Harold Acton: Last of the Medici
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rheinsbergOverall: very well written, very much biographie romancee in style - Stefan Zweig would have been delighted, and who knows, maybe was -, and also very opinionated. I looked up the author. He was Harold Acton, one of the Bright Young Things of the 1920s, best man to Evelyn Waugh during the later's first marriage, supposedly partly the model for Anthony Blanche in Brideshead Revisited. Scion of an Anglo-Italian family. Gay. Not a fan of Mussolini, thank God. Served in the RAF during WWII.
On to the narrative. Acton covers roughly a century, between the 1640s, when future Cosimo III. is born, to the death of Gian Gastone de' Medici, whereupon Franz Stephan gets the Duchy. He's focused on the family members and their wives - and btw, the end of the line came to be if this book is anything to go by because a couple of in varying degrees awful men married a couple of strong willed women, degree of awfulness debate worthy, several of whom did not behave as expected, and had catastrophic marriages with them - and blithely assumes you know at least a bit history if you've purchased this book and he doesn't have to explain everything from ground scratch.
For example, when saying in the introduction the reader may be surprised that he didn't pick the more famous Medici and their time to focus on instead of this bunch, he says:
The Renaissance is admittedly the most interesting period of Italian history, Florence the most typical state, Lorenzo de' Medici its most typical citizen.
Okay? I mean, I'm not exactly disagreeing, the Italian Renassaisance is fascinating - but "the most interesting of Italian history? whatever did he think of all those Roman Republic and Roman Empire centuries? Or how about the late 11th, early 12th century, starring the other Frederico Secondo, the medieval HRE Emperor born in Sicily, a Renaissance mind in the middle ages, and in the same era St. Francis and the dastardly yet very efficient Pope Innocent III and Salerno as a place where women could study medicine as well as men and Italians, Germans, Normans and Moors all living in Italy? And how is Florence more typical of the Renaissance than, say, Venice? Or Rome? Lorenzo de'Medici as the epitome of the Renaissance man I can go with. Note that Acton expects you to know something about Lorenzo, aka Il Magnifico, here, and like I said, doesn't bother explaining why you should.
Here's another bit from the preface illustrating neatly Acton's style, when he talks about the portraits of the last Medici:
And it is strange to compare the portraits of these Medici with those of the earlier branch, with the Renaissance -faces of Lorenzo and Giuliano, and the grandsons and great - grandsons of Cosimo Pater Patriae. For the Bourbon has intruded . There is no longer the same austerity : instead, a ponderous sensuality becomes more and more apparent, rigid in the beginning of the seventeenth century and kept under firm control, as in the faces of Austrian and Spanish nobility, but later loosening into a thicker voluptuousness, curdling into flaccid folds until, finally, a terrible senile lust asserts itself. Decay sets in . The muscles that were taut have let themselves go. The heavy eyelids droop more than ever now, the loose and flabby lips completely drop, like some pulpy fruit, bursting and over-ripe : only the nose retains its mighty prominence. But for this indomitable bulwark all the features sag, and no amount of pride will succeed in pulling them together. The over -emphasis of each weakness:the triumph of matter over mind, of exultant fleshiness (never has the
spirit surrendered to such an extent as this, one exclaims) accumulates so as to form the most gruesome of caricatures.
Louis XIV: Excuse you, Acton. What do you mean, "The Bourbon has intruded"? Leaving aside that I am the grandson of a Medici, are you accusing my family of being sex fiends?
Henri IV: Well, I will admit I might qualify. I certainly pounced whenever I had the chance. On the other hand, I am still everyone's candidate for Best French King ever, and not just because Voltaire wrote an epic about me. So it evidently was not to my detriment.
Louis XIV: With all due respect, Granddad, I might not be everyone's choice for "best" but for "most influential" and "the one everyone else is thinking of when saying "French King"? Le Roi, c'est moi. And I did have mistresses, of course I did, but only rarely two at a time, unlike you. Certainly compared with such imitators of myself like that Saxon boasting about this strength, I showed both taste and restraint.
Louis XIII: And I was repressedly gay and therefore had only one mistress. I probably never had sex with my male favourites at all. As for my wife, Anne and I needed 23 years to produce Louis and Philippe. No one, but no one, can accuse me of having had too much sex!
Louis XV: Well. Err. What can I say? When your nickname is "the Well Beloved".... and we can't all do ballet for physical exercise. We really can't, great-grandfather. I hated it.
Louis XVI: The only woman I ever had sex with in my entire life was my wife. After seven years of trying in vain. And no, I did not have sex with a man, either. You have to go back to the middle ages to find a French King with my fidelity among earlier dynasties.
Philip V: But I, first Bourbon king of Spain, and contemporary of most of these Medici Acton is writing about, was totally faithful to both my wives, no known mistresses or male favorites! If I got a reputation for being sexually dependent on them, well, remember that it's a tough life thinking you're dead or possibly a frog, and I needed moral support. Wife = nurse! I too take umbrage at being blamed for Medici decadence.
All pre revolutionary Bourbon Kings: Back at ya, Acton. If the Medici ran themselves down, our heritage wasn't at fault!
Back to the story. Forcahn, some more orientation, as to how these Medici relate to other Medici you might have heard of, to wit, two Queens of France:
Catherine de' Medici: last of the older line of the Medici, descended from the famous Lorenzo. Married Henri II of France, a Valois. More in my story which you've read. Three of her four sons became Kings of France and died; the fourth had already died when the third still reigned. That was the end of the Valois, and then came Henri de Navarre, the first Bourbon on the throne, who had married Catherine's daughter Margot in the famous St. Bortholomew's Night . When their marriage was annulled years later, he married:
Marie de' Medici: second wife of Henri IV. Marie came from another branch of the Medici line, descending from Lorenzo the Elder,younger brother to Cosimo Pater Patriae, whereas Catherine had descended from that Cosimo. Marie de' Medici was the mother of Louis XIII., and various smart and energetic daughters, including Henrietta Maria, married to Charles I. of England (he would get beheaded), mother of Charles II and James II. However, Marie de' Medici's favourite kid was her second son Gaston, which is important for this story. Gaston was the in fact THE archetypical scheming younger brother, and his mother schemed right with him. Since Louis XIII and Anne d'Autriche did not produce living kids for 23 years, Gaston joined every plot against his brother ever in the security that as the sole male heir, he would never suffer serious consequences when caught. Then came future Louis XIV, and shortly after him Philippe the Gay. With now two living boys between him and the throne, Gaston was very frustrated indeed, but also more cautious. He transferred his ambition to his children. One of his daughters will be a main character of this book, so remember: Gaston = wannabe King. Also, thanks to his second marriage, loaded in cash. His idea for his daughters - he didn't have any sons - was that they should either marry their royal cousins or other royalty. That's how he raised them.
Ferdinando II: Golden Autumn of the Medici
Our story starts in 1642, in the year Galileo Galilei dies, Tuscany's greatest scientist. His boss was Ferdinando II de' Medici , Grand Duke of Tuscany and basically the last Medici managing to show the old Medici virtues - patronage of the arts and sciences - united to basic government efficiency. Ferdinando is married to Vittoria della Rovere, a first cousin, and the same year Galileo dies, his son Cosimo (future Cosimo III) is born.
(If Friedrich and Wilhelm and any mixing thereof a fave Hohenzollern names and the Hannovers go for "George" and "Ernst August" and combinations thereof, the Medici go for: Cosimo, Lorenzo, Giuliano, Ferdinando, Francesco. Most are called variations of these names.)
Ferdinando comes across as a sympathetic guy in general. At age 20 he didn't leave Florence when the plague struck again but remained and helped as much as he could. People didn't forget that. He also, which was increasingly rare in his age of religious strife, was not a bigot. Quote from the book:
An anecdote of his youth already denoted certain symptoms of the Grand Duke's easy , tolerant nature. On a cold winter's evening he was warming himself by a fire in his apartment, when his mother, the Archduchess Maria-Maddalena, paid him an impromptu visit. She told him with dismay that she had suddenly discovered the existence of a particular carnal abuse in Florence ; among people, more over, of distinct parts, power and social standing. In spite of whatsoever virtues they might possess, she was determined to have them all severely punished, and submitted a long list of offenders to his scrutiny.
When the Grand Duke had read it, he remarked that this information did not suffice. There were others of similar tendencies he could append to her list. And taking a quill, he added his name in capitals.
The Archduchess said he had done this merely to save the guilty, but that she would have them chastised all the same. The Grand Duke in quired to what punishment she chose to condemn them , and she replied with some vehemence: ‘They must be burned. ' So the Grand Duke, flinging the list into the fire, said : “ There they are, Madame, punished just as you have condemned them .'
Ferdinando wasn't kidding. One of the reasons why his marriage to his cousin Vittoria was miserable was that she caught him with a hot page, one Count Bruto della Molara. (Acton: "The Grand Duchess was naturally indignant when she surprised her husband and his page in the midst of forbidden dalliance, and promptly left the room without a word.")
Vittoria first tried to take her revenge by calling in Jesuits to denounce these specific sins from the pulpit. Whereupon the hot page, with Ferdinando's knowledge, managed to "compromise" at least one of the Jesuits. Exit Jesuits from Florence. Vittoria next ensured that her new baby, Cosimo, was raised exactly as the opposite of his father. Ferdinando loved art and sciences; Vittoria ensured Cosimo would only love religion and be as little taught in the sciences as she could get away with. And the religion was of the most fundamentalist type available at the time. Despite having a deeply miserable marriage, she and Ferdinando, eighteen years after Cosimo, managed to produce another living male child, Francesco Maria. Now Cosimo would turn into an ultra pious bigot. Francesco Maria would be a partying playboy who ate, drank and fucked his way to an early death. Give you three guesses which was was made a Cardinal of the Church. (Because second sons, hey.)
Marguerite Louise d'Orleans: Vive la Resistance
Cosimo was such a serious ultra pious kid and youth that he ceased to smile in public. He was with priests all the time. Ferdinando correctly concluded that this did not bode well for the future and that the boy had to get married quickly so he could procreate and maybe live a little. Also, of course, a shiny wife would bring useful connections and money. To that end, he procured for his son the younger daughter of Gaston d'Orleans, eternal busy schemer. Uncle to Louis XIV. Said daughter, Marguerite-Louise, absolutely did NOT want to go and marry a future Medici Duke, but cousin Louis insisted. And young Cosimo quickly found out that his parents' marriage was paradise compared to his own. Marguerite Louise had one goal: she'd return to France. Never mind that noble Catholic marriages were supposed to be forever. She wanted to return to France with the same singlemindedness and fervor SD wanted to marry Fritz and Wilhelmine to their Hannover cousins. To that end, she proceeded to insult and humiliate both Cosimo and the Medici in general as much as she could from the get go. She demanded the Tuscan crown jewels (used for her marriage and coronation as Duchess) for her personal use, and when Cosimo pointed out they didn't belong to him as a private person but to the state of Florence, she attempted to steal them and smuggle them out of Tuscany to sell them. (She was caught.) (BTW, the man Marguerite Louise had wanted to marry instead was, wait for it, Charles de Lorraine, Grandfather of Franz Stephan. He was her lover for a while, too.) She threatened to break a bottle on Cosimo's head if he didn't leave her alone. According to our Sophie of Hanover, who made her one and only long Italian trip with husband Ernst August around that time, she slept with her husband once a week to duty's sake, but that was that, neither of them could force themselves to do more. Louis XIV. sent a marriage counsellor in the form of a Poitevin lady, Madame Deffand, to whose reports we owe the knowledge that Marguerite Louise was also a passionate walker who exhausted both her Florentine and French attendants by long hiking tours.
Cosimo responded to this at first by reducing Marguerite Louise's French staff in the hope of forcing her to adjust, but fat chance. She came up with a new insult instead. Since Italians in general and the Medici in particular were all poisoners, clearly, she insisted on only eating what a French cook would prepare for her. Marguerite Louise then hit on a really good (for her) idea, which was telling Cosimo, by then the Duke, that since she hadn't wanted to marry him and had been forced to, clearly their marriage was null and void, which meant they were living in shameless unholy concubinage. Cue much self flagellation on Cosimo's part and ponderings whether she was right.
She did swear she was ready and willing to retire to a nunnery, as long as it was a FRENCH nunnery. By then, he'd basically been reduced to keeping her in a genteel captivity with guards prepared to stop her if she made a run for it. She pretended to have breast cancer, so she'd be sent back to France, but the (French) doctor sent by Cousin Louis said she was fine. Then she started public pillow fights with her cook and tickled him on her bed to the breathless amazement of spectators. Since somehow, in this years of hell, three children, two boys and one daughter, had been produced, Cosimo at last caved and allowed to return to France. (Without her children, of course.)
Cosimo III: 53 Years of Bigotry in Government
Now, independent from this once his father had died Cosimo had started the longest reign any Duke of Tuscany would ever have (52 years, all in all). And it was a terrible one on every level. Scientists and artists were either banished or so poorly paid they went on their own initiative. The economy became so poor that there was bartering on the streets instead of paying with coins. And bigotry ruled. Complete with old school religious antisemitism. Cosimo started to persecute Jews. He forbade Christian/Jewish marriages, forgave Christians and Jews to live in the same house together, forbade Jews to serve in Christian households and Christians to serve Jews. Any type of sexual intercourse between Christians and Jews was forbidden. Etc. And even the Christians were supposed to denounce each other for not being Christian enough if needed.
(There are, however, two examples of laws Cosimo created which our author does approve of. I quote from the book:
Youthful sinners were punished with corresponding severity: in some cases, however, one must applaud the method. Settimanni writes, in October, 1690 : 'A peasant boy between five and six years old, from the district of Pistoia, was castrated in the hospital of S. Maria Nuova, for killing a little girl of three with a stone. He had wanted to remove a medal that she wore about her neck, whence she began to scream , and he stoned her to the ground, striking her head in such wise that it killed her. Seeing that she was dead, he dragged her to a ditch , and covered her face with his clothes . For so much craftiness (malizia ) it was well judged that he should not be allowed offspring in this world, and therefore he was castrated .' Cruelty to animals was also punished in a manner we might emulate : a scoundrel was put in the pillory by the column in the market-place, with a collar and placard , ‘ for being a murderer of cats ' , and two of his dead victims were
appended on his neck .)
Marguerite Louise: the final years
Meanwhile, Cosimo also kept up on news about his ex in France, via the Tuscan emissary, who sent regular reports on Marguerite Louise. Having achieved her life goal, Marguerite Louise was a bit at a loss at what do with herself. Technically, she did stay in a nunnery. De facto, she was at Versailles most often, gambling huge sums away (which lead to regular arguments for her pension via letter with Tuscany). She had an affair with her groom. (She also hit her servants when the mood struck her. Sex or beatings, it could be either.) She bathed in the nude in the (public) river. (When Cosimo complained about this to Louis via envoy, Louis basically reacted with a shrug.) When the Abbess of the convent where she was living, Montmartre, had died and a new Abbess was appointed, the new Abbess tried to lay down the law. Fat chance. Marguerite Louise threatened to kill her with a hatchet and a pistol. In the end, an agreement with Cosimo and Louis was reached that Marguerite Louise would move to a new convent (Sainte Mande).
For a while, Marguerite Louise had kept up correspondence with her oldest son, Ferdinando when he'd become a rebellious teen writing her letters, and once when Cosimo became ill she told everyone at Versailles it wasn't Tuscany she'd hated, only her husband, and immediately after his death she would "she would fly to Florence to banish all hypocrites and hypocrisy and establish a new government". In the end, Cosimo outlived her, but Marguerite Louise never stopped surprising people till her end. Having moved to Sainte-Mande, she declared it a "spiritual brothel" in need of reform, and she had a point; there were five or six nuns with illegitimate kids and several lovers, and the Abbess was present only some months in the year (during which she wore trousers) and with her lover otherwise. Marguerite Louise threw herself into her last transformation into a sincere reformer, overhauled the convent, kicked out the Abbess and the wayward nuns and next threw herself into charity. She had two strokes which partially incapacitated her, and by then, Louis was dead and Philippe d'Orleans Regent. In another surprising turn of events, the aging Marguerite Louise had become pals with his mother, Liselotte, and so Philippe allowed her to buy a house in Paris and live out her life there in peace, which she did.
Fall of the House of Medici: Ferdinando and Gian Gastone
As for her children. The oldest, Ferdinando, had some of the good Medici gifts of old - he was a musician and composer, and openly bisexual (this included an affair with a castrato and with a hot musician, but he also had female lovers). Cosimo, despite all evidence to the contrary thinking marriage was just the thing, and argueing with this rebellious son all the time, much like FW insisted on him marrying both as a disciplinary measure and for the future of the dynasty. A very nice girl, as it happened, Violante of Bavaria, who was devoted him. Alas, Ferdinando found her dull and didn't requite her feelings. (Stop me if this sounds familiar.) During his regular trips to Venice, he managed to get infected with syphilis, and not the type to stop at stage 2. He died of it, eventually, unable to recognize anyone around him.
This made brother Gian Gastone the heir, though Dad Cosimo also tried to heighten his chances by making his own younger brother, the frolicking playboy Cardinal (remember him) leave the clergy and marry. His brother did that, and promptly died, but not before his wife had taken a look at his fat, debauched body and declared he was too revolting for her to sleep with. Gian Gastone (named after his scheming French grandfather Gaston d'Orleans) had been married at Dad Cosimo's orders in Ferdinando's life time already since it was evidence that tertiary syphilis suffering Ferdinando would never rule. (And had no children by Violante.) With an unerring instinct, Cosimo's wife of choice for Gian Gastone was.... Anna Maria Franziska of Saxe-Lauenburg, in Bohemia. She'd already been married and widowed, with one daughter, i.e. proven fertile. This may have given her the self confidence to do absolutely NOT what either her husband or his father wanted. Gian Gastone had travelled to Osnabrück to marry her there and had expected to return with her to Tuscany forthwith. Instead, she insisted they'd go to her estate in Bohemia. He hated it there and found it deadly boring. She was a passionate horsewoman and into agriculture, and they shared absolutely nothing. He attempted to flee to Paris; Dad ordered him back. He also ordered Franziska to come to Tuscany, but fat chance. She stayed where she was, and where she made the rules and had the power. Gian Gastone started to drink, massively, and became an alcoholic who was rarely seen sober for the rest of his life. He also gambled away huge sums of money in Prague, and started his life of sexual debauchery, according to Acton. Cosimo enlisted the help of the Pope to order his daughter in law to come to Tuscany with her husband, but she only said there was no point, since Gian Gastone was impotent in addition to being a useless gambling drunk. At which point Cosimo III. caved and allowd Gian Gastone to come home alone. Too late for the life long habits Gian Gastone had picked up, though.
Allow me to rewind to before the marriage: in the gospel according to Acton, it starts with hot lackey Giuliano Dami, who is exceptionally beautiful, and whom Gian Gastone falls for and takes with him to Germany when he sets off to marry as ordered by Dad. As the marriage is a catastrophe from the start, Dami becomes more than Gian Gastone's boyfriend and consolation, he becomes his pimp. Quoth Acton:
Before he had left Florence, and even in Paris, he had been voted well favoured as to physique, with his sad eyes and sensual lips, his slender shape and delicate complexion. After his sojourn in Prague he became bloated and unrecognizable. For in the capital of Bohemia Giuliano Dami found it more easy to seduce his master into those profligate courses which were afterwards to set their stamp on him.
We will quote from a memoir of Gian Gastone in the Biblioteca Moreniana at Florence :
‘There were scores of fresh young students in Prague, smooth chinned Bohemians and Germans, who were so impecunious that on certain days they wandered begging from door to door. In this wide preserve Giuliano could always hunt for amorous game and introduce some new and comely morsel to the Prince. There was also no small number of palaces at Prague belonging to great and opulent nobles. These had regiments of retainers about them in their households, foot men and lackeys of low birth and humble station. Giuliano induced His Highness to seek his diversions with these, and to mingle freely in their midst, so as to choose any specimen that appealed to his singular sense. He encouraged the Prince, moreover, to eat and drink and make free with this beau monde, and intoxicate himself in their company. ...
mildred_of_midgard: (Giuliano Dami), per Wikipedia, was not yet 14 when the wedding took place, so if you add in travel time and some time for Gian Gastone to acquire him in Italy before that, was 13 at most when Gian Gastone decided he was hot stuff, and 15 when he was allegedly winning Gian Gastone over to a debauched lifestyle in Prague. (Gian Gastone was 12 years older.)
Maybe, maybe not.
selenak: His age definitely is a powerful argument for him being unfairly blamed in the who corrupted whom stakes in Prague. But he does get the blame for this and for the later "Ruspanti", see below, in the 1930s book I'm summarizing.
By now, it was glaringly obvious to Cosimo that he had a succession problem. One son dying of syphilis, the other impotent (with women) according to his wife, drinking himself to death and staring up to the stars (he did that, it was a thing). Cosimo tried to petition that his daughter, who'd been married to the Elector Palatine, would be allowed to succeed. But alas.
Charles VI, HRE: Cosimo, my friend, let me point out two things for you. Firstly, the Palatinate is a principality within the HRE, which means I'm your daughter's husband's boss, and I decide about any additional title any of my Electors get. Secondly, and as importantaly, do you remember why Tuscany is a duchy now? Which it sure as hell was not in the days of Lorenzo the Magnificent? Because my ancestor Charles V. took the quondam Republic of Florence and made it into the Duchy of Tuscany, appointing your ancestor its Duke. You know, when his troops were in Italy and Rome got sacked and the Florentines debated either letting child!Catherine de' Medici be raped by the troops or put her out in a cage in front of the city walls so Charles' canons would hit her. Those days. Anyway, since your ancestor from the younger Medici line accepted Tuscany as a Duchy from the hands of the Holy Roman Emperor, it means any Duke of Tuscany is the vassal of the HRE and if your dynasty is about to die out, well, I've got an idea...
Cosimo: I hate you. How about I pick Don Carlos, son of Isabella Farnese, Queen of Spain and of Philip V. instead?
Charles VI (having spent years of his life fighting Philip V.) : I don't think so.
Cosimo dies. Gian Gastone ascends, the literal last of the Medici, save for his sister. He's so drunk all the time that he throws up out of his chaise when carried through Florence, so he rarely is. At meals he's not better - vomiting into his napkin, wiping his mouth with his periwig. Also: the Ruspanti. Who were they?
The Ruspanti
According to Acton, once Cosimo was dead, Giuliano Dami went recruiting again, and these beautiful young men, mostly of low life origin, were referred to as the Ruspanti. Only now because Gian Gastone was the Duke, Giuliano Dami could reek in the money from anyone who wanted access to him, especially since Gian Gastone for the last few years did not get out of his bed anymore. Literally. After the famous occasion when he threw up in public out of his chaise when transported through the streets, he remained in bed and if he had to hold court, held court there. The Ruspanti performed sexual acts both with each other and for him, though that's not all they did, and their number grew up to 300. Or, to quote Acton again:
Giuliano Dami, who had every reason to foster this passion, collected a regiment of males and whose entire business was to pander, however grossly, to the Grand Duke's caprices , and mitigate the asperities of the political situation and the monotony of his daily life. Their salaries varied with the antics they performed ; often he required them to insult him and knock him about like a clown ; from the fact that they were paid on Tuesdays and Saturdays in ruspi ( a ruspo being a Florentine sequin formerly worth ten francs) they became notorious as Ruspanti. They were generally recruited from the lowest classes ( ‘ it mattered not from what gang of vagrant knaves and mongrels, unruly and unclean, provided they were graced with an alluring eye and the countenance of an Adonis” ) , though knights and citizens, and many foreigners figured among them. Soon they usurped the Grand Duke's time almost to the
exclusion of everyone else : their prominence embarrasses the polite historian, though he may not cancel the rôles they played in Gian Gastone's latter years. Necessarily their presence must cloud the perspective, while investing it with a deeper pathos. (...)
Giuliano and the Ruspanti knew more about him than his ministers ; but his jokes were widely reported , and he joked on every subject. 'He would entertain a dozen dissolute boys to sumptuous dinners, and one by one he would call them by the names of his most prominent men of state. With these he would hold his nightly conference .'(...)
When Gian Gastone tries to make a deal with the Spaniards, accepting Don Carlos as his heir and Spanish troops to fortify that claim, in 1731:
The Spanish troops did not arrive until October, 1731. Meanwhile the Ruspanti, some 370 strong, were becoming a public menace : even Spanish soldiers were less feared than this rowdy gang of bullies. Every time they came for their wages beneath the colonnade in thecourtyard of the Pitti, there was an uproar. On the evening of August 25th, 1731 , writes Settimanni, the Grand Duke’s Ruspanti, who since a fortnight had not been paid for their good services to H.R.H. , betook themselves in great number to the old market and tried to obtain food from the cook-shops without money to pay for it ; but the shopkeepers resisted them, and a scuffle ensued with knives and stonesa - flying. Nothing of the matter came before the courts of justice, however, from due regard to the favour this rabble enjoyed with H.R.H. Such scenes were of daily occurrence. And in September, the Ruspanti shouted insults outside the windows of the chamber where H.R.H. slept, and even tried to enter it and see whether His Highness were alive or dead, having forced their way through the gate of the Boboli Gardens. After this a sentry-box was built to keep armed guards there during the night, who were ordered to tell anyone approaching the said windows to withdraw , and if they disobeyed, to fire immediately. The Serene Electress also, fearing similar insults from the Ruspanti, doubled the guards to her apartment.
A more exact version is told in the reliable MS. memoir in the Biblioteca Moreniana: Giuliano Dami had ceased to encourage the Grand Duke’s disorderly routs from fear of the Electress, who regarded him as their instigator and pursued him with a deadly hatred .The Grand Duke abstained from them in consequence , for he adored and valued Giuliano more than his own eyes. After a time, however, he could forbear no longer, so great was the delight he took in these assemblies. Without informing Giuliano he arranged with ten or twelve of his Ruspanti that they were to enter the Boboli Gardens by a gate above the large piazza, which always remained half -open with a single sentry to guard it. A secret door from the garden would admit them to the palace, whence they could easily gain his apartments. They reached this gate at the appointed hour, wearing grotesque masks and dominoes, but as the sentry turned them back they set upon him and put him to flight with a volley of stones. This obstacle overcome, they entered the garden, but could not find the secret door, for darkness was gathering. In the meantime the sentry had warned the bodyguard. Torches were lit , and ten stout soldiers fully armed set after them . The Ruspanti were groping in the dark, unable to find the door. When they saw the torches of the bodyguard approaching, they moved some distance from the palace to avoid suspicion. But instead of escaping, as they could have done easily by one of the side-alleys or shrubberies, they came forth pluckily to meet their adversaries. The guards were ready to charge them, but as the Ruspanti appeared unexpectedly in a compact body with pistols and drawn swords, they had to let them pass. They were merely escorted , unrecognized, out of the royal gardens. Bettino Ricasoli suspected they were thieves, and gave orders that in future all members of the bodyguard were to use muskets with bayonets attached to them by night. ... Had any but the Ruspantibeen responsible, the whole city would have been overturned to discover the culprits . But the incident was hushed up, and no steps whatever were taken to investigate. When the Grand Duke was informed, his delight was unbounded . He summoned his hectic young heroes, and wished them to render him a full account of their adventure. He lauded their courage, and made them bountiful amends.
The Electress is Gian Gastone's sister, who had married the Prince Elector of the Palatinate, remember, but was widowed by then and returned to Florence. Anyway, those were the Ruspanti.
But: Gian Gastone's reign wasn't all sexual license and alcohol. After Cosimo's death, Gian Gastone immediately gets rid of the anti-Jewish and anti-Protestant laws his father had made, throws out corrupt churchmen from the government, and revoked the banishment of "new" (i.e. Galilean) ideas from the university of Pisa. He also separated Medici property from state property, being aware that despite his efforts, neither his sister nor Don Carlos would succeed him, and this way his sister could at least inherit the family possessions. Amazingly given thie condition he already was in by the time he took over, he managed a reign of 13 years before his alcoholism at last killed him. Because of his reforms, he was sincerely mourned. But the story of the Medici was over for good.
On to the narrative. Acton covers roughly a century, between the 1640s, when future Cosimo III. is born, to the death of Gian Gastone de' Medici, whereupon Franz Stephan gets the Duchy. He's focused on the family members and their wives - and btw, the end of the line came to be if this book is anything to go by because a couple of in varying degrees awful men married a couple of strong willed women, degree of awfulness debate worthy, several of whom did not behave as expected, and had catastrophic marriages with them - and blithely assumes you know at least a bit history if you've purchased this book and he doesn't have to explain everything from ground scratch.
For example, when saying in the introduction the reader may be surprised that he didn't pick the more famous Medici and their time to focus on instead of this bunch, he says:
The Renaissance is admittedly the most interesting period of Italian history, Florence the most typical state, Lorenzo de' Medici its most typical citizen.
Okay? I mean, I'm not exactly disagreeing, the Italian Renassaisance is fascinating - but "the most interesting of Italian history? whatever did he think of all those Roman Republic and Roman Empire centuries? Or how about the late 11th, early 12th century, starring the other Frederico Secondo, the medieval HRE Emperor born in Sicily, a Renaissance mind in the middle ages, and in the same era St. Francis and the dastardly yet very efficient Pope Innocent III and Salerno as a place where women could study medicine as well as men and Italians, Germans, Normans and Moors all living in Italy? And how is Florence more typical of the Renaissance than, say, Venice? Or Rome? Lorenzo de'Medici as the epitome of the Renaissance man I can go with. Note that Acton expects you to know something about Lorenzo, aka Il Magnifico, here, and like I said, doesn't bother explaining why you should.
Here's another bit from the preface illustrating neatly Acton's style, when he talks about the portraits of the last Medici:
And it is strange to compare the portraits of these Medici with those of the earlier branch, with the Renaissance -faces of Lorenzo and Giuliano, and the grandsons and great - grandsons of Cosimo Pater Patriae. For the Bourbon has intruded . There is no longer the same austerity : instead, a ponderous sensuality becomes more and more apparent, rigid in the beginning of the seventeenth century and kept under firm control, as in the faces of Austrian and Spanish nobility, but later loosening into a thicker voluptuousness, curdling into flaccid folds until, finally, a terrible senile lust asserts itself. Decay sets in . The muscles that were taut have let themselves go. The heavy eyelids droop more than ever now, the loose and flabby lips completely drop, like some pulpy fruit, bursting and over-ripe : only the nose retains its mighty prominence. But for this indomitable bulwark all the features sag, and no amount of pride will succeed in pulling them together. The over -emphasis of each weakness:the triumph of matter over mind, of exultant fleshiness (never has the
spirit surrendered to such an extent as this, one exclaims) accumulates so as to form the most gruesome of caricatures.
Louis XIV: Excuse you, Acton. What do you mean, "The Bourbon has intruded"? Leaving aside that I am the grandson of a Medici, are you accusing my family of being sex fiends?
Henri IV: Well, I will admit I might qualify. I certainly pounced whenever I had the chance. On the other hand, I am still everyone's candidate for Best French King ever, and not just because Voltaire wrote an epic about me. So it evidently was not to my detriment.
Louis XIV: With all due respect, Granddad, I might not be everyone's choice for "best" but for "most influential" and "the one everyone else is thinking of when saying "French King"? Le Roi, c'est moi. And I did have mistresses, of course I did, but only rarely two at a time, unlike you. Certainly compared with such imitators of myself like that Saxon boasting about this strength, I showed both taste and restraint.
Louis XIII: And I was repressedly gay and therefore had only one mistress. I probably never had sex with my male favourites at all. As for my wife, Anne and I needed 23 years to produce Louis and Philippe. No one, but no one, can accuse me of having had too much sex!
Louis XV: Well. Err. What can I say? When your nickname is "the Well Beloved".... and we can't all do ballet for physical exercise. We really can't, great-grandfather. I hated it.
Louis XVI: The only woman I ever had sex with in my entire life was my wife. After seven years of trying in vain. And no, I did not have sex with a man, either. You have to go back to the middle ages to find a French King with my fidelity among earlier dynasties.
Philip V: But I, first Bourbon king of Spain, and contemporary of most of these Medici Acton is writing about, was totally faithful to both my wives, no known mistresses or male favorites! If I got a reputation for being sexually dependent on them, well, remember that it's a tough life thinking you're dead or possibly a frog, and I needed moral support. Wife = nurse! I too take umbrage at being blamed for Medici decadence.
All pre revolutionary Bourbon Kings: Back at ya, Acton. If the Medici ran themselves down, our heritage wasn't at fault!
Back to the story. For
cahn, some more orientation, as to how these Medici relate to other Medici you might have heard of, to wit, two Queens of France:Catherine de' Medici: last of the older line of the Medici, descended from the famous Lorenzo. Married Henri II of France, a Valois. More in my story which you've read. Three of her four sons became Kings of France and died; the fourth had already died when the third still reigned. That was the end of the Valois, and then came Henri de Navarre, the first Bourbon on the throne, who had married Catherine's daughter Margot in the famous St. Bortholomew's Night . When their marriage was annulled years later, he married:
Marie de' Medici: second wife of Henri IV. Marie came from another branch of the Medici line, descending from Lorenzo the Elder,younger brother to Cosimo Pater Patriae, whereas Catherine had descended from that Cosimo. Marie de' Medici was the mother of Louis XIII., and various smart and energetic daughters, including Henrietta Maria, married to Charles I. of England (he would get beheaded), mother of Charles II and James II. However, Marie de' Medici's favourite kid was her second son Gaston, which is important for this story. Gaston was the in fact THE archetypical scheming younger brother, and his mother schemed right with him. Since Louis XIII and Anne d'Autriche did not produce living kids for 23 years, Gaston joined every plot against his brother ever in the security that as the sole male heir, he would never suffer serious consequences when caught. Then came future Louis XIV, and shortly after him Philippe the Gay. With now two living boys between him and the throne, Gaston was very frustrated indeed, but also more cautious. He transferred his ambition to his children. One of his daughters will be a main character of this book, so remember: Gaston = wannabe King. Also, thanks to his second marriage, loaded in cash. His idea for his daughters - he didn't have any sons - was that they should either marry their royal cousins or other royalty. That's how he raised them.
Ferdinando II: Golden Autumn of the Medici
Our story starts in 1642, in the year Galileo Galilei dies, Tuscany's greatest scientist. His boss was Ferdinando II de' Medici , Grand Duke of Tuscany and basically the last Medici managing to show the old Medici virtues - patronage of the arts and sciences - united to basic government efficiency. Ferdinando is married to Vittoria della Rovere, a first cousin, and the same year Galileo dies, his son Cosimo (future Cosimo III) is born.
(If Friedrich and Wilhelm and any mixing thereof a fave Hohenzollern names and the Hannovers go for "George" and "Ernst August" and combinations thereof, the Medici go for: Cosimo, Lorenzo, Giuliano, Ferdinando, Francesco. Most are called variations of these names.)
Ferdinando comes across as a sympathetic guy in general. At age 20 he didn't leave Florence when the plague struck again but remained and helped as much as he could. People didn't forget that. He also, which was increasingly rare in his age of religious strife, was not a bigot. Quote from the book:
An anecdote of his youth already denoted certain symptoms of the Grand Duke's easy , tolerant nature. On a cold winter's evening he was warming himself by a fire in his apartment, when his mother, the Archduchess Maria-Maddalena, paid him an impromptu visit. She told him with dismay that she had suddenly discovered the existence of a particular carnal abuse in Florence ; among people, more over, of distinct parts, power and social standing. In spite of whatsoever virtues they might possess, she was determined to have them all severely punished, and submitted a long list of offenders to his scrutiny.
When the Grand Duke had read it, he remarked that this information did not suffice. There were others of similar tendencies he could append to her list. And taking a quill, he added his name in capitals.
The Archduchess said he had done this merely to save the guilty, but that she would have them chastised all the same. The Grand Duke in quired to what punishment she chose to condemn them , and she replied with some vehemence: ‘They must be burned. ' So the Grand Duke, flinging the list into the fire, said : “ There they are, Madame, punished just as you have condemned them .'
Ferdinando wasn't kidding. One of the reasons why his marriage to his cousin Vittoria was miserable was that she caught him with a hot page, one Count Bruto della Molara. (Acton: "The Grand Duchess was naturally indignant when she surprised her husband and his page in the midst of forbidden dalliance, and promptly left the room without a word.")
Vittoria first tried to take her revenge by calling in Jesuits to denounce these specific sins from the pulpit. Whereupon the hot page, with Ferdinando's knowledge, managed to "compromise" at least one of the Jesuits. Exit Jesuits from Florence. Vittoria next ensured that her new baby, Cosimo, was raised exactly as the opposite of his father. Ferdinando loved art and sciences; Vittoria ensured Cosimo would only love religion and be as little taught in the sciences as she could get away with. And the religion was of the most fundamentalist type available at the time. Despite having a deeply miserable marriage, she and Ferdinando, eighteen years after Cosimo, managed to produce another living male child, Francesco Maria. Now Cosimo would turn into an ultra pious bigot. Francesco Maria would be a partying playboy who ate, drank and fucked his way to an early death. Give you three guesses which was was made a Cardinal of the Church. (Because second sons, hey.)
Marguerite Louise d'Orleans: Vive la Resistance
Cosimo was such a serious ultra pious kid and youth that he ceased to smile in public. He was with priests all the time. Ferdinando correctly concluded that this did not bode well for the future and that the boy had to get married quickly so he could procreate and maybe live a little. Also, of course, a shiny wife would bring useful connections and money. To that end, he procured for his son the younger daughter of Gaston d'Orleans, eternal busy schemer. Uncle to Louis XIV. Said daughter, Marguerite-Louise, absolutely did NOT want to go and marry a future Medici Duke, but cousin Louis insisted. And young Cosimo quickly found out that his parents' marriage was paradise compared to his own. Marguerite Louise had one goal: she'd return to France. Never mind that noble Catholic marriages were supposed to be forever. She wanted to return to France with the same singlemindedness and fervor SD wanted to marry Fritz and Wilhelmine to their Hannover cousins. To that end, she proceeded to insult and humiliate both Cosimo and the Medici in general as much as she could from the get go. She demanded the Tuscan crown jewels (used for her marriage and coronation as Duchess) for her personal use, and when Cosimo pointed out they didn't belong to him as a private person but to the state of Florence, she attempted to steal them and smuggle them out of Tuscany to sell them. (She was caught.) (BTW, the man Marguerite Louise had wanted to marry instead was, wait for it, Charles de Lorraine, Grandfather of Franz Stephan. He was her lover for a while, too.) She threatened to break a bottle on Cosimo's head if he didn't leave her alone. According to our Sophie of Hanover, who made her one and only long Italian trip with husband Ernst August around that time, she slept with her husband once a week to duty's sake, but that was that, neither of them could force themselves to do more. Louis XIV. sent a marriage counsellor in the form of a Poitevin lady, Madame Deffand, to whose reports we owe the knowledge that Marguerite Louise was also a passionate walker who exhausted both her Florentine and French attendants by long hiking tours.
Cosimo responded to this at first by reducing Marguerite Louise's French staff in the hope of forcing her to adjust, but fat chance. She came up with a new insult instead. Since Italians in general and the Medici in particular were all poisoners, clearly, she insisted on only eating what a French cook would prepare for her. Marguerite Louise then hit on a really good (for her) idea, which was telling Cosimo, by then the Duke, that since she hadn't wanted to marry him and had been forced to, clearly their marriage was null and void, which meant they were living in shameless unholy concubinage. Cue much self flagellation on Cosimo's part and ponderings whether she was right.
She did swear she was ready and willing to retire to a nunnery, as long as it was a FRENCH nunnery. By then, he'd basically been reduced to keeping her in a genteel captivity with guards prepared to stop her if she made a run for it. She pretended to have breast cancer, so she'd be sent back to France, but the (French) doctor sent by Cousin Louis said she was fine. Then she started public pillow fights with her cook and tickled him on her bed to the breathless amazement of spectators. Since somehow, in this years of hell, three children, two boys and one daughter, had been produced, Cosimo at last caved and allowed to return to France. (Without her children, of course.)
Cosimo III: 53 Years of Bigotry in Government
Now, independent from this once his father had died Cosimo had started the longest reign any Duke of Tuscany would ever have (52 years, all in all). And it was a terrible one on every level. Scientists and artists were either banished or so poorly paid they went on their own initiative. The economy became so poor that there was bartering on the streets instead of paying with coins. And bigotry ruled. Complete with old school religious antisemitism. Cosimo started to persecute Jews. He forbade Christian/Jewish marriages, forgave Christians and Jews to live in the same house together, forbade Jews to serve in Christian households and Christians to serve Jews. Any type of sexual intercourse between Christians and Jews was forbidden. Etc. And even the Christians were supposed to denounce each other for not being Christian enough if needed.
(There are, however, two examples of laws Cosimo created which our author does approve of. I quote from the book:
Youthful sinners were punished with corresponding severity: in some cases, however, one must applaud the method. Settimanni writes, in October, 1690 : 'A peasant boy between five and six years old, from the district of Pistoia, was castrated in the hospital of S. Maria Nuova, for killing a little girl of three with a stone. He had wanted to remove a medal that she wore about her neck, whence she began to scream , and he stoned her to the ground, striking her head in such wise that it killed her. Seeing that she was dead, he dragged her to a ditch , and covered her face with his clothes . For so much craftiness (malizia ) it was well judged that he should not be allowed offspring in this world, and therefore he was castrated .' Cruelty to animals was also punished in a manner we might emulate : a scoundrel was put in the pillory by the column in the market-place, with a collar and placard , ‘ for being a murderer of cats ' , and two of his dead victims were
appended on his neck .)
Marguerite Louise: the final years
Meanwhile, Cosimo also kept up on news about his ex in France, via the Tuscan emissary, who sent regular reports on Marguerite Louise. Having achieved her life goal, Marguerite Louise was a bit at a loss at what do with herself. Technically, she did stay in a nunnery. De facto, she was at Versailles most often, gambling huge sums away (which lead to regular arguments for her pension via letter with Tuscany). She had an affair with her groom. (She also hit her servants when the mood struck her. Sex or beatings, it could be either.) She bathed in the nude in the (public) river. (When Cosimo complained about this to Louis via envoy, Louis basically reacted with a shrug.) When the Abbess of the convent where she was living, Montmartre, had died and a new Abbess was appointed, the new Abbess tried to lay down the law. Fat chance. Marguerite Louise threatened to kill her with a hatchet and a pistol. In the end, an agreement with Cosimo and Louis was reached that Marguerite Louise would move to a new convent (Sainte Mande).
For a while, Marguerite Louise had kept up correspondence with her oldest son, Ferdinando when he'd become a rebellious teen writing her letters, and once when Cosimo became ill she told everyone at Versailles it wasn't Tuscany she'd hated, only her husband, and immediately after his death she would "she would fly to Florence to banish all hypocrites and hypocrisy and establish a new government". In the end, Cosimo outlived her, but Marguerite Louise never stopped surprising people till her end. Having moved to Sainte-Mande, she declared it a "spiritual brothel" in need of reform, and she had a point; there were five or six nuns with illegitimate kids and several lovers, and the Abbess was present only some months in the year (during which she wore trousers) and with her lover otherwise. Marguerite Louise threw herself into her last transformation into a sincere reformer, overhauled the convent, kicked out the Abbess and the wayward nuns and next threw herself into charity. She had two strokes which partially incapacitated her, and by then, Louis was dead and Philippe d'Orleans Regent. In another surprising turn of events, the aging Marguerite Louise had become pals with his mother, Liselotte, and so Philippe allowed her to buy a house in Paris and live out her life there in peace, which she did.
Fall of the House of Medici: Ferdinando and Gian Gastone
As for her children. The oldest, Ferdinando, had some of the good Medici gifts of old - he was a musician and composer, and openly bisexual (this included an affair with a castrato and with a hot musician, but he also had female lovers). Cosimo, despite all evidence to the contrary thinking marriage was just the thing, and argueing with this rebellious son all the time, much like FW insisted on him marrying both as a disciplinary measure and for the future of the dynasty. A very nice girl, as it happened, Violante of Bavaria, who was devoted him. Alas, Ferdinando found her dull and didn't requite her feelings. (Stop me if this sounds familiar.) During his regular trips to Venice, he managed to get infected with syphilis, and not the type to stop at stage 2. He died of it, eventually, unable to recognize anyone around him.
This made brother Gian Gastone the heir, though Dad Cosimo also tried to heighten his chances by making his own younger brother, the frolicking playboy Cardinal (remember him) leave the clergy and marry. His brother did that, and promptly died, but not before his wife had taken a look at his fat, debauched body and declared he was too revolting for her to sleep with. Gian Gastone (named after his scheming French grandfather Gaston d'Orleans) had been married at Dad Cosimo's orders in Ferdinando's life time already since it was evidence that tertiary syphilis suffering Ferdinando would never rule. (And had no children by Violante.) With an unerring instinct, Cosimo's wife of choice for Gian Gastone was.... Anna Maria Franziska of Saxe-Lauenburg, in Bohemia. She'd already been married and widowed, with one daughter, i.e. proven fertile. This may have given her the self confidence to do absolutely NOT what either her husband or his father wanted. Gian Gastone had travelled to Osnabrück to marry her there and had expected to return with her to Tuscany forthwith. Instead, she insisted they'd go to her estate in Bohemia. He hated it there and found it deadly boring. She was a passionate horsewoman and into agriculture, and they shared absolutely nothing. He attempted to flee to Paris; Dad ordered him back. He also ordered Franziska to come to Tuscany, but fat chance. She stayed where she was, and where she made the rules and had the power. Gian Gastone started to drink, massively, and became an alcoholic who was rarely seen sober for the rest of his life. He also gambled away huge sums of money in Prague, and started his life of sexual debauchery, according to Acton. Cosimo enlisted the help of the Pope to order his daughter in law to come to Tuscany with her husband, but she only said there was no point, since Gian Gastone was impotent in addition to being a useless gambling drunk. At which point Cosimo III. caved and allowd Gian Gastone to come home alone. Too late for the life long habits Gian Gastone had picked up, though.
Allow me to rewind to before the marriage: in the gospel according to Acton, it starts with hot lackey Giuliano Dami, who is exceptionally beautiful, and whom Gian Gastone falls for and takes with him to Germany when he sets off to marry as ordered by Dad. As the marriage is a catastrophe from the start, Dami becomes more than Gian Gastone's boyfriend and consolation, he becomes his pimp. Quoth Acton:
Before he had left Florence, and even in Paris, he had been voted well favoured as to physique, with his sad eyes and sensual lips, his slender shape and delicate complexion. After his sojourn in Prague he became bloated and unrecognizable. For in the capital of Bohemia Giuliano Dami found it more easy to seduce his master into those profligate courses which were afterwards to set their stamp on him.
We will quote from a memoir of Gian Gastone in the Biblioteca Moreniana at Florence :
‘There were scores of fresh young students in Prague, smooth chinned Bohemians and Germans, who were so impecunious that on certain days they wandered begging from door to door. In this wide preserve Giuliano could always hunt for amorous game and introduce some new and comely morsel to the Prince. There was also no small number of palaces at Prague belonging to great and opulent nobles. These had regiments of retainers about them in their households, foot men and lackeys of low birth and humble station. Giuliano induced His Highness to seek his diversions with these, and to mingle freely in their midst, so as to choose any specimen that appealed to his singular sense. He encouraged the Prince, moreover, to eat and drink and make free with this beau monde, and intoxicate himself in their company. ...
mildred_of_midgard: (Giuliano Dami), per Wikipedia, was not yet 14 when the wedding took place, so if you add in travel time and some time for Gian Gastone to acquire him in Italy before that, was 13 at most when Gian Gastone decided he was hot stuff, and 15 when he was allegedly winning Gian Gastone over to a debauched lifestyle in Prague. (Gian Gastone was 12 years older.)Maybe, maybe not.
selenak: His age definitely is a powerful argument for him being unfairly blamed in the who corrupted whom stakes in Prague. But he does get the blame for this and for the later "Ruspanti", see below, in the 1930s book I'm summarizing. By now, it was glaringly obvious to Cosimo that he had a succession problem. One son dying of syphilis, the other impotent (with women) according to his wife, drinking himself to death and staring up to the stars (he did that, it was a thing). Cosimo tried to petition that his daughter, who'd been married to the Elector Palatine, would be allowed to succeed. But alas.
Charles VI, HRE: Cosimo, my friend, let me point out two things for you. Firstly, the Palatinate is a principality within the HRE, which means I'm your daughter's husband's boss, and I decide about any additional title any of my Electors get. Secondly, and as importantaly, do you remember why Tuscany is a duchy now? Which it sure as hell was not in the days of Lorenzo the Magnificent? Because my ancestor Charles V. took the quondam Republic of Florence and made it into the Duchy of Tuscany, appointing your ancestor its Duke. You know, when his troops were in Italy and Rome got sacked and the Florentines debated either letting child!Catherine de' Medici be raped by the troops or put her out in a cage in front of the city walls so Charles' canons would hit her. Those days. Anyway, since your ancestor from the younger Medici line accepted Tuscany as a Duchy from the hands of the Holy Roman Emperor, it means any Duke of Tuscany is the vassal of the HRE and if your dynasty is about to die out, well, I've got an idea...
Cosimo: I hate you. How about I pick Don Carlos, son of Isabella Farnese, Queen of Spain and of Philip V. instead?
Charles VI (having spent years of his life fighting Philip V.) : I don't think so.
Cosimo dies. Gian Gastone ascends, the literal last of the Medici, save for his sister. He's so drunk all the time that he throws up out of his chaise when carried through Florence, so he rarely is. At meals he's not better - vomiting into his napkin, wiping his mouth with his periwig. Also: the Ruspanti. Who were they?
The Ruspanti
According to Acton, once Cosimo was dead, Giuliano Dami went recruiting again, and these beautiful young men, mostly of low life origin, were referred to as the Ruspanti. Only now because Gian Gastone was the Duke, Giuliano Dami could reek in the money from anyone who wanted access to him, especially since Gian Gastone for the last few years did not get out of his bed anymore. Literally. After the famous occasion when he threw up in public out of his chaise when transported through the streets, he remained in bed and if he had to hold court, held court there. The Ruspanti performed sexual acts both with each other and for him, though that's not all they did, and their number grew up to 300. Or, to quote Acton again:
Giuliano Dami, who had every reason to foster this passion, collected a regiment of males and whose entire business was to pander, however grossly, to the Grand Duke's caprices , and mitigate the asperities of the political situation and the monotony of his daily life. Their salaries varied with the antics they performed ; often he required them to insult him and knock him about like a clown ; from the fact that they were paid on Tuesdays and Saturdays in ruspi ( a ruspo being a Florentine sequin formerly worth ten francs) they became notorious as Ruspanti. They were generally recruited from the lowest classes ( ‘ it mattered not from what gang of vagrant knaves and mongrels, unruly and unclean, provided they were graced with an alluring eye and the countenance of an Adonis” ) , though knights and citizens, and many foreigners figured among them. Soon they usurped the Grand Duke's time almost to the
exclusion of everyone else : their prominence embarrasses the polite historian, though he may not cancel the rôles they played in Gian Gastone's latter years. Necessarily their presence must cloud the perspective, while investing it with a deeper pathos. (...)
Giuliano and the Ruspanti knew more about him than his ministers ; but his jokes were widely reported , and he joked on every subject. 'He would entertain a dozen dissolute boys to sumptuous dinners, and one by one he would call them by the names of his most prominent men of state. With these he would hold his nightly conference .'(...)
When Gian Gastone tries to make a deal with the Spaniards, accepting Don Carlos as his heir and Spanish troops to fortify that claim, in 1731:
The Spanish troops did not arrive until October, 1731. Meanwhile the Ruspanti, some 370 strong, were becoming a public menace : even Spanish soldiers were less feared than this rowdy gang of bullies. Every time they came for their wages beneath the colonnade in thecourtyard of the Pitti, there was an uproar. On the evening of August 25th, 1731 , writes Settimanni, the Grand Duke’s Ruspanti, who since a fortnight had not been paid for their good services to H.R.H. , betook themselves in great number to the old market and tried to obtain food from the cook-shops without money to pay for it ; but the shopkeepers resisted them, and a scuffle ensued with knives and stonesa - flying. Nothing of the matter came before the courts of justice, however, from due regard to the favour this rabble enjoyed with H.R.H. Such scenes were of daily occurrence. And in September, the Ruspanti shouted insults outside the windows of the chamber where H.R.H. slept, and even tried to enter it and see whether His Highness were alive or dead, having forced their way through the gate of the Boboli Gardens. After this a sentry-box was built to keep armed guards there during the night, who were ordered to tell anyone approaching the said windows to withdraw , and if they disobeyed, to fire immediately. The Serene Electress also, fearing similar insults from the Ruspanti, doubled the guards to her apartment.
A more exact version is told in the reliable MS. memoir in the Biblioteca Moreniana: Giuliano Dami had ceased to encourage the Grand Duke’s disorderly routs from fear of the Electress, who regarded him as their instigator and pursued him with a deadly hatred .The Grand Duke abstained from them in consequence , for he adored and valued Giuliano more than his own eyes. After a time, however, he could forbear no longer, so great was the delight he took in these assemblies. Without informing Giuliano he arranged with ten or twelve of his Ruspanti that they were to enter the Boboli Gardens by a gate above the large piazza, which always remained half -open with a single sentry to guard it. A secret door from the garden would admit them to the palace, whence they could easily gain his apartments. They reached this gate at the appointed hour, wearing grotesque masks and dominoes, but as the sentry turned them back they set upon him and put him to flight with a volley of stones. This obstacle overcome, they entered the garden, but could not find the secret door, for darkness was gathering. In the meantime the sentry had warned the bodyguard. Torches were lit , and ten stout soldiers fully armed set after them . The Ruspanti were groping in the dark, unable to find the door. When they saw the torches of the bodyguard approaching, they moved some distance from the palace to avoid suspicion. But instead of escaping, as they could have done easily by one of the side-alleys or shrubberies, they came forth pluckily to meet their adversaries. The guards were ready to charge them, but as the Ruspanti appeared unexpectedly in a compact body with pistols and drawn swords, they had to let them pass. They were merely escorted , unrecognized, out of the royal gardens. Bettino Ricasoli suspected they were thieves, and gave orders that in future all members of the bodyguard were to use muskets with bayonets attached to them by night. ... Had any but the Ruspantibeen responsible, the whole city would have been overturned to discover the culprits . But the incident was hushed up, and no steps whatever were taken to investigate. When the Grand Duke was informed, his delight was unbounded . He summoned his hectic young heroes, and wished them to render him a full account of their adventure. He lauded their courage, and made them bountiful amends.
The Electress is Gian Gastone's sister, who had married the Prince Elector of the Palatinate, remember, but was widowed by then and returned to Florence. Anyway, those were the Ruspanti.
But: Gian Gastone's reign wasn't all sexual license and alcohol. After Cosimo's death, Gian Gastone immediately gets rid of the anti-Jewish and anti-Protestant laws his father had made, throws out corrupt churchmen from the government, and revoked the banishment of "new" (i.e. Galilean) ideas from the university of Pisa. He also separated Medici property from state property, being aware that despite his efforts, neither his sister nor Don Carlos would succeed him, and this way his sister could at least inherit the family possessions. Amazingly given thie condition he already was in by the time he took over, he managed a reign of 13 years before his alcoholism at last killed him. Because of his reforms, he was sincerely mourned. But the story of the Medici was over for good.
Tags:
- anna maria franziska of saxe-lauenburg,
- anna maria luisa de' medici,
- cosimo iii. de' medici,
- ferdinando de' medici,
- ferdinando ii. de' medici,
- francesco maria de' medici,
- franz i. stephan,
- gian gastone de' medici,
- giuliano dami,
- harold acton,
- louis xiv,
- marguerite louise d'orleans,
- medici,
- violante of bavaria,
- vittoria della rovere
Giuliano Dami's age
Date: 2021-12-05 04:27 pm (UTC)So this happened:
Bruschi: The anonymous manuscript claims, and other historians repeat, that Giuliano accompanied GG on his way to his wedding in Bohemia, meaning GG arrived with his lover in tow (and therefore wasn't committed to his marriage from the get-go). But nobody has ever asked how old Giuliano was at the time!
Mildred: Me, me! I asked! And was appalled by the answer.
Bruschi: The anonymous manuscript, while it gives all sorts of juicy (and unreliable, slanderous) details about Giuliano's origins, leaves out the most basic fact: when was he born? And I can tell you that he was born in 1683, meaning he would have been 14 when the wedding took place. Now, first of all, nobody takes a 14-yo as a companion on a trip like this.
Me: Your faith in human nature exceeds mine. Also, they don't necessarily have had to have been sexually involved at the time. Giuliano could have just been one lackey in a sizable retinue that wasn't necessarily hand-picked to consist 100% of people having sexual relations with the prince. But go on.
Bruschi: And second of all, I have documentary evidence showing that Giuliano was still in Italy, employed by an Italian noble, in 1703, meaning when he was 20. He didn't enter GG's service until his early 20s.
Me: Woot! Must tell salon and clear GG's name!
ETA: I must add that Bruschi is attempting to clear GG's name of having entered an arranged marriage to a complete stranger with no intention of being sexually faithful to her. I, who heartily disapprove of the double standard toward women but am reluctant to condemn human beings, especially gay ones, for finding emotional and sexual satisfaction outside of a cold-bloodedly arranged marriage, am more concerned about whether he was RAPING a CHILD or not.
no subject
Date: 2024-01-26 07:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-01-27 01:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-01-28 01:55 am (UTC)I should probably just make a copy of that in the Philip V post, since it makes no sense where it is and no one will ever find it there.