1776 - Echoes of the American Revolution in the Dukedom of Parma, Piacenza and Guastalla

ECHOES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION IN THE DUKEDOM OF PARMA, PIACENZA AND GUASTALLA

David Salomoni

The sun never shined on a cause of greater worth. ‘ Tis not the affair of a city, a country, a province, or a kingdom, but of a continent. ‘ Tis not the concern of a day, a year, or an age; posterity are virtually involved in the contest, and will be more or less affected even to the end of time, by the proceedings now.¹

-Thomas Paine

It is with these words that, at the beginning of the year 1776, the English pamphleteer Thomas Paine defined the scope of the action undertaken by the American patriots against their homeland: England. A universal cause, the beginning of a catharsis that would involve future generations, relieving their shoulders from the burden represented by the inequalities between individuals that still the social structures of old Europe. The age of the American Revolution represented for his contemporaries, on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, a moment of excitement and hope. There was a widespread feeling that after such event, something in the world would change. People felt like they were assisting a dramatic clash between continents, and, for the majority of the generation that in that age read the works of Voltaire and Raynal, the victorious war for independence fought by the colonies looked like the great punishment for Europe, corrupted by a seemingly dark medieval heritage. It was feared the possibility that one day America would have in turn dominated Europe. After the Declaration of Independence, the attention previously given to the events overseas added to the philosophical debate, the problems of the insertion of the nascent American state in the network of diplomatic and military relations.

The war, stretching over seven years, and looking more and more like an international conflict involving France, Spain, and Holland, risked becoming a world war. As the international community became increasingly involved in the conflict, it is possible to observe a growing awareness of the events taking place even in Italy, usually thought of as being well removed from the conflict. However, Italian monarchs, aristocrats, intellectuals and explorers did not remain indifferent to the struggle for independence undertaken by the American colonies. Indeed, there are many recorded relationships between significant Italian and American personalities, such as the strong amity reportedly established between the Tuscan Filippo Mazzei and Thomas Jefferson.

This work seeks to better understand how a small and, under a political perspective, seemingly insignificant northern Italian state, the Dukedom of Parma, Piacenza and Guastalla, became connected to the political and military storm brewing in a far-distant corner of the world called America. The time examined in this essay is the year 1776. During the eighteenth century the Dukedom of Parma depended both economically and politically on the two main Bourbon powers: France and Spain. France and Spain were also the two main allies of the American revolutionaries. Parma was diplomatically represented by Spain, while its only independent diplomatic representation of the small state resided in France. Nonetheless, it would not, at first consideration, seem obvious to find such a wide and detailed amount of information concerning the American Revolution, or about the parliamentary debates taking place in London, in the dukedom’s only official means of communication, the Gazzetta di Parma. Indeed, in this period, Parma was arguably the most politically conservative state on the Italian peninsula, one unlikely to be so interested in the talk of rights and freedom being spread by the American Revolution.

The duke Don Ferdinando di Borbone, freed in 1771 from the Francophile ascendancy of his reform-minded prime minister Guillaume-Léon du Tillot, initiated a return en arri è re.² Du Tillot’s fall was linked with that of the French minister Choiseul who, at the time, was a main supporter of the Parmesan minister’s policies.³ Following his removal, du Tillot was replaced with the more controllable Count Giuseppe Sacco and between 1771 and 1775 Ferdinando di Borbone recalled the Jesuit order into the state and restored the Holy Inquisition.⁴ Even the duke’s wife, Marie Amelie of Habsburg, was intolerant to French and Spanish tutelage over the small state and was eager to bring her husband’s dukedom under imperial Austrian protection. Indeed, these years would mark a turning point that saw a crucial shift in Austria’s foreign policy vis-à-vis the Italian territories. Until the first half of eighteenth century, the marriage policy followed by the Habsburgs had been oriented towards Germany and the most important royal houses of the empire. Subsequently, the policy of the House of Habsburg changed, becoming increasingly more externally oriented in accordance to evolving dynastic interests. This shift had been a long time coming and had been anticipated by certain policymakers, among them the Austrian chancellor of state, Baron Kaunitz, inventor of the Renversement des Alliances, which seemed to guarantee a new alliance between the Viennese court and France.⁵

With regard to the purpose of the work it is not incautious to believe that, within the political game played by the main European powers, the duke of Parma could glimpse the possibility of cutting out a wider margin of administrative power among his states for himself. It is useful to point out the political context in which the Dukedom of Parma was absorbed, in order to show how little evident was for the duke Ferdinando to follow slavishly the directions and the orientations concerning foreign policy followed by his more powerful kinsmen, the kings of France and Spain, The two branches of the Bourbons were linked by a solidarity that has seen storms at the time of the Regency, but that cemented in family pact between the Spain of Philip V and Charles III, and the France of Louis XV and Louis XVI.⁶

Within the scope of foreign and Italian historiography no research has been made on the reception of the American Revolution inside the north-central Italian states: the Dukedom of Parma, Piancenza and Guastalla and the Dukedom of Modena. This current work is meant to be the introduction to a larger study on how one of these small political entities became involved with the events that, during the last quarter of the eighteenth century, were to have a profound effect on the course of history. Despite the absence of works concerning Parma, there has been some significant research done on the reception of the American Revolution in other Italian states, fundamental for any critical work of comparison. Among these, the most complete is the fourth volume of the monumental work of Franco Venturi concerning the eighteenth century:

Settecento Riformatore⁷, in which relations with American patriots and local Italian states and personalities are finely analyzed. Another major volume of miscellaneous works, edited by Giorgio Spini and Tiziano Bonazzi is Italia e America dal Settecento all ’ Et à dell ’ Imperialismo⁸, containing notable essays such as “Northern America in the Archives of the Sacred Congregation ‘de Propaganda Fide’,” written by Luca Codignola concerning the relations between the Papal State and Catholic communities in North America; “Public Opinion in Piedmont before the American Revolution and the Making of the United States,” written by Piera Ciavirella, and “Tuscan Scholars and New America in Late Eighteenth Century Academic Competition” written by Piero del Negro.

The primary sources used for this research are mostly unpublished. They are the dispatches from the ambassador of Parma at Versailles to the Parmesan secretary of state, contained in Parma’s State Archive (PSA), and editions of the Gazetta di Parma from 1776, contained in the municipal archive.

THE REVOLUTION IN THE GAZZETTA DI PARMA

(JANUARY-AUGUST 1776)

To all appearances all united colonies are on the eve of a glorious revolution.⁹

- Gazzetta di Parma, 15 May 1776

The information contained within the articles of the Gazetta di Parma that concern the political and military drama of the revolution can be grouped into three main categories. The first relates to the parliamentary debate in England among radical exponents in solidarity with the American revolutionaries, supporters of a policy of openness towards the grievances of the colonies; the Old Whigs, pushed by political calculation to criticize the policy of George III in America; and the parliamentarians who supported the king and sustained a strong colonial policy against the protests of the revolutionaries. The second category of news published in the small Bourbon capital city, directly relates to goings-on of war: naval battles, warfare, and the displacement of troops. The focus is especially on the Canadian campaign, begun in 1775 and resolved by the defeat of American forces during the siege of Quebec in the spring of 1776. The third category comprises news received directly from America that arrived without having gone through the mediatory filter of London, Leiden or Amsterdam - cities from which came most of Parma’s foreign news. This communication channel without mediation illuminates the perspective of the American insurgents on current events. These articles describe the mood of the civilian population in America, the material conditions in which they poured and the reasons why they were driven to such a resolution, showing the first steps of a new state ready, as stated in the Declaration of Independence, “to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them.”¹⁰

In ten years, between 1773 and 1783, a series of upheavals transformed the political landscape of British America. The Boston Tea Party of December 1773 marked a new and delicate period in the already deteriorated relationship between Britain and its continental colonies, which eventually resulted two years later in open rebellion and war.¹¹ The political situation in Britain, as shown by the Gazzetta di Parma for the year 1776, illustrates the attempt by George III to restore royal power as granted according to the principles of 1689, consolidating in his own hands the right of state patronage and embodying the ideal of the “patriotic king.” A loose sheet circulating along the roads of London during 1776, and reported in the gazette, appeals to the king: “Arise, O king order a fasting for Great Britain and America: end the bloodshed of your children.”¹² The position held by George III arose from the Glorious Revolution of 1689, which confirmed the political prominence of parliament and depicted the monarch as a father to his subjects. This political model was particularly close to the role that Duke don Ferdinando wished to embody in his own state, small though it was.

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¹ Cited in Paine, T. (2001). Rights of Men, Common Sense and Other Political Writings. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 56.

² Tocci, G. (1979). Il ducato di Parma e Piacenza . In: Galasso, G. Ed. Storia d ’ Italia. Turin: UTET. Ch. XVII/1. p. 263.

³ Ibid. pp. 307-308.

⁴ Ibid. pp. 308-309.

⁵ Mazohl-Wallnig, B. (2005). Tra politica imperiale e politica dinastica. In: Mora, A. Ed. Un Borbone tra Parma e l ’ Europa. Don Ferdinando e il suo tempo. Reggio Emilia:Edizioni Diabasis, ch.3, p. 30.

⁶ Ibid. Vovelle, M. (2005). Parme, de l’Europe des Lumières à l’Europe en Révolution. ch.1, p. 16.

⁷ Venturi, F. (1984). Settecento Riformatore. Turin: Einaudi. (The French historian Michelle Vovelle defined Venturi’s Settecento Riformatore: ‹‹ […] une référence majeure et que nombre de dix-huitièmistes on au moins effleuré comme René Poumeau et parfois decouvert […]››).

⁸ Spini, G., Bonazzi, T., Eds. (1976). Italia e America dal Settecento all ’ Et à dell ’ Imperialismo. Venice: Marsilio Editori.

⁹ Unknown. (1776). Philadelphia, 15 May 1776, Gazzetta di Parma, 31, p. 245. (With regard to the Gazette of Parma, the authors of the articles are never mentioned. The title of the articles is always represented by the article’s place and date of writing).

¹⁰ Maier, P., ed. (1998). The Declaration of Independence and The Constitution of the United States. New York: Bantam Books, p. 53.

¹¹ Elliot, J. (2006). Empires of the Atlantic World. Britain and Spanish America 1492-1830. Turin: Einaudi, p. 475.

¹² Unkonwn. (1776). London, 5 march 1776, Gazzetta di Parma, 10, pp. 76-77.