Leopold II
(1797-1870)

Died aged c. 73

Leopold II (3 October 1797 – 29 January 1870) was Grand Duke of Tuscany from 1824 to 1859. He married twice; first to Maria Anna of Saxony, and after her death in 1832, to Maria Antonia of the Two-Sicilies. By the latter, he begat his eventual successor, Ferdinand. Leopold was recognised contemporarily as a liberal monarch, authorising the Tuscan Constitution of 1848, and allowing a degree of press freedom. The Grand Duke was deposed briefly by a provisional government in 1849, only to be restored the same year with the assistance of Austrian troops, who occupied the state until 1855. Leopold attempted a policy of neutrality with regard to the Second Italian War of Independence, but was expelled by a bloodless coup on 27 April 1859, just before the beginning of the war. The Grand Ducal family left for Bologna, Papal territory since the Congress of Vienna. Tuscany was occupied by soldiers of Victor Emmanuel II of Sardinia for the duration of the conflict. The preliminary peace of Villafranca, agreed to between Napoleon III of France and Franz Joseph of Austria on 11 July, provided for the return of the Lorraines to Florence, but Leopold himself was considered too unpopular to be accepted, and on 21 July 1859, he abdicated the throne in favour of his son, Ferdinand. Ferdinand was not, however, any more acceptable to the revolutionaries in control of Florence, and his accession was not proclaimed. Instead, the provisional government proclaimed the deposition of the House of Habsburg (16 August).

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