More Than We Should Have To Handle
By 1700, Genoa was deep in decline and as a political power was insignificant, though the city itself was still strategically
important to the world perhaps in more ways than the Genoese would prefer. The de Mari family featured in this AAR is entirely fictionalised, though the name is taken from history.
By 1700, Genoa was deep in decline and as a political power was insignificant, though the city itself was still strategically
important to the world perhaps in more ways than the Genoese would prefer. The de Mari family featured in this AAR is entirely fictionalised, though the name is taken from history.
Chapter One - Keeping Up Appearances
Our palazzo was directly stricken at least four times by the cannonballs. Many of neighbors’ estates were hit as well; a few mentions were made and rumours twisted through the grapevine of a few odd bankers sustaining so much damage from the bombardment that they were cast into poverty. Perhaps this is true, though I’ve observed that the word ‘poverty’ is used rather lightly around the Genoese palazzos.
Many of the finer details of the incident evade me. I was six in the spring of 1684; my principal memory is the sheer sound of it all. Whenever I’ve asked anyone in my family about the bloody episode, namely why precisely the French felt the need to fire tens of thousands of cannonballs at Genoa for four days straight and then sail off with no apparent gain except perhaps to feel like God Himself dusting off His hands after wiping away Gomorrah, the only responses I have received are sighs and simplistic, dismissive mutterings usually around five words long, one of which is invariably “Luigi”. Luigi XIV, I gathered. The “Sun King”. The mention of his name alone was sufficient for me to conclude that my Gomorrah explanation was close enough to the truth in order for me, like the Doge of Genoa, to thereafter become dismissive of the incident.
I’ve always wanted to introduce him as the Doge of Genoa (though “my father” would be the more obvious choice) because he deserves a bit of pomp and flair. Of course, at that time he was not the Doge, although an important financier. Actually, the Doge, or my father rather, would harrumph that my last statement was farcically backwards, as he maintains that while his political title in reality means next to nothing, leadership of La Banca de Mari means no less than the pinnacle of economic supremacy on the continent. Indeed, my father is an important man, coming from a family that has gained enormous wealth from a century of financing the von Habsburgs and the Spanish Empire. Unfortunately, as with all Genoese power, it is either is hushedly channeled through our old city’s walls into the great powers between which she is wedged, or else it writhes and withers under the beating rays of the cruel Sun King. We do keep a fair bit of money, though.
My father in his old age has apparently relinquished all but one facial expression, and as for the rather blank one he has kept I can only say that he could have made a better choice. But like a true aristocrat, his emotions have instead become dictated by his blood. In his happy hours his face fills up with colour so that one feels compelled, as with a half-drunk glass of water, to call his eyes light blue instead of grey. Today, they were definitely grey.
Colonel Asco was heading north with the army to the Spanish city of Milan. It was the first month of 1700, and old man Luigi was proving that he had not in any way lost his capacity to bring about a spectacular crisis. With his dear grandson set to inherit the Spanish Crown, I’m sure my family was not alone in suspecting that Luigi would not heed the international outcry against a union of the two empires. However, as a dependency of the Spanish Empire, my father had no place openly opposing Carlos II’s testament.
In any case, it seemed my father would fall back into a quiet, cynical, Genoese neutrality, like one falls into an comfy old hammock to rest, despite the fact that the ropes are wearing a bit more than is desirable. The de Mari’s, of course, could terminally finance a Bourbon Spain just as well as a Habsburg one. And so, with gentle appeasement in mind, it was that the army marched north to Milan, keeping up appearances.
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