In 1808 Napoleon gave all
Tuscany, and Leghorn with it, to his sister Elisa, but when in 1814 he
was deposed, Leghorn was restored to the Tuscan grand-dukes and
garrisoned for them by German troops, an earthquake having profited by
the general disorder meantime to pay it another visit. The grand-duke
now being driven out of Florence by Murat, he took refuge at Leghorn,
which fell a prey to an epidemic of typhus. The first steam-vessel
appared there in 1818, and in 1835 the Asiatic cholera; in 1847 a
telegraphic line to Pisa was opened.
In 1848 the revolutions prevalent throughout Europe had their effect at
Leghorn. The citizens shared in the uprising against the grand-duke, and
elected among its representatives F. D. Guerrazzi, once famous as the
first of Italian novelists and a man of generous mind and heart, who
duly suffered arrest and imprisonment when the grand-duke was restored
by the Austrians. He was sentenced to fifteen years' prison with hard
labor, but later his sentence was commuted to exile.
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