Temple of the Sibyl, Tivoli
It is said, indeed, that he had sketched a constitution before he left Tuscany; but, at all events, his reforms in the local administration went very far towards this great end. His purpose, in which, as in so much besides, he was obstructed by a multiplicity of special statutes and customs, was to introduce over the duchy one uniform system of municipal government, embracing all districts, rural as well as urban. During his whole reign, step after step led him towards this result, by organising new communal councils in various provinces, which had at length comprehended nearly the whole state. At the same time there was extended to the new boards the privilege conferred first on those in the Florentine territory, of managing their local patrimony as of old, without dependence upon the supreme government. The polity of Alessandro de’ Medici, which still prevailed in Florence, was annulled in 1781; and the elective board which administered the affairs of the city thenceforth consisted of a gonfalonier, as president, eleven priors, and twenty councillors.[f]
A Tuscan Estimate of Leopold
The reforms of Leopold I (Emperor Leopold II) did not suffice to drag Tuscany from the abyss into which she had been cast by the sbirocracy of the Medici. A fallen people would rise again to the enthusiasm of grand ideas, but what grand idea did Leopold I place at the head of the regenerative movement? He corrected clerical abuses, but did not enkindle the religious faith of the people after the example of the ardent preachers of the Crusades of the Middle Ages and the sixteenth century reformers. He recognised equality in civil laws, but did not make a social credo of it like the French republicans.
Leopold’s idea was a paternal government, a sort of family council, where the most touching accord would reign between the prince and the assembly elected by the commons. He wanted to make another Arcadia of Tuscany, an Arcadia simply occupied with its well-being and material progress, foreign to the use of arms and neutral in all aspects of war. But this was not the way to model character and make free citizens. The shock given to Europe by the French Revolution and the results therefrom had quite other effects. When Italy owed to the France of ’89 that moral shock which stirred up men’s minds and made them enter into communication with the universal conscience, it did not need more to convict of error those who reproached the French Revolution with having upset the reforms of Italian princes without any compensation. Abstention in this gigantic struggle was impossible. It was imperative to fight either for the powers of the past or for those of the future; so this worship of principles became the great passion of souls, and character regained all its old vigour. The Restoration came to check this salutary movement.
The sleeping sbirocracy inaugurated by Fossombroni went back to the Medici traditions and the meanness of the old régime was again substituted for the moral and political grandeur of the French epoch. But it was thenceforth impossible to stifle the germs of the new life. We shall see these germs, in spite of most unfavourable conditions, fructifying in Tuscany as in other parts of Italy; we shall see the country of Michelangelo coming out of its abasement and paying the Italian revolution the tribute of its genius, its love, and its blood.[g]
ITALY IN THE REVOLUTIONARY AGE
[1790-1794 A.D.]
For the sovereigns of Italy, as well as for the people, the first three years of the revolutionary age formed a time of abortive plans and earnest preparation.
Events of immediate interest cut short two visionary designs, of which, although both must have failed of success, yet either, by the very attempt, might have given another colour to the history of Europe. A few aspiring cardinals, looking back to Gregory VII and Sixtus V, devised an Italian league, to be headed by the pope; and at the court of Turin, which took example from its own more recent annals, there was planned a campaign against its Austrian neighbours. But Rome was destined to fall a passive victim to foreign aggression; and the ambitious king of Sardinia became the scapegoat of the prince whose Lombard crown he had wished to transfer to his own brows.