[Illustration: (Drawing of two women walking out of a stone gateway, with statues and trees in the background.)] Violante of Bavaria, wife of Prince Ferdinando, son of Cosimo III, lived occasionally at Poggio Imperiale, and it was frequently visited by her brother-in-law Gastone, the last of the Medicean Grand Dukes, who inherited all the vices but none of the talent of his house. Pietro Leopoldo of Lorraine, his successor, had a particular predilection for the imperial villa and spent 1,300,000 francs on enlarging it and building immense stables (now cavalry barracks). When he, on the death of his brother in 1790, became Emperor of Austria, his second son Ferdinando III succeeded to the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, and gave hospitality at Poggio Imperiale to the King of Sardinia and his wife, who had been compelled to quit Piedmont by the revolution. Charles Emanuel IV and Marie Clotilde arrived on the 19th January 1799, only to be driven out after a month of quiet and repose. They fled to Sardinia, and Napoleon having abolished Tuscany with a stroke of a pen, the Grand Duke took refuge with his brother in Vienna. A new kingdom—Etruria—was then created, with Lodovico of Bourbon, son of the Duke of Parma, as king. He died in 1803, leaving his young widow as regent for his little son, and Poggio Imperiale became her favourite residence. She added the rustic loggia and was beginning other improvements when Napoleon, unmoved by her tears and entreaties, swept Etruria off the map of nations and the poor Queen Regent and her small boy were driven into exile. A new mistress now ruled in the great villa—Napoleon’s sister, the brilliant Elise Bonaparte married to Captain Felice Baciocchi, who had been created Prince of Lucca and Piombino; and she gave balls and festivals to celebrate her brother’s victories in the villa which owed most of its splendour to Austrian princesses. Her grandeur was, however, short-lived; in 1814 she left Poggio Imperiale at dead of night, and Ferdinando III returned to Tuscany. Three years later a royal company assembled in the “Villa of five hundred rooms,” as Poggio Imperiale was commonly called, to say farewell to the Arch Duchess Leopoldine of Austria who was to embark at Leghorn as the bride of the Crown Prince of Portugal and the Brazils. Her two sisters, one married to Prince Leopold of Naples the other to Napoleon, then a prisoner at St Helena, met her there together with the Princess of the Brazils who had come to receive her son’s future wife at the hands of Prince Metternich.