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1730 Trending Topics: Parma and Tuscany
Date: 2022-01-01 04:54 pm (UTC)And a 1714 (again, there have been slight changes between 1714 and 1730) map, giving some context as to why Austria and Spain have a long history of claiming territory in Italy and are so invested in fighting each other over it:
(Look, it's hard to get clear, good-quality, colored, English-labeled maps at exactly the zoom level I want, for every territorial change in the 18th century. :P)
Isabella Farnese: Hi, I'm the Queen of Spain, and I'm here to tell you about those other projects we're into now! I married a king who already had a son from his late first wife (Marie Louise of Savoy). So I've got to worry about providing kingdoms for my sons.
Plan A was: Louis XV dies, my husband Philip abdicates and goes to France to be king there, and takes his oldest son, my stepson, to France, leaving me and my oldest son (Don Carlos) to rule Spain! But then Louis didn't die and now he's married with a son, so, that idea died.
Plan B, while I was waiting for Louis to die, was to marry my boy Don Carlos to Archduchess Maria Theresa. Her dad has this thing called a Pragmatic Sanction indicating that she's going to inherit all the Habsburg territory. Sounds pretty good to me if I can get my son married to her! So Spain made a treaty with Austria a few years back. But that bastard Charles VI was just toying with me the whole time! He never intended to let my son marry his daughter. So now we're on to...
Plan C. As a Farnese descended from Medici, I say that I am the next logical heir to Parma (as soon as the current Farnese dies) and Tuscany (as soon as Gian Gastone finishes drinking himself to death). So obviously the 1730s are going to be a great decade for my son to inherit Italian territory! Just need to get everyone else to agree...
Austria: Excuse me, those are ours to give and take away, and also Naples and Sicily and Sardinia and the Milanese and pretty much everything Spain and Austria have been fighting over in Italy for the last umpteen decades/centuries and will continue fighting over in the 18th century. If we let you into Parma and Tuscany, pretty soon you'll be using it as a springboard to conquer all of Italy, and Italy is ours! for some definition of "ours" that means "whether or not we control it or have even controlled it in recent memory."
Isabella: So as you can see, Austria's not going to take this lying down. Therefore, I want Spanish garrisons in Parma and Tuscany to safeguard my son's rights there. Not neutral Swiss garrisons. Do you hear me, Europe?!
Austria: Spanish garrisons over my dead body!
Great Britain: Sigh. Well, we tried pushing the whole Swiss garrison thing, but Isabella is a terrier, so we finally signed a treaty with Spain last year agreeing to Spanish garrisons.
France: Did we hear something about our cousins the Bourbons occupying most of Italy and keeping our enemies the Habsburgs out? Spanish garrisons all the way, baby!
Austria: TRY me. I dare you.
Great Britain: Well, France, as allies *cough*, we did sign that treaty with Spain last year saying we have to force the Spanish garrisons in over Austria's dead body. Time for war? (mid 1730)
France: Yes, yes. War. But, uh, you go first. You're the one with the navy!
Great Britain: WTF, France.
France: Look, we agree with you about the Spanish garrisons. But we all need to consider how this affects the balance of power in Europe. So let's all sit down and negotiate a balance of power treaty that isn't just about Spanish garrisons in Parma and Tuscany, but about how we can all continue to live with each other after this. Okay? Come on, it'll be fun, we've been practicing negotiating balance of power treaties for the last ten years. We're pros at congresses that go nowhere and treaties that keep the peace for two more years and then everyone gets upset and we have to renegotiate.
Spain: WHERE ARE MY GARRISONS. The deadline has come and gone!
France: Well, see, we're *trying* to help you go to war with Austria (you know this is our favorite thing in France) over your garrisons, but the British are dragging their feet. You know how they are.
Great Britain: *cannot believe the words they are hearing*
Great Britain: France obviously doesn't want to go to war and is trying to pin the blame on us!
France: Don't want to go to war?! Are you crazy? We in France totally want to conquer the Austrian Netherlands (future Belgium) from Austria! ...That is the war we're talking about, right?
Great Britain: *facepalm*
So 1730 comes and goes and there is no war with Austria.
Re: 1730 Trending Topics: Parma and Tuscany
Date: 2022-01-02 08:39 am (UTC)Mildred, in the AU where that happens, how would Philip had managed without a wife as caretaker at his side? Did he at least have Farinelli yet? Would his oldest son (if said son hadn't died as well) been up to the job? Would ruling France have stabilized him? And, most importantly, what kind of quip would Voltaire have made?
The Spanish garrisons in Italy and the Austria vs Spain ongoing disputes are a plot point in the part of Casanova's memoirs that narrates the Bellino episode in his life, which takes place 1743. (Essentially: Casanova, nineteen, meeets Bellino, Castrato Singer, 17. Falls in love but is certain Bellino is in fact a woman. Lots of spirited arguments between the two and sparks fly. He gets temporarily depressed by a (fake) penis but when deciding he's attracted no matter what, Bellino reveals she is indeed a she, Teresa Lanti. (Who took this disguise because female sopranos weren't allowed on stage in any of the Italian states still belonging to the Church, which was a lot of them, including Bologna, where she was grom.) (Also, Teresa Lanti was an alias. Her real name was Angiola Calori. Casanova was thoughtful enough to change the names for a couple of still living ladies when writing down his memoirs. The identification of Bellino with historical soprano Angiola Calori wasn't made until people had access to the original manuscript again, which shows at one point the name "Angiola Calori" stricken out and replaced with "Teresa Lanti".) Anyway, Bellino and Casanova first met in an inn where another guest is the Spanish war commissioner Don Sancho, and later, after they are an item and travelling together, they run afoul of an Austrian garnison when it turns out Casanova has lost his passport, which means he's held there for some weeks until escaping and making it to the next Spanish garnison where they are delighted to help him even without a passport not because he's that charming but because anything to annoy the Austrians. So when I looked up the Bellino episode a couple of years ago I came across this Spain vs Austria peripherally.
Re: 1730 Trending Topics: Parma and Tuscany
Date: 2022-01-02 04:09 pm (UTC)You know, I was going from memory there and I may have been misremembering. She may have been assuming she would have to leave her son in Spain while she went to France. Maybe it depends on his age: maybe she stays in Spain until he doesn't need a regent any more.
Did he at least have Farinelli yet?
He does not! No Farinelli until 1737, alas.
I was checking Wikipedia to see if he'd made it to France before 1737, and the answer is no, but hey, check this out:
In 1726, he also visited Parma and Milan, where Johann Joachim Quantz heard him and commented: "Farinelli had a penetrating, full, rich, bright and well-modulated soprano voice, with a range at that time from the A below middle C to the D two octaves above middle C. ... His intonation was pure, his trill beautiful, his breath control extraordinary and his throat very agile, so that he performed the widest intervals quickly and with the greatest ease and certainty. Passagework and all kinds of melismas were of no difficulty to him. In the invention of free ornamentation in adagio he was very fertile." Quantz is certainly accurate in describing Farinelli as a soprano, since arias in his repertoire contained the highest notes customarily employed by that voice during his lifetime:
In case anyone wants to have Quantz mentioning Farinelli to Fritz in fanfic. It's historical! (Was Farinelli one of the singers Fritz tried to get from Italy and couldn't lure away? I forget.)
Would his oldest son (if said son hadn't died as well) been up to the job?
Well, which is the oldest son depends on the dates here. Before 1724, yeah, that's the one who becomes king for seven months when Philip abdicates, then dies of smallpox. After 1724, oldest (surviving) son is historical Ferdinand VI. Both sons of first wife Marie-Louise of Savoy. We've talked briefly about Ferdinand before, but all I have to go on is Wikipedia. It tells me he either inherited Dad's psychological problems or had different ones, was dependent on and faithful to his wife, and appears to have let his ministers do most of the ruling, as he was shy and insecure. So it might have ended up being Louis XV's reign all over again, minus the mistresses. ;)
But I'm handwaving this because I have no real idea. At some point, I might look for a source on the Spanish Bourbons in the latter half of the century; I only really know Philip V. (Whose bio first introduced me to the G1 letter about Gibraltar, because he was *obsessed* with it.)
Would ruling France have stabilized him?
Maybe! Or at least a little; there are very few silver bullets for mental illness. But post-1720, he did agonize over whether he had the right to rule Spain. So he would have been spared that, at least.
And, most importantly, what kind of quip would Voltaire have made?
A good one!
Basically, Isabella wants two of Margaret's old duchies for her boy. (I say "two" not "both", because Margaret had even more duchies!)
What were her other ones? Piacenza is sometimes listed separately as one of the territories Isabella, as a descendant of the Medici, claimed; sometimes it's just lumped under Parma. I lumped it for the sake of simplicity for
The Spanish garrisons in Italy and the Austria vs Spain ongoing disputes are a plot point in the part of Casanova's memoirs that narrates the Bellino episode in his life, which takes place 1743.
Once Don Carlos becomes Charles III of Spain (when older half-brother Ferdinand VI dies in 1759), Don Carlos/Charles III has to leave Naples + Sicily to *his* son, namely walking, talking embarrassment Ferdinand, i.e. the one who was married to Maria Carolina and who slapped Joseph on the butt during his visit to Naples.
Re: 1730 Trending Topics: Parma and Tuscany
Date: 2022-01-02 06:46 pm (UTC)Was Farinelli one of the singers Fritz tried to get from Italy and couldn't lure away? I forget.
Me too, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't, because Farinelli was the superstar of superstars and frankly out of his financial league. However, Quantz' praise of him is really good to know!
Re: 1730 Trending Topics: Parma and Tuscany
Date: 2022-01-02 11:50 pm (UTC)Yeah, so, Penne is also one of the things Isabella wants that gets lumped under "Parma" and that goes to Don Carlos in 1731. Isabella is no slouch at wanting things that belonged to Margaret! (And yes, I should have said that it was as a Farnese, not as a descendant of the Medici, that Isabella wants Piacenza--the Medici ancestry is relevant to Tuscany.)
Me too, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't, because Farinelli was the superstar of superstars and frankly out of his financial league.
Yeah, especially if this is the Ruppin or early Rheinsberg period, because Farinelli was off the market in 1737, being in Spain. So yeah, probably not something Ruppin!Fritz felt he could aspire to.
Re: 1730 Trending Topics: Parma and Tuscany
Date: 2022-01-03 06:01 am (UTC)Farinelli's vocal range
Date: 2022-01-03 11:39 pm (UTC)Quantz is certainly accurate in describing Farinelli as a soprano, since arias in his repertoire contained the highest notes customarily employed by that voice during his lifetime: "Fremano l'onde" in Pietro Torri's opera Nicomede (1728) and "Troverai se a me ti fidi" in Niccolò Conforto's La Pesca (1737) both have sustained C6. His low range apparently extended to F3, as in "Al dolor che vo sfogando", an aria written by himself and incorporated in a pasticcio called Sabrina, and as in two of his own cadenzas for "Quell' usignolo innamorato" from Geminiano Giacomelli's Merope.
Re: 1730 Trending Topics: Parma and Tuscany
Date: 2022-01-03 05:13 am (UTC)and Italy is ours! for some definition of "ours" that means "whether or not we control it or have even controlled it in recent memory."
Heeee!
Great Britain: *cannot believe the words they are hearing*
I laughed out loud at this, thus causing E to read this comment on her way to bed and be very confused (I did warn her it would take me longer to explain than the time she had given that it was already past her bedtime :) )
Re: 1730 Trending Topics: Parma and Tuscany
Date: 2022-01-03 10:08 pm (UTC)Re: 1730 Trending Topics: Parma and Tuscany
Date: 2022-01-04 02:32 pm (UTC)I should also spell out a connection I realized I didn't make explicit: This is our peace-loving Cardinal Fleury (see his write-up) trying to avoid war and succeeding. Three years later, August the Strong will die, Chauvelin will go, "Fuck yeah, the excuse for war I've been waiting for!"* and Fleury will be unable to avoid a war this time. Fleury will also try very hard to avoid the War of the Austrian Succession, but will be losing his grip on power by 1741 (he is 88 by then and dies in 1743), and Belle-Isle will succeed as the head of the war party (but not succeed in becoming Fleury's successor).
* Chauvelin's actual quote:
This cause of war is as good as any other, and for every one man who is made to march in Poland, our glory demands that we make ten march wherever it takes.
Which is not a terribly inaccurate description of the distribution of French troops, and partly explains why their candidate, Stanislas, lost the Polish crown.