Marriage to Napoleon earned Austrian noblewoman an Italian Duchy
Austrian archduchess Maria Luisa d'Asburgo-Lorena reigned as Duchess of Parma from April 1814 until her death on this day in 1847. She was the eldest child of Francis I, the first Emperor of Austria and - as Francis II - the last Holy Roman Emperor. Despite being brought up to despise France, Maria Luisa agreed to marry Napoleon Bonaparte by proxy in 1810. When she was asked for her consent, she replied: ‘I wish only what my duty commands me to wish.’ Fortunately, when she met Napoleon for the first time, she remarked: ‘You are much better looking than your portrait.’ She bore him a son in 1811, Napoleon Francois Joseph Charles Bonaparte, who was styled King of Rome at his birth and who later became Napoleon II. After Napoleon’s failed invasion of Russia in 1812, the French ruler’s fortunes changed dramatically and he had to abdicate and go into exile on the island of Elba. The 1814 Treaty of Fontainebleau gave the Duchies of Parma, Piacenza and Guastalia to Maria Luisa, who was to rule over them until her death. To prevent Maria Luisa from joining Napoleon in Elba, the Emperor Francis II sent Count Adam Albert von Neipperg to accompany his daughter to the spa town of Aix-les-Bains. Read more…
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Musician who developed the model for ‘comic opera’
A prolific composer of operas, Domenico Cimarosa was born on this day in 1749 in Aversa, between Naples and Caserta in Campania. Cimarosa wrote more than 80 operas during his lifetime, including Il matrimonio segreto (The Secret Marriage), which is considered to be his finest work. Other composers judge it to be among the greatest examples of opera buffa, the Italian term for comic opera and Verdi considered it to be the model for the genre. Cimarosa attended a free school connected to a monastery in Naples where the organist taught him music and as a result obtained a scholarship to attend a musical institute in the city for 11 years. He wrote his first opera at the age of 23 and, after several successes in theatres in Naples, he was invited to Rome where he produced another comic opera, L’Italiano in Londra. He travelled throughout Italy, writing operas for theatres in Naples, Rome and Florence until he was invited to St Petersburg by Empress Catherine II. He remained at her court for four years composing music for important occasions. He then went to Vienna at the invitation of Leopold II where he produced his masterpiece, Il matrimonio segreto. Read more…
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Artist who captured life in Venice
The painter Ettore Tito, whose landscapes and scenes from contemporary life in Venice earned him a substantial following in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, was born on this day in 1859 in Castellammare di Stabia, near Naples. Despite his southern roots, Tito spent most of his life in Venice. His Campanian father captained merchant ships but his mother was Venetian and they moved to Venice when Ettore was still a child. His prodigious talent for art emerged at an early age. He was taken under the wing of the Dutch artist Cecil van Haanen and was accepted by the Accademia di Belle Arti at the age of 12, graduating at 17 after studying under Pompeo Marino Molmenti, a distinguished professor. Tito appreciated the beauty of Venice but wanted his paintings to capture the character of the city and its people. He earned the first important recognition of the quality of his work when his 1887 painting Pescheria vecchia a Venezia, a busy scene of traders and customers at the fish market by the Rialto bridge, won great praise at the Esposizione Nazionale Artistica in Venice and was subsequently bought by the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna in Rome. Read more…
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Sacking in 546 left city a shadow of its former self
The Ostrogoths, the Germanic tribe that took over large parts of the Italian peninsula with the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, achieved a symbolic victory on this day in 546 when an army under the leadership of King Totila captured and sacked Rome following a year-long siege of the Eternal City. The event was part of the Gothic War between the Ostrogoths, who had originated on the Black Sea in the area now known as Crimea, and the Byzantine (Eastern) Empire, between 535 and 554. Totila led a fightback by the Ostrogoths after the fall of the Gothic capital at Ravenna in 540 signalled the apparent reconquest of Italy by the Byzantines. He had swept south with his forces and was based at Tivoli, east of Rome, as he plotted how he would recapture the region of Latium. In 545, he laid siege to the city. Bessas, the commander of the imperial garrison charged with protecting the city, was stubborn but cruel to the Roman citizens. Although he had a stock of grain, he would not let it be used to feed the population unless they paid for it, while at the same time refusing requests from citizens to leave the city. Read more…
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Repatriation of Vittorio Emanuele III sparked anger
The remains of Italy’s wartime king, Vittorio Emanuele III, were returned to Italian soil on this day in 2017, 70 years after his death in exile in Egypt. His body had been buried in St. Catherine’s Catholic Cathedral in Alexandria since 1947, when he died at the age of 78, a year and a half after abdicating in favour of his son, Umberto II. His remains were flown to Italy by military aircraft for reburial at his family’s mausoleum at the Sanctuary of Vicoforte, a church in the province of Cuneo, Piedmont. At the same time, the body of his wife, Queen Elena, who had died in France in 1952, was flown to Italy from Montpelier, so that they could be buried side by side. Vittorio Emanuele’s coffin, draped in a flag bearing the coat of arms of the Savoy family, was taken from the plane at Cuneo’s small Levaldigi airport and escorted to the Sanctuary solely by local officials, including the prefect vicar, the local village mayor and the president of Cuneo’s Chamber of Commerce. Only a handful of people were allowed in the church for the interment ceremony. Read more…
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Brigadier-General James L Dozier held for 42 days
Three years after the kidnap and murder of the former Italian prime minister Aldo Moro shocked Italy and the wider world, terrorists representing the ultra-left group Brigate rosse - the Red Brigades - returned to the headlines on this day in 1981 with the abduction of the high-ranking United States Army officer James L Dozier. Brigadier-General Dozier, who was serving in Italy as deputy Chief of Staff of NATO's Southern European land forces, was seized and taken from his apartment in Verona and held for 42 days before being rescued by Italian special forces. The kidnap took place at between 5.30 and 6pm when four men turned up at the door of the apartment posing as plumbers. The general was overpowered and then struck over the head before his wife, Judith, who was initially held at gunpoint, was tied up with chains and plastic tape. According to his wife, 50-year-old General Dozier was then bundled into what she described as a "steamship trunk", which the men carried out to a waiting van. Mrs Dozier was left in the apartment, alerting neighbours later by banging on the walls. It was the first time the Red Brigades had held a member of the American military, or any foreign national. Read more…
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The day a pontiff finally lost patience with the Tudor king
Pope Paul III announced the excommunication of King Henry VIII of England from the Catholic Church on this day in 1538 in Rome. Henry had been threatened with excommunication by the previous pope, Clement VII, in 1533 after he married Anne Boleyn. However, Clement did not act on his threat straight away, hoping Henry might come to his senses. Henry had been awarded the title of Defender of the Faith by a previous pope because he had written a defence of the seven sacraments of the Catholic church against the protestant leader Martin Luther. But Clement died the following year and a new pope had to be elected. Pope Paul III, who was born Alessandro Farnese, became pontiff in 1534 and took on the job of organising the Counter Reformation as well as using nepotism to advance the power and fortunes of the Farnese family. When it became clear Henry was intent on demolishing the Catholic Church in England, Paul III issued the original papal bull - edict - drawn up by Clement VII. He lost patience with Henry after he declared himself head of the Church of England and started ordering the execution of anyone who stood in his way. Read more…
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World War I pilot claimed eight aerial victories
First World War pilot Leopoldo Eleuteri, who was credited with seven of the eight combat victories he claimed, was born in Castel Ritaldi, a small town in Umbria about 60km (37 miles) by road southeast of Perugia, on this day in 1894. Eleuteri did not begin flying active combat sorties as a fighter pilot until February 1918 but progressed rapidly with the 70th Squadron of the Corpo Aeronautico Militare, the airborne arm of the Royal Italian Army. He went on to fly more than 150 sorties and between April 1918 and October 1918 claimed eight enemy planes shot down, being eventually credited with seven successes in his own right. Passionate about all forms of mechanised flight since he was a boy, Eleuteri volunteered for aeronautical service as soon as he was old enough. He was a student in a technical school until he was conscripted in 1915. At first, he was assigned to duty in ordnance factories before being sent to join the 3rd Infantry Regiment of the Royal Italian Army. There, he was allowed to begin aviation training. In October 1916, he qualified as a pilot at Gabardini's flying school at Cameri in Piedmont. Read more…
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Book of the Day: Double Emperor: The Life and Times of Francis of Austria, by Chip Waqar
For 43 years, Francis I of Austria ruled a vast heterogenous Empire that came to dominate the continent of Europe. Ascending Charlemagne’s thousand-year throne of the Holy Roman Empire at the age of twenty-four on the unexpected death of his father, this scion of the ancient Habsburg dynasty became the first Emperor of Austria and for two years, the only
Double Emperor in history. Both the father in law of Napoleon Bonaparte and his chief rival for dominance of the continent of Europe, Francis eventually led a coalition of nations to Paris in 1814 and sent Napoleon into exile. The exiled Napoleon’s only son and heir lived with his grandfather thereafter in Vienna until his tragic early death. Kings, ministers, generals and the glitterati of Europe gathered under his watchful eye at the Congress of Vienna to decide the fate of a continent in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars in which he played a pivotal role. The Congress saw the emergence of his new Austrian Empire as the most dominant power in continental Europe until long after his death 20 years later. A devoted husband, father and grandfather, his modest lifestyle and simple tastes that set the tone of the Biedermeier era concealed a complex and calculating ruler whose initial, cautious liberalism gradually evolved into a stoic conservatism. No other life-biography in English has been written about this mysterious but powerful figure of early 19th century Europe whom Metternich and Radetzky called their master.
Chip Wagar is a practicing attorney in New Orleans, where he has lived since 1976, having been born in upstate New York. He attended the Austro-American Institute in Vienna during his college years at the George Washington University where he was graduated in 1976 with a Bachelor of Arts in International Affairs.
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