It was now time
for the English to appear in those waters, and in 1652 they were
defeated by the Dutch off Leghorn. About seventy-five years later the
grippe paid Leghorn a first visit, and not long after a violent
earthquake shook down many buildings and killed many women and children;
but the authorities did what they could to secure the city in future by
declaring the day a perpetual fast, and forbidding masking and dancing
on it.
No disaster worth recording befell the city till Bonaparte came with the
Rights of Man in 1796 and left a French garrison, which evacuated the
place the next year, after having levied a fine of two million francs.
The year after that Nelson occupied it with eight thousand English
troops, and the following year the French reoccupied it and sacked the
churches and imposed another fine nearly as great as the first. After
the Napoleonic victories in the Italian wars, they seem to have come
back again and fined the city two million francs more. They now remained
five years, and in the mean time a Livornese, Giovanni Antonio Giaschi,
invented a submarine-boat for attacking and destroying war-vessels, and
a Spanish ship brought the yellow-fever.
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