. Use and profit, not less than elegance, are alike kept in view: everywhere we discern traces of the care which is taken to preserve them. The cities of the Papal States, on the contrary, only seem to stand because the earth is unwilling to swallow them up. ”

“ The Grand Duke of Tuscany however, engages, should the said reversion fall to him, to cede to the Duke of Modena, as soon as he shall have entered into possession of the principality of Lucca, the following territories:
1. The Tuscan districts of Tivizano, Pietra Santa, and Barga. ”

“ The Tuscans, of all classes, appeared to me to be a very polished people, as if still retaining traces of their early civilisation. The peasants were far superior in every respect to those of other countries, and fewer crimes were at that time committed in Tuscany than in any other part of Europe.
On the 30th of April, 1791, we once more found ourselves in Rome.
The two French princesses, Madame Adelaide and Madame Victoire, aunts of Louis XVI., were lodged at Cardinal de Bernis’. The cardinal having declined to take the oath of allegiance to the republic, was no longer ambassador ”