Giuseppe Lechi
Giuseppe Lechi | |
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Division General | |
Battles/wars | Battle of Marengo (1800), Peninsular War (1808–1809), Battle of Tolentino (1815) |
Giuseppe ("Joseph") Lechi (5 December 1766 – 9 August 1836) was an
Biography
Born in
Born a subject of the
Giuseppe entered the temporary government of Brescia and organized the Brescian Legion that General Bonaparte sent to fighting in Emilia, Marche and then in Central Italy.
It was in Città di Castello, in 1798, that happened the famous episode of the discussed donation of Raphael's painting "The Marriage of the Virgin" to Giuseppe Lechi by the City Council.[2]
In the spring of 1799 Giuseppe Lechi with his unit was engaged in a military campaign in
Back in Italy with Napoleon he fought at
After the
More and more bound up with the "Murat's circle", General Lechi joined the
In 1804, Giuseppe Lechi participated in the conquest of the
In the years 1808 and 1809 Lechi was in Spain at the service of Joseph Bonaparte that has yielded away in the meantime the Kingdom of Naples to Murat; Joseph conquered the city of Barcelona and becomes temporarily the governor there.
In 1809 he faced a trial in France (apparently for claims of violence, embezzlement and abuse) but escaped the judgment and was sent back to Naples at the service of his friend, the new king, Joachim Murat.
Lechi was also involved in the conspiracies of general Domenico Pino, probably also as a link for Murat himself in the plot.
On 31 January 1814, Giuseppe was governor of Tuscany handing over Livorno to the English Fleet in an attempt made by Murat to bargain a separate peace with Austria. In 1815 "Joseph" Lechi was as always at Murat's side in his last and hopeless stand against the Austrians at the Battle of Tolentino (2–3 May 1815). As a prisoner of war, Lechi refused to swear any fidelity to the new Habsburgic regime and remained jailed in Lubiana till 1818.
Freed, Lechi settled down in his family's Villa of
Notes
- ^ Fausto or Faustino Lechi, who was a minor brother of the notorious Count Galliano Lechi portrayed in a book by Stendhal as "Count Vitelleschi". A sister of Giuseppe Lechi's Franca, or "Fanny", became a Stendhal's character too as also his brother the general Teodoro, Napoleon's "mon beau général", who was portrayed in the character of the model gentleman and soldier "Count of Pietranera" in the book The Charterhouse of Parma (1839).
- Academy of Brera, in Milan, Italy.
- ^ "Ragionamenti di cose patrie ad uso della gioventü del conte cavaliere Francesco Gambara". 1840.
External links
- http://www.storiadimilano.it/Personaggi/Milanesi%20illustri/personaggi_avventurosi.htm
- Istituto Storico delle Insorgenze, L'insurrezione di Brescia
- Paolo Martinucci: "PREMESSE STORICHE E CULTURALI DELL’INSORGENZA NEL BERGAMASCO E NEL BRESCIANO", http://www.identitanazionale.it/inso_1002.php