The Last Stand of the Old Regime

Abstract

The territorial and dynastic arrangements sanctioned at Lunéville in 1801 left north-western and central Italy with a more varied array of regimes than before the triennio. At one extreme, there was no appreciable period of restoration in Piedmont or the territories of the Cisalpine/Italian Republic; the Savoyard and Habsburg regencies installed by the Allied armies in the spring of 1799 were swept away soon after Marengo. These regions began their experience of direct rule by the Napoleonic regime at virtually the same time as France, although they felt it in very different ways. Elsewhere, the circumstances created by Lunéville were less clear. Liguria was, on the face of it, a restored sister republic and, as such, in the most difficult position, caught between the demands of the French occupation and its inherent unpopularity with the forces of counter-revolution. The duchies of Parma and Piacenza were left in a complete limbo, between the transfer of their duke to Florence in 1801 and proper annexation to France in 1805. A caretaker government under the Duchess, Maria-Amelia, and her chief minister, Franco Schizzati, was balanced by the presence of the French Commissioner-General, Moreau de St Méry. Ferdinand III’s restoration in Tuscany was, therefore, brief.