Lucia - Andrea Di Robilant [134]
The following day Lucia, dressed in mourning, gathered the final draft of her letter of condolences to Prince Eugène—she had stayed up late writing several versions—and drove out with Alvisetto to Queen Hortense’s palace, where Eugène was staying before returning to his wife and children in Bavaria. It was a very emotional leave-taking; both Hortense and Eugène were crushed by the death of their mother. For Lucia, it was also the last formal act of her brief career as lady-in-waiting to a court that had vanished under the ruins of Napoleon’s Empire.
In the darkest hour, just before the final collapse, Napoleon had ordered Eugène to cross the Alps and come to the defence of France. Eugène had resisted the call from his stepfather because his wife was about to give birth again. Furthermore, by remaining in the Kingdom of Italy at the head of a much reduced Armée d’Italie, he had hoped to lay a claim to the kingdom, or at least a portion of it, in any redrawing of the European map. But during the preliminary talks held by the great powers in Paris in April and May 1814 after Napoleon’s demise, it became clear that northern Italy would fall under Austria’s control in one form or another. By the time Eugène hurried back to Paris to assist his dying mother, his kingdom had disintegrated. Mob violence in the streets of Milan culminated on 20 April with the gruesome lynching of Eugène’s unpopular finance minister, Giuseppe Prina. Lucia learnt that Alvise had managed to leave Milan safely and reach Alvisopoli, but she knew little else, and communications remained very fragmented.
During the following weeks Lucia became obsessed with one question: what future lay in store for Venice? At the end of April the Austrians finally lifted the siege but the city was prostrate after six months of isolation, hunger and disease. The death of the Republic seventeen years earlier, Lucia confided to her diary, was still “a thorn in my heart.” There was, she knew, very little chance of resurrecting it. But she felt it was wrong to give up all hope. “Surely this is the time to try,” she told her sister, “what with all the European sovereigns gathered here [in Paris] at once.” If the Bourbon monarchy had been restored—so went her argument—why not imagine that the Republic of their elders might also be? In a moment of enthusiasm, she wrote to her Venetian friends still in Milan begging them to underwrite a petition to the allies “for the rebirth of our Republic.” She reminded them that the Genoese had already taken a similar step. “It will perhaps prove useless, but at least [we] will not have to blame [ourselves] for not having made every possible effort.”46
It was a valiant but doomed endeavour. The allies did not have the slightest interest in reviving the Republic of old. “Everywhere I am told that Venice will be ceded back to Austria,” she observed sadly. Clearly, Emperor Francis was the person she should try to see: she asked for an interview and was received on 24 May. Lucia lobbied hard on behalf of Venice, reminding the emperor that the city had greatly suffered and would need special attention to get back on its feet. Indeed, why not make it an important administrative centre, a regional capital of the Austrian Empire? Why not make it the official residence of a Habsburg archduke? Lucia pressed on, carried away by her own arguments. “But all the Emperor did, after each suggestion I made, was to repeat: ‘Please stay