During that year Napoleon was occupied with the war against Prussia, which was terminated by the battle of Jena; and in 1807 he had commenced his system of intrigue in Spain, the first fruit of which was another appropriation in Italy. The widowed queen of Etruria, who acted as regent for her son Charles Louis, was unceremoniously ejected from his states, which in May, 1808, were formed into three departments of France, while the princess of Piombino was established at Florence with the title of grand duchess of Tuscany. About the same time—upon the proposal or pretext that the Bourbons of Parma should be made sovereigns of Portugal—their duchies of Parma, Piacenza, and Guastalla were finally annexed to France.
[1808-1811 A.D.]
The principal event of that year was the opening campaign of the French in Spain and Portugal. The schemes of the military autocrat in that quarter, destined to be the first step in his road to destruction, led him to recall his brother Joseph from the throne of Naples, which, on his leaving Italy for Madrid, was bestowed on Joachim Murat, grand duke of Berg and Cleves, one of the emperor’s bravest generals, and husband of his sister Caroline. The new king’s only title was an edict issued by Napoleon at Bayonne, on the 15th of July, 1808, in which he announces that he has granted to Joachim the throne of Naples and Sicily, vacant by the accession of Joseph to that of Spain and the Indies. The showy and gallant soldier began his reign by driving Sir Hudson Lowe out of the island of Capri;[23] and when the Carbonari, a sect of republicans recently organised, had co-operated with the royalists in raising disturbances throughout Calabria, he sent into the province his countryman, General Manhés, recommended for such service by having previously pacified, or depopulated, the Abruzzi. The envoy, executing his commission with heartless severity, made that secluded region orderly and peaceful, for the first time perhaps in its modern history.
The next year overturned the papal throne. The turmoil which the Revolution raised in the Gallican church had been quieted by the concordat of 1801; but a code of regulations issued by the first consul for carrying the principles of that compact into effect in France, and a decree issued by the vice-president Melzi for the same purpose in Lombardy, had been both disavowed by Pius as unauthorised by him, and as contrary not only to the spirit of the concordat, but to the principles of the church of Rome. The reconciliation which ensued was but hollow; and Napoleon determined that his dominion over Italy, now extending from one end of the peninsula to the other, should not be defied; and the papal state was openly claimed as a fief held under Napoleon, the successor of Charlemagne. The remonstrances of Pius on ecclesiastical matters, indeed, were urged in a tone that could not have failed to irritate a temper like that of the emperor.
In January, 1808, as is more fully described in the history of France, seven thousand soldiers under Miollis, professing to march for Naples, turned aside and seized Rome; and in April an imperial decree, founding its reasons on the pope’s refusal of the alliance, on the danger of leaving an unfriendly power to cut off communication in the midst of Italy, and on the paramount sovereignty of Charlemagne, annexed irrevocably to the kingdom of Italy the four papal provinces of Ancona, Urbino, Macerata, and Camerino.
In May, 1809, Napoleon dated from the palace of Schönbrunn at Vienna a decree which annexed to the French Empire those provinces of the papal state which had not been already seized. The pope was to receive an annuity of two millions of francs, and to confine his attention to the proper duties of his episcopal office. Pius issued a very firm manifesto, went through the form of excommunicating Napoleon and all ecclesiastics who should obey him. On the night between the 5th and 6th of July, the French soldiers and the police broke into his apartments, and seized his person. He was transported into France, and thence back to Savona, where he was kept a close prisoner till 1811. In June, 1810, the kingdom of Italy received its last accession of territory, the southern or Italian Tyrol being then incorporated with it.
[1810-1814 A.D.]
It appears, as the result of the events which have now been summarily related, that, from the middle of 1810 till the fall of Napoleon in 1814, the political divisions of Italy were the following:
The mainland was divided into four sections, or, more properly, into three, since Lucca falls really under the first. (1) A large proportion of it had been incorporated with France, whose territories on the western coast now stretched southward to the frontier of Naples. These Italian provinces of the French Empire lay chiefly on the western side of the Apennine, where they included the following districts—Nice, with Savoy, since 1792; Piedmont, since 1802; Genoa, since 1805; Tuscany, since 1808; and the western provinces of the Roman see, since 1809. On the northeast of the mountain chain, France had only Parma, Piacenza, and Guastalla, which were annexed to it in 1808. Within the Neapolitan frontier it had the duchies of Benevento and Pontecorvo. (2) On the western side of the mountains, the imperial territory was interrupted by the little independent principality comprehending Lucca and Massa-Carrara. This petty state, however, was possessed by members of the emperor’s family, and was practically one of his French provinces. (3) Central and eastern Lombardy, with some districts of the Alps, and a part of the peninsula proper, composed the kingdom of Italy, of which Napoleon wore the crown. Its territories comprehended, first, the whole of Austrian Lombardy; secondly, the Valtelline, with Chiavenna and Bormio; thirdly, Venice and its mainland provinces, from the Oglio on the west to the Isonzo, which had been latterly fixed as the eastern frontier; fourthly, that part of the Tyrol which forms the valley of the Adige; fifthly, the territories of the dukes of Modena and Reggio, except Massa-Carrara; sixthly, the papal provinces of Ferrara, Bologna, and Romagna, of Urbino, Macerata, Camerino, and Ancona. (4) The kingdom of Naples consisted of the same provinces on the mainland which had been governed by the Bourbons; and since the year 1806, it had been ruled by sovereigns belonging to the imperial family of France. The legitimate monarchs still possessed the two great islands—the ex-king of Naples holding Sicily, the king of Sardinia the isle which gave him his title.