Overall: 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 did 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 dlue 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 niickname 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.
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.
Our story starts in 1642, in the year Galileo Gaililei 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 lieave 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.)
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 biusy 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 proceded 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 couldl 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 eatiing 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 flagelation 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 FRENCH nunnery. By then, he'd basically been reduced to keeping her in a genteel prison 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. 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.)
Harold Acton: Last of the Medici I: How to make really bad marriages
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 did 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 dlue 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 niickname 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.
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
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.
Our story starts in 1642, in the year Galileo Gaililei 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 lieave 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.)
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 biusy 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 proceded 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 couldl 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 eatiing 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 flagelation 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 FRENCH nunnery. By then, he'd basically been reduced to keeping her in a genteel prison 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. 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.)