The Revolutionary Movement of 1848-9 in Italy, Austria-Hungary, and Germany: With Some Examination of the Previous Thirty-three YearsMaurice, C. Edmund (Charles Edmund)
History
The Revolutionary Movement of 1848-9 in Italy, Austria-Hungary, and Germany: With Some Examination of the Previous Thirty-three Years
Maurice, C. Edmund (Charles Edmund)
Europe -- History -- 1848-1849; Revolutions -- Europe
The movement now spread beyond Tuscany and affected the dominions of
the Duke of Lucca. This Duke was one of those eccentric princes who
combined despotism and a reliance on Austria with a certain love of
playing at Liberalism with foreign exiles. This game was not carried
on with any of those ambitious objects which had led Francis of Modena
to play with rebellion in 1831; but it rather arose from a love of
clever literary lions, coupled with those tendencies to eccentricity
which might be natural to a prince with no great responsibilities and
a certain amount of cleverness. When, however, the Liberal movement
spread to Lucca, he dropped his dilettantism and proposed to suppress
Liberalism by force. Finding that the people rose against him, he
consented to yield all which Leopold of Tuscany had granted; but his
subjects were unwilling to trust a prince who was the ruler of so
small a State under the influence of Austria, and who had only yielded
to reform under sudden pressure; so they continued to make further
demands. The Duke, weary of the struggle, and very likely desirous to
avoid bloodshed, took advantage of a clause in the Treaty of Vienna
which constituted the Grand Duke of Tuscany his heir, and resigned his
dominions forthwith to Leopold. At the same time, he desired to exempt
from this surrender the two towns of Pontremoli and Bagnone and to
hand them over to the Duke of Modena. Leopold accepted the territory
of Lucca; but, by the same clause which had constituted him the heir
to the Duke of Lucca, he was bound, on acquiring the territory, to
surrender to the Duke of Modena the district of Fivizzano. Now, of all
the princes of Italy, none had been more utterly subservient to
Austria than the Duke of Modena, and the people of Fivizzano therefore
resented the proposal to annex them to Modena. The Duke of Modena
thereupon called on the Austrian Marshal Radetzky to help him to
enforce his demands; and, while Leopold of Tuscany was preparing to
fix a day for the surrender of Fivizzano, the Duke of Modena marched
his troops into the town and massacred the unarmed inhabitants.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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