Lucia (26 page)

What is being said in Brescia about the break-out of hostilities in the near future is being said here in Vienna as well—all one sees at the theatre, these days, are plays with military themes. But I am convinced these fears are groundless and we shall have peace for several more years. The recent wars brought too much suffering for anyone to contemplate a renewal of hostilities. No one is about to close down the mountain passes, no one is about to declare war.
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This was wishful thinking on the part of Lucia, for Bonaparte had been stoking the fires of a new European crisis for some time. The Treaty of Amiens in 1802 had brought relative peace to continental Europe, and for two years the first consul had focused most of his energies on domestic affairs, modernising public administration, reforming the judicial system, building up public education and founding the Banque de France. His restlessness abroad, however, remained unabated, and he never lost a chance to push France’s borders and exasperate his neighbours, as if peace were merely a continuation of war by other means. In 1804 the British government, fed up with Bonaparte’s peacetime expansionism, financed a plot to assassinate him. When the plot failed, Bonaparte declared himself hereditary emperor, ostensibly to discourage further attempts on his life. He was crowned on 2 December 1805 in Paris by Pius VII. Emperor Napoleon set about creating an imperial aristocracy, lavishing high-sounding titles of nobility on members of his family and his most loyal generals. The Cisalpine Republic in northern Italy, the puppet-state over which he presided, became the Kingdom of Italy, and he was crowned in Milan on 26 May 1805. His stepson, Prince Eugène de Beauharnais, became the kingdom’s viceroy.

The bulk of the French army was still assembled on the coast near Boulogne, apparently poised for an offensive against Britain. But Napoleon’s presence in Italy for the coronation ceremony suggested he had indeed changed his mind in favour of another continental war—certainly that was what everyone talked about: a new war in northern Italy.

Lucia received fresh news from Antonio Canova, the artist, who arrived in Vienna in mid June to install the mausoleum commissioned by Albert of Saxony-Teschen for his wife, the Archduchess Christina. Lucia had known him for many years and she had him over for lunch, eager to hear the latest from Italy. It was the season of white asparagus, the large, fleshy variety that was so popular with visitors, and Lucia went to the market expressly that morning to buy some. On the way home, she stopped to purchase a special vinegar
aux fines herbes
with which to dress it, and two bottles of white wine from the Rhineland. After singing the praise of the trusty white asparagus, the great sculptor turned to the subject of war. He described the gloom that was spreading back home, the memories of Napoleon’s past campaigns being still so vivid among the Italians. Turning to the mausoleum he was working on, a large monument in the shape of a pyramid costing 8,000 florins, he said the expense of bringing the artwork across the Alps in such uncertain times was so high it had put a serious dent in the sum he was taking home.
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The great man grouched about working too hard and travelling too much, and in the end he confessed that he had not even begun work on a marble statue of Mary Magdalen that Alvise had commissioned for the new church in Alvisopoli for a fee of 10,000 ducats.
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Despite Canova’s discouraging outlook, Lucia continued to pray for peace. Austria, she informed Paolina, was preparing three armies: one under the command of the emperor, with General Mack at his side, and the other two under the command of Archduke Charles and Archduke John. “They say that he who wants peace prepares for war. Let us hope this proverb will once more be proven true.”
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The following month, however, Napoleon ordered the bulk of the Grande Armée to redeploy from Boulogne to the Rhine. Austria and its Continental allies—Russia, Sweden and Naples—responded by forming a new grand coalition with Britain. As the storm gathered during the summer of 1805, Lucia and Alvisetto saw the city empty itself. Viennese society broke ranks, and all the great families retreated to country estates scattered about the Habsburg Empire. Only government officials and military officers remained in the capital, preparing the country for war. Lucia felt she had the city to herself. “I hadn’t been to the Prater in a long time,” she wrote to her sister after a night stroll under a full moon.

Alvisetto and I walked for hours. We then went over to the Ramparts, and were both so entranced by the beautiful light of the moon that we didn’t want to return home. It occurred to me that the same moon was shining over you; but, philosopher that you are, you probably did not even notice her. I pictured you in your room, the blinds closed, with only the light of your candle flickering around you.
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Lucia much preferred being in Vienna than in Margarethen. Her trips out to the country, while necessary to keep track of business accounts, became increasingly burdensome. The drainage system still did not work properly, and after every rain-shower the grounds around the house remained waterlogged for days, attracting clouds of mosquitoes. “How can we possibly have purchased such a dump?”
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she asked out of sheer exasperation after arriving at the property one day and finding the house in disorder and the garden so flooded she had trouble getting inside. On that same visit she discovered the caretaker had scabies. She had gone to the kitchen to prepare her usual pots of
crème au chocolat
and had asked the man to stir for her while she went to fetch a cooking implement. “When I returned, I took the wooden spoon from him: that’s when I realised. You know how I dread that disease.
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The doctor came over and confirmed my suspicions; but the caretaker refused to be taken to the hospital…He asked to be let go, and I immediately said yes.”
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At Margarethen, Lucia was seldom in the mood to appreciate even the sounds of nature. “The toads delight us with their croaking harmonies—the only recognisable noise around here,” she sneered. “That, and the hissing of bats.” A nightingale in the pheasantry had given her pleasure in the early part of summer. “But now the pheasantry is flooded and the bird has flown away.”
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Having given up hope of ever cultivating safflower in the swampy fields of Margarethen, she developed a new passion:
Prunus cerasus,
the lovely cherry tree she had originally seen cascading down the banks of the Elbe during her first summer in Austria. She now planted row upon row of
Twieselbeerbaum
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around the house; she pored over German agricultural almanacs to learn all there was to learn about this particular cherry tree; and she spent hours translating the abstruse technical texts into Italian. “It’s a good way to improve my German,” she remarked. This was the fifth summer in a row she was spending in the “dump,” away from her husband.

The growing noises of war soon caught up with her in the country. One day, in mid July, Alvisetto’s German instructor came back from his walk to the village and announced that recruiting officers had arrived. “I’d rather not have to witness those poor parents torn from their sons,”
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Lucia replied with anguish. The mood turned sombre in the house.

“Will they come to separate us as well?” Alvisetto asked his mother later that evening, at the dinner table.

“No,” she replied. “We shall always be together.”

“I feel much better now; I shall eat with greater appetite.”

After dinner, Alvisetto walked about the house with his big hat on—a peculiar habit he had recently developed and which his grandfather, Andrea, also had. Lucia watched her son come through the room as she sat at her writing desk. “His blood is truly Memmo blood,” she scribbled to her sister. “This thing he has about wearing his hat in the house has become a fixation. No doubt he’d keep it on all day if he weren’t made to take it off.”
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A few days later, Lucia was forced to break the promise she had made to Alvisetto about not leaving him alone: she had to go to Vienna to organise the move to a new apartment, a smaller place but with a nice view of the Danube, which she had let for six months. Alvisetto would not have it. “I am not going to be separated from my mother,” he insisted, tears swelling in his eyes. “I will go with you—don’t even speak of leaving me here if you don’t want to see me cry…”
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With that, he burst into tears.

Lucia stayed in Vienna only the time that was strictly necessary. Exhausted, her muscles aching from moving furniture around, she wrote to Paolina on 7 August: “Our new home is delightful. The river here is at its widest point.”
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She looked forward to moving in with Alvisetto and living there until the end of the following spring, by which time she hoped to return to Italy—provided war did not force her to change plans. While in Vienna, she learnt that she had been awarded the Starred Cross. It occurred to her that she now had a formal tie to the Habsburg Court. But the timing seemed so odd, what with war preparations by now in full swing.

Two days later she was back at Margarethen with Alvisetto. “The Austrian regiments are marching through the fields around us,” she reported. “It is said that General Mack is heading for the Tyrol on his way to Italy with His Majesty at the head of 100,000 men…”
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Alvisetto gave his own bit of strategic advice, drawing from his recently acquired knowledge of geography: “I believe the Russians should join the Imperial Army. I have seen on the map that the Russian Empire is very extended and may provide us with many troops.”
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In fact, the Russian army was already moving west, albeit at a woefully sluggish pace. In mid August, Lucia wrote that “friends who have just come from Russia and have a keen eye for military matters told me they saw 120–130,000 troops marching into Poland.”
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A week later, an Austrian cavalry battalion stopped in Margarethen. Three hundred soldiers camped in the fields around the house. Lucia found Alvisetto playing billiards with a group of officers belonging to General Mack’s regiment. The commanding officer said cheerfully that if the boy were old enough he would recruit him. “I shall only go to war to defend my papa and my mama,”
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Alvisetto snapped back. Everyone laughed, and Lucia let her son bask in the limelight a little longer before taking him up to bed.

G
eneral Mack entered Bavaria, France’s ally, on 11 September, then moved north, concentrating his troops between Ulm and Gunzburg, on the Upper Danube, about eighty miles east of the Black Forest, whence he expected Napoleon to appear. There Mack waited for the Russian reinforcements marching west from Poland. He estimated Napoleon headed an army of 70,000 men, and he wanted to crush that force before it reached Italy, the presumed theatre of war. Once the Russians joined him, he should easily have the upper hand. But General Kutuzov and his troops were moving too slowly. As Lucia wrote to her sister in mid September, the Russians were still in Polish Galicia.

Far worse was the fact that General Mack had made a terrible miscalculation: Napoleon had chosen to make Germany, not Italy, the main battleground of the new war, and planned to annihilate the Austrian forces before the Russian reinforcements arrived. On 25 September, when he crossed the Rhine north of the Black Forest, Napoleon was at the head of 210,000 men, not the 70,000 General Mack had expected. The Grande Armée wheeled south, then east, and, covering eighteen to twenty miles a day, reached the Danube in only two weeks, moving speedily to General Mack’s rear, between Ingolstadt and Donauworth, and cutting his line of retreat.

The Austrian high command, suddenly aware of the catastrophic position of its army, urged the Russians to rush westward. “I hear they are marching at an incredible speed now,” Lucia reported on 1 October. “Many of the troops travel by cart, and manage to cover up to 48–50 miles a day.”
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But it was too late. The French attacked the Austrians during the second week of October, pushing them towards Ulm, and eventually forcing the bulk of General Mack’s army into the city. On 16 October, the French artillery opened fire. The Austrian commander realised his forces would not be able to withstand the siege without the support of the Russians, who were still a hundred miles away. He surrendered to Napoleon to avoid the complete destruction of his army. Some 50,000 Austrians were taken prisoner; the French had hardly any losses. Napoleon had again humiliated Austria. With his army practically intact, he made a run for Vienna, and on 13 November, he was sleeping in Schönbrunn Palace, the Habsburg summer residence near the capital. Emperor Francis and his court had fled days before. Vienna was entirely in the hands of the French.

L
ucia returned from Margarethen to find the city swarming with blue uniforms. Her apartment along the Danube was requisitioned. “Nineteen men are camping out in ten rooms,”
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she complained, overwhelmed by the chaos in her house. But she was relieved to find three letters from Paolina, whom she had not heard from since August because of the disruptions caused by the war. “At last I have found you again.”
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Napoleon did not stay in Vienna. After a few days’ rest, he was off to chase the Russians and the rest of the Austrian army. On 3 December, Lucia told Paolina confidentially she had received “amazing news” that very evening from the battlefront, but could not share it with her “for fear that our correspondence be interrupted” by censors. “Peace may already be close at hand,” she added, biting her lip.
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The “amazing news,” of course, was that Napoleon had won a decisive victory against the combined forces of Austria and Russia in the plains around the village of Austerlitz.

Three days later, Lucia was at home discussing the latest events with a few Austrian friends. During dinner, a messenger brought her a note from a French commanding officer returning from the battlefield: General Baraguey d’Hilliers, who had commanded the French occupying forces in Venice in 1797. Having heard Lucia was in Vienna, he was eager to see her and wondered at what time he could visit her. When it became apparent that the general wished to come by that very evening, panic swept the room and the soirée quickly came to an end as Lucia’s guests “did not wish to compromise themselves by being introduced to him.”
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