Guillaume du Tillot
Léon Guillaume (du) Tillot
Tillot's career was of his own making. The son of a valet de chambre, he studied at the Collège des Quatre-Nations in Paris, then went to the court of Charles III of Spain; after Charles' departure to be King of Sicily, Tillot was attached to the household of Philippe de Bourbon, whose private secretary and treasurer he became. He organised fêtes for Philippe at Chambéry and elsewhere.
Career at Parma
In June 1749, at Louis XV's request he left Paris for Parma, to serve as observer and councillor to Philippe, Louis's son-in-law, who was made Duke of Parma under terms of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748). The Duke immediately named him (29 June 1749), minister of finance (intendant général du coffre) conferring upon Tillot responsibilities for court spending, paymaster of salaries, overseer of the palaces, gardens, court theatre, spectacles and festivities.
In this role, Tillot promoted all forms of French musical theater at the court. He commissioned the "reform opera"
Tillot's capabilities were soon rewarded with the position of minister of public finance, and then of first minister. His ministry, modernizing and liberalizing the Duchy's official functions, helped boost its economy.[3] On 20 June 1764, Tillot was made marchese di Felino, receiving its lands as well as those of San Michele Tiorre.
Tillot, like a latter-day
, still a novelty in Europe. For the better flow of people and goods, he improved roads and bridges, canalised waterways and liberalised importation and exportation. In these undertakings he was aided by the longest period of peace Italy had known.Tillot placed his influence with the Bourbon courts of France, Spain and Naples, in reducing antiquated
Along with the reorganisation of the ducal library, Tillot assembled his private one, in which the works of the Encyclopédistes and the Encyclopédie were to be found. Tillot instituted an Académie des Beaux Arts, a museum of Antiquities, a ducal printing-press, which produced the Gazzetta di Parma. He reorganised the University of Parma, one of Europe's oldest, from its somnolence; for a brief spell it ranked among the progressive universities of Italy, with Milan, Pavia and Modena.[6]
Around Tillot an Enlightened circle gathered:
In 1756, Tillot invited to court Guillaume Rouby de Cals, whom he employed first in the financial administration, then as his personal secretary and aide. Rouby de Cals directed the first manufactory of military cloth in Parma, in Borgo San Donnino, now Fidenza.
The fall of Tillot
With the accession to the Duchy of the somewhat simple
The classic biography is U. Benassi, Guglielmo du Tillot: Un ministro riformatore del secolo XVIII (Parma, 1915).
Notes
- ^ In Italy, sometimes Dutillot.
- ^ illot's role linking the court to impresarios, is the subject of an essay in Civiltà teatrale e Settecento emiliana, Susi Davoli, ed. (Bologna) 1986.
- ^ Comparable liberalising policies were carried out in Naples, from 1761 onwards, by Bernardo Tanucci, minister to Charles, Philippe's older brother, and to the young king, Ferdinand.
- ^ Franco Venturi, "Church and Reform in Enlightenment Italy: The Sixties of the Eighteenth Century", The Journal of Modern History, 48.2 (June 1976:215-232) p.218f.
- ^ Venturi 1976:230f.
- ^ Venturi 1976:221.
- ^ The exhibition Petitot: Un Artista del Settecento Europeo a Parma was held in Palazzo Bossi-Bocchi, Parma, 1997.
References
- Alessandro Cont, Il potere della tradizione. Guillaume Du Tillot e la questione della nobiltà, "Nuova Rivista Storica", 100, 1 (gennaio-aprile 2016), pp. 73–106