Lucia - Andrea Di Robilant [72]
15. Empress Joséphine was very fond of this drawing and she gave it to her son, Eugène de Beauharnais. Lucia met the artist David in Paris in 1813 through an old friend of her father. She could see the artist’s studio from the window of her apartment.
16. Lucia saw Prince Eugène frequently at the royal palace in Milan when she was lady-in-waiting to Princess Augusta.
17. On one of Lucia’s first visits to Malmaison, Empress Joséphine took her upstairs to see her newly refurbished circular bedroom. “It is magnificent,” Lucia wrote in her diary. Today it is possible to see the same room at Malmaison just as Lucia described it.
18. In the summer of 1813 Lucia often visited Empress Joséphine at Malmaison, her retreat outside Paris. The decor was very stylish and the atmosphere relaxed. The estate was given to Joséphine by Napoleon as part of their divorce settlement.
19. Lord Byron lived at Palazzo Mocenigo during part of his stay in Venice—here he is seen at work in his study overlooking the Grand Canal. He took a three-year lease at £ 200 a year—a considerable sum in the Venice of the post-Napoleonic years. His relationship with Lucia, however, grew steadily worse as she proved to be a tough and stubborn landlady.
They were daunting questions, which Lucia presumably shared only with Paolina. Indeed, it is hard to see how Lucia could have preserved her secret without her sister’s close collaboration. But very few other people knew, apart from her trusted maid, Margherita, and the midwife who was eventually called in to assist her during delivery. It helped, of course, that Alvise was away during this ordeal. But it is unlikely Lucia spent much time at Palazzo Mocenigo at all during her pregnancy. Padua would have been too risky as well. It is possible that she returned to her mother’s family estate, Castel Gomberto, north of Vicenza, which she had not visited in nearly a decade, since last taking the waters in Valdagno. There she would certainly have felt protected, in a familiar environment, away from prying eyes. Another possibility is that Lucia made the best of Pope Pius VI’s special authorisation to visit Celestia, and spent the latter part of her pregnancy attended by the nuns of the convent which had become, over the years, a second home to her.
At the end of May, six months into her pregnancy, Lucia was relieved to hear from her friends at the Austrian military command in Padua that Maximilian was alive and well. He had found himself thrown into battle as soon as he had joined up with General Hotze’s forces in the snowy Voralberg, where the gathering Austrian troops were under the constant fire of General Masséna’s soldiers. At the end of the winter, the French had begun their retreat towards Zurich, leaving a sea of melted snow and blood-stained mud in their wake. The Austrians had advanced into Switzerland, occupying the city of Chur, and had continued their pursuit of the French, marching north and taking the French-controlled city of Winterthur, some twenty miles east of Zurich.
According to the battle report now in Vienna’s Military Archive, a daring action on the part of Maximilian led to the crucial victory in Winterthur. After a day of fierce fighting, the French began to retreat towards the city, crossing the river Toess. They burnt all the bridges but one, across which the last soldiers scrambled to safety. Maximilian realised the gains of the day would be lost if the Austrians remained stranded on their side of the river. He led a platoon down to the banks of the Toess and followed it downstream until he found a bend where he and his men waded across. In certain points the water rose above their chests and the current was so strong it very nearly took them away. But they managed to reach the other side, climbed a steep ravine and surprised the French rear-guard from behind their lines, capturing the last bridge before it was blown up. Towards dusk the French abandoned Winterthur