Name	Mantua
Official name
Image shield	Mantova-Stemma.png
Region	Lombardy
Province	Mantua (MN)
Frazioni	Castelletto Borgo, Cittadella, Formigosa, Frassino, Gambarara, Lunetta, Virgiliana
Mayor party	PdL
Mayor	Nicola Sodano
Area total km2	63.97
Population total	48353
Population as of	31 June 2009
Population demonym	Mantovani
Elevation m	19
Saint	Anselm of Lucca, the Younger
Day	March 18
Postal code	46100
Area code	0376
Website

Mantua ( , in the local dialect of Emilian language Mantua) is a city and comune in Lombardy, Italy and capital of the province of the same name. Mantua's historic power and influence under the Gonzaga family, made it one of the main artistic, cultural and notably musical hubs of Northern Italy and the whole country itself. Mantua is noted for its significant role in the history of opera, and the city is known for its several architectural treasures and artifacts, elegant palaces or palazzi, and its medieval and Renaissance cityscape. It is also the town to where Romeo was banished in William Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet.

Mantua is surrounded on three sides by artificial lakes created during the 12th century. These receive the waters from the Mincio, which descend from Lake Garda. The three lakes are called Lago Superiore, Lago di Mezzo, and Lago Inferiore ("Superior", "Middle", and "Inferior" Lakes). A fourth lake, Lake Pajolo, which once completed a defensive water ring of the city, dried up at the end of the 18th century.

History

A settlement existed as soon as around 2000 BC on the banks of the Mincio, on a sort of island which provided natural protection. In the 6th century BC it was an Etruscan village which, in Etruscan tradition, was re-founded by Ocnus.

The name derives from the Etruscan god Mantus, of Hades. After being conquered by the Cenomani, a Gallic tribe, the city was conquered by the Romans between the first and second Punic wars, confusing its name with Manto, a daughter of Tyresia (Tiresias). The new territory was populated by veteran soldiers of Augustus. Mantua's most famous ancient citizen is the poet Publius Vergilius Maro, Virgil (Mantua me genuit), who was born near the city in 70 B.C.

After the fall of the Roman Empire, Mantua was invaded in turn by Byzantines, Longobards and Franks. In the 11th century it became a possession of Boniface of Canossa, marquis of Toscana. The last ruler of the family was the countess Matilda of Canossa (d. 1115), who, according to legend, ordered the construction of the precious Rotonda di San Lorenzo (1082).

After the death of Matilde of Canossa, Mantua became a free commune, and strenuously defended itself from the Holy Roman Empire in the 12th and 13th centuries. In 1198 Alberto Pitentino optimised the course of the Mincio, creating what Mantuans call "the four lakes" to reinforce the city's natural protection. Between 1215 and 1216 the city was under the podesteria of the Guelph Rambertino Buvalelli.

During the struggle between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, Pinamonte Bonacolsi took advantage of the chaotic situation to seize power in 1273. His family ruled Mantua for the next century, making it more prosperous and artistically beautiful. On August 16, 1328, the last Bonacolsi, Rinaldo, was overthrown in a revolt backed by the House of Gonzaga, a family of officials. Luigi Gonzaga, who had been podestà of the city in 1318, was elected "People's Captain". The Gonzaga built new walls with five gates and renovated the architecture of the city in the 14th century, but the political situation in the city did not settle until the third Gonzaga, Ludovico I Gonzaga, eliminated his relatives, seizing power for himself. During the Renaissance, the Gonzaga family softened their despotic rule of Mantua and raised the level of culture and refinement in Mantua.

receiving the news of his son Francesco being elected cardinal, fresco by Andrea Mantegna in the Stanza degli Sposi of Palazzo Ducale.]]

.]]

Through a payment of 120,000 golden florins in 1433, Gianfrancesco I was appointed marquis of Mantua by Emperor Sigismund, whose daughter Barbara of Brandenburg he married. In 1459 Pope Pius II held a diet in Mantua to proclaim a crusade against the Turks. Under Francesco II the famous Renaissance painter Andrea Mantegna worked in Mantua as court painter, producing some of his most outstanding works.

The first Duke of Mantua was Federico II Gonzaga, who acquired the title from Emperor Charles V in 1530. Federico commissioned Giulio Romano to build the famous Palazzo Te, on the periphery of the city, and profoundly improved the urbanistic asset of the city.

In 1627, the direct line of the Gonzaga family came to an end with the vicious and weak Vincenzo II, and the town slowly declined under the new rulers, the Gonzaga-Nevers, a cadet French branch of the family. The War of the Mantuan Succession broke out, and in 1630 an Imperial army of 36,000 Landsknecht mercenaries besieged Mantua, bringing the plague with them. Mantua never recovered from this disaster. Ferdinand Carlo IV, an inept ruler whose only aim was to hold parties and theatrical representations, allied with France in the Spanish Succession War. After the latter's defeat, he took refuge in Venice, carrying with him a thousand pictures. At his death, in 1708, he was declared deposed and his family lost Mantua forever in favour of the Habsburgs of Austria.

Under Austrian rule, Mantua enjoyed a revival, and during this period the Royal Academy of Sciences, Letters and Arts, the Scientific Theatre, and numerous Palaces were built.

On June 4, 1796, during the Napoleonic Wars, Mantua was besieged by Napoleon as a move against Austria, who joined the First Coalition. Austrian and Russian attempts to break the siege failed, but spread the French thin enough to abandon the siege on 31 July to fight other battles. The siege resumed on August 24. In early February the city surrendered and the region came under French administration. Two years later, in 1799, the city was retaken by the Austrians.

Later, the city was again passed to Napoleon's control. In the year 1810 by Porta Giulia, a gate of the town at Borgo di Porto (Cittadella), Andreas Hofer was shot; he had led the insurrection of the Tyrol against Napoleon.

After the brief French rule, Mantua returned to Austria in 1814, becoming one of the Quadrilatero fortress cities in northern Italy. Agitation against Austria culminated in a revolt which lasted from 1851 to 1855, and was finally suppressed by the Austrian army. One of the most famous episodes of Italian Risorgimento took place in the valley of Belfiore, when a group of rebels was hanged by the Austrians.

In 1866, Mantua was incorporated in united Italy by the king of Sardinia.

Main sights

Whs	Mantua and Sabbioneta
State party
Type	Cultural
Criteria	ii, iii
Id	1287
Region	Europe and North America
Year	2008
Session	32nd
Link	http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1287

The Gonzaga protected art and culture, and hosted several important artists like Leone Battista Alberti, Andrea Mantegna, Giulio Romano, Donatello, Peter Paul Rubens, Pisanello, Domenico Fetti, Luca Fancelli and Nicolò Sebregondi. Though many of the masterworks have been dispersed, the cultural value of Mantua is nonetheless outstanding. Many monuments furnish examples of unique patrimony in patrician buildings and Italian architecture.

Main landmarks include:

The Palazzo Te (1525–1535), a creation of Giulio Romano (who lived in Mantua in his final years) in the style of mature Renaissance and with some hints of a certain post-Raphaelian mannerism. It was the summer residential villa of Frederick II of Gonzaga. It hosts the Museo Civico (with the donations of Arnoldo Mondadori, one of the most important Italian publishers, and Ugo Sissa, a Mantuan architect who worked in Iraq from where he brought back important Mesopotamian artworks)

The Palazzo Ducale, famous residence of the Gonzaga family, made up by a number of buildings, courtyards and gardens gathered around the Palazzo del Capitano, the Magna Domus, and the Castle of St. George.

The Basilica of Sant'Andrea

The Duomo

The Rotonda di San Lorenzo

The Bibiena Theater

The church of San Sebastiano

The Palazzo Vescovile ("Bishops Palace")

The Palazzo degli Uberti

The Torre della Gabbia ("Cage Tower")

The Palazzo del Podestà that hosts the museum of Tazio Nuvolari

The Palazzo della Ragione with the Torre dell'Orologio ("Clock Tower")

The Palazzo Castiglioni Bonacolsi

The Palazzo Valenti Gonzaga, an example of architecture and decorations of Baroque period, decorated with frescoes attributed to Flemish painter Frans Geffels. The facade of the palace was designed by Nicolò Sebregondi.

Transportation

Mantua lies across the Milan-Codogno-Cremona-Mantova. By car, it can be reached through the A4 (Milan-Venice) Highway to Verona, and from there Highway A22 (Brennero-Modena). Otherwise, through the State road 415 (Milan-Cremona) to Cremona, and from there State road 10 (Cremona-Mantova).

Mantova railway station, opened in 1873, forms part of the Verona–Mantua–Modena railway, and is a terminus of two secondary railways, linking Mantua with Cremona and Monselice, respectively. Until 1967, it was also a terminus of the Mantua–Peschiera del Garda railway.

The closest airport is Verona-Villafranca.

Miscellany

An annual survey of Legambiente (an ecologist movement of Italy) in 2005 declared Mantua the most liveable city of the country. The study was based on levels of pollution, quality of life, traffic of cars, and public transportation, among other criteria.

The body of Saint Longinus, twice recovered and lost, was asserted to have been found once more at Mantua in 1304, together with the Holy Sponge stained with Christ's blood.

In William Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet, Romeo spends his period of exile—his punishment for killing Tybalt—in Mantua. Also, in Shakespeare's play Taming of the Shrew, the schoolmaster who pretends to be Lucentio's father, Vincentio, is from this city.

Giuseppe Verdi's opera Rigoletto (based on Victor Hugo's play Le roi s'amuse) is set in Mantua. Austro-Hungarian authorities in Venice forced him to move the action from France to Mantua.

Since 1997 Mantua has hosted the Festivaletteratura, one of the most renowned literary events in Europe.

In 2007 the remains of two people were discovered during the construction of a factory. The remains are thought to be between 5,000 and 6,000 years old. It is speculated that the remains are of two young lovers because the two skeletons appear to be embracing.

Namesakes

As with many European cities, Mantua has been the inspiration for the names of many other settlements, including:

;Canada Mantua, a village in West Hants, Nova Scotia

;U.S.A. Mantua, Ohio, Mantua, Utah, Mantua, New Jersey, Mantua, Virginia, the Mantua district of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the village of Mantua in Baltimore County, Maryland, the hamlet of Mantua (sometimed spelled Manatua) in Greene County, Alabama, and a location in Monroe County, Iowa.

Twin cities

Azuchi, Japan, 2005 Madison, United States, 2001 Weingarten, Germany, 1998 Pushkin, Russia, 1993 Charleville-Mézières, France, 1963 Nevers, France, 1963 Hyderabad, India Oradea, Romania Vitória, Brazil

Famous citizens

Virgil (70 BCE–19 BCE), a classical Roman poet.

Sordello or Sordel, a 13th-century Lombard troubadour, born in the municipality of Goito in the province of Mantua.

Pietro Pomponazzi (1462–1525), an Italian philosopher. He is sometimes known by his Latin name, Petrus Pomponatius.

Giovanni Battista Bertani (1516–1576), architect.

Leone de' Sommi (c. 1525–c. 1590), theater director and writer.

Claudio Monteverdi (c. 1567-1643), composer.

Giuseppe Sarto (1835–1914), appointed Bishop in 1884 before he became Pope Pius X in 1903.

Alberto Jori, neo-aristotelian philosopher.

See also

Roman Catholic Diocese of Mantova

Tazio Nuvolari "The flying Mantuan" World famous racing Driver. There is a museum dedicated to his exploits.

Notes

External links

Official website

Palazzo Te (in Italian)

Palazzo Ducale (in Italian)

A Mantova To know and to see Mantua

Category:Cities and towns in Lombardy Category:Cities in Etruria Category:Roman towns and cities in Italy Category:World Heritage Sites in Italy

Nicole Krauss (born 1974) is an American author best known for her novels The History of Love (2005) and Man Walks into a Room (2002) and most recently, Great House (2010). Her fiction has been published in The New Yorker, Harper's, Esquire, and Granta's Best American Novelists Under 40, and has been collected in Best American Short Stories (2003 and 2008). Her novels have been translated into thirty-five languages.

Early life

Krauss was born in New York City to an English mother and an American father who grew up partly in Israel. Krauss's maternal grandparents were born in Germany and Ukraine and later emigrated to London. Her paternal grandparents were born in Hungary and Slonim, Belarus, met in Israel, and later emigrated to New York. Many of these places are central to Krauss's 2005 novel, The History of Love, and the book is dedicated to her grandparents.

At the age of 14 Krauss became serious about writing. Until she began her first novel in 2002, Krauss wrote and published mainly poetry.

Krauss enrolled in Stanford University in 1992, and that fall she met Joseph Brodsky who worked closely with her on her poetry over the next three years. He also introduced her to the work of writers such as Italo Calvino and Zbigniew Herbert. In 1999, three years after Brodsky died, Krauss produced a documentary about his work for BBC Radio 3. She traveled to St. Petersburg where she stood in the "room and a half" where he grew up, made famous by his essay of that title. Krauss majored in English and graduated with honors, winning several undergraduate prizes for her poetry as well as the Dean's Award for academic achievement. She also curated a reading series with Fiona Maazel at the Russian Samovar, a restaurant in New York City co-founded by Brodsky and Mikhail Baryshnikov.

In 1996 Krauss was awarded a Marshall Scholarship and enrolled in a masters program at Oxford University where she wrote a thesis on the American artist Joseph Cornell. During the second year of her scholarship she attended the Courtauld Institute in London, where she received a masters in art history, specializing in seventeenth-century Dutch art and writing a thesis on Rembrandt.

Career

In 2002, Krauss published her acclaimed first novel, Man Walks Into a Room. A meditation on memory and personal history, solitude and intimacy, the novel won praise from Susan Sontag and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award. The movie rights to the novel were optioned by Richard Gere.

The History of Love was first published as an excerpt in The New Yorker in 2004. The rights to the full novel sparked auctions among publishers, with Krauss eventually signing with Norton as her American publisher. The novel weaves together the stories of Leo Gursky, an 80-year-old Jewish survivor from Slonim, the young Alma Singer who is coping with the death of her father, and the story of a lost manuscript also called The History of Love. The novel was an international bestseller and won numerous awards. The book was optioned by Warner Brothers and is set to be directed by Alfonso Cuarón.

Great House was named a finalist for the 2010 National Book Award in Fiction on October 13, 2010.

Personal life

In 2004, Krauss married novelist Jonathan Safran Foer. They live in Park Slope in Brooklyn, New York, and have two children.

Bibliography

Books

Great House (2010)

The History of Love (2005)

Man Walks Into a Room (2002)

Short stories

"The Young Painters", The New Yorker, 2010

"From the Desk of Daniel Varsky", Harper's, 2007 (Included in Best American Short Stories 2008)

"My Painter", Granta, 2007

"The Last Words on Earth", The New Yorker, 2004

"Future Emergencies", Esquire, 2002 (Included in Best American Short Stories 2003)

Awards

William Saroyan International Prize for Writing, 2008

Granta's Best American Novelists under 40, 2007

Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger (France), 2006

Medicis Prize shortlist (France), 2006

Femina Prize shortlist (France), 2006

Orange Prize shortlist (U.K.), 2006

Los Angeles Times Book of the Year (for Man Walks Into a Room), 2002

Named "Best and Brightest" writer by Esquire Magazine, 2002

References

External links

Nicolekrauss.com - The Official Website of Nicole Krauss

Category:American novelists Category:American people of Belarusian descent Category:American people of English descent Category:American people of German descent Category:American people of Hungarian descent Category:American people of Ukrainian descent Category:American short story writers Category:1974 births Category:Living people Category:Alumni of the Courtauld Institute of Art Category:Marshall Scholars Category:Jewish novelists Category:Jewish American writers Category:Stanford University alumni

Name	John Reed
Caption	Reed in 2007
Birth date	February 07, 1969
Birth place	TriBeCa, New York City
Nationality	American
Alma mater	Columbia University
Occupation	novelist
Website	http://www.johnreed.tv

John Reed (born February 7, 1969) is an American novelist. He is the author of four novels: A Still Small Voice (2000), Snowball's Chance (2002) with a preface by Alexander Cockburn, The Whole (2005), and All the World's a Grave: A New Play by William Shakespeare (2008). His fifth book, Tales of Woe (2010), is a collection of twenty-five stories, chronicling true stories of abject misery.

Biography

Born in 1969 in New York City, Reed is the son of artist David Reed. He attended Hampshire College, and received a Masters in Fine Art in Creative Writing from Columbia University. He teaches at The New School.

Reed was an early contributor to, and subsequently an editor with, Open City, a New York literary journal published by Robert Bingham, who later founded the book series.

Works

reading from his non-fiction Tales of Woe, at the MTV Press/Brooklyn Rail launch party.]]He is affiliated with the New York Press and The Brooklyn Rail. "Americans are extremely sophisticated in terms of narrative forms," said Reed in an interview. "We see it in commercials, we see it on TV, we see it in movies. But the narrative forms we're talking about are three acts, five acts, depending on how you want to look at it. They're all based on a Christian model of sin, suffering, redemption; which is not a large model."

A Still Small Voice

A Still Small Voice (Delacorte 2000, Delta 2001), Reed’s first novel, is a historical novel based on the life of a girl growing up in Kentucky from 1850-1870.

Snowball's Chance

Snowball's Chance (Roof Books 2002/2003), Reed’s second novel was a controversial send-up of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, and ended in a cataclysmic attack on the “Twin Mills” (reminiscent of the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center). It became a bestseller in the field of books by independent literary publishers. and received international reviews. The Boston Globe wrote that Reed was “blaming the victim of terrorism,” while Christopher Hitchens called Reed a “Bin Ladenist". John Strausbaugh reported in The New York Press:

"Snowball's Chance is a pretty vicious parody of Animal Farm. 'My intention is to blast Orwell,' Reed says. 'I’m really doing my best to annihilate him.' He not only shanghais Orwell’s story, but amps up and mocks the writer’s famously flat, didactic style–that fairytailish simplicity that has ensured Animal Farm a place in high school English classes for the last 50 years."

The Daily Telegraph (London) wrote that a fortnight's work would not undo Orwell's legacy. The Orwell estate objected to Reed’s use of Animal Farm. The estate had recently weathered the release and publication of a handwritten list of "crypto-communists" that George Orwell gave to the British Secret Service at the onset of the "Cold War," a phrasing first employed by Orwell. The list of authors, artists and various politically active personages consisted of over one hundred names (the number is often mistakenly put at thirty-seven, which was the number of names previously released by the British Secret Service). Though the list does sport some unpleasant language and descriptions, the overall consequences of the list are debatable. Reed's work was interpreted as anti-Orwell. Throughout 2002/03, The Wind Done Gone (a parody of Gone with the Wind) was engaged in ongoing litigation with the estate of Margaret Mitchell; detractors of Snowball's Chance raised the question of copyright infringement, as was reported in The Age (Australian):

[William] Hamilton [the Orwell estate's legal representative], of London, said: "If it were a straight parody, I would say 'Good on you.' But this book seems to take rather than give." Reed said: "I think that Orwell, were he still alive, would far rather be with me in my hovel than sitting in some corporate office preparing lawsuits."

The Whole, or, Duh Whole

magazine's senior editor Monica de la Torre and editor-in-chief Betsy Sussler.]] The Whole, Reed’s third novel, parodied MTV and was released in 2005 by MTV Books (Simon & Schuster). The novel described a gigantic hole that appears in the middle of the country, which engulfs four states.

All the World's a Grave

Reed, in a new work, returns to the overhaul of canonical English writers in All the World's a Grave, fall 2008, Penguin Books. The work, subtitled "A New Play by William Shakespeare", is a tragedy in five acts, a "mash-up" constructed of lines drawn from five Shakespeare tragedies and one Shakespeare history; Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, Othello, Romeo & Juliet and Henry V. The work has received early praise from Actor Sir Ian McKellen and Playwright Richard Foreman. In the "literary trick" (as described by Page Six of The New York Post) Shakespeare's lines are rearranged into a wholly new story, in which Prince Hamlet of Denmark goes to war to claim his bride and the daughter of King Lear, Juliet. Upon a triumphant return home, Hamlet discovers that his mother has murdered his father, and married Macbeth. Visited by his father's ghost, and goaded by the opportunistic Lieutenant Iago, Hamlet is driven mad by the erroneous belief that Juliet is having an affair with General Romeo.

References

External links

John Reed's website

All the World's a Grave'', book website.

Kill the beavers!, The Daily Telegraph, November 22, 2002.

John Reed: Saint George and the Damn Truth, Moby Lives, Nove,ber 10, 2003.

John Reed: The Whole, an excerpt, Brooklyn Rail, January 2005.

Dinitia Smith: A Pig Returns to the Farm, Thumbing His Snout at Orwell, The New York Times, November 25, 2002.

Cathy Young: Blaming the Victim, Reason.com, December 3, 2002.

Andrea Scrima: Review of Tales of Woe, Rumpus, November 16, 2010.

Category:1969 births Category:Living people Category:American novelists Category:American humorists Category:Writers from New York Category:Hampshire College alumni Category:Columbia University alumni Category:George Orwell Category:The New School faculty

Andreas Hofer (November 22, 1767 – February 20, 1810) was a Tirolean innkeeper and patriot. He was the leader of a rebellion against Napoleon's forces.

He was an innkeeper turned politician who fought for Austria against the French during the War of the Third Coalition. In 1809, he became the leader of a rebellion against Franco-Bavarian forces that sparked the War of the Fifth Coalition. He was subsequently captured and executed.

Early life

Andreas Hofer was born 1767 in St. Leonhard in Passeier, County of Tyrol. His father was an innkeeper of the Sandhof inn and Andreas followed in his footsteps when he inherited the establishment. He also traded wine and horses in northern Italy and learned the language. He married Anna Ladurner. In 1791 he was elected into the Tyrolean Landtag. In dialectical German he was known as a "wirt" (innkeeper) and thus ever after "The Sandwirt."

In the war of the Third Coalition against the French he became a sharpshooter and later a militia captain. When Tyrol was transferred from Austria to Bavaria (France's ally) in the Treaty of Pressburg in 1805, Hofer became a leader of the anti-Bavarian movement. In January 1809, he was part of a delegation to Vienna to ask Emperor Francis II of Austria for support for a possible uprising. The Emperor gave his assurances and the delegation returned home.

Hofer begun to secretly organize insurrection, visiting villagers and holding councils of war in local inns. Reputedly he was so much on the move that he signed his messages "Andreas Hofer, from where I am" and letters to him were addressed to "wherever he may be". At the same time other leaders organized their own forces elsewhere in the Alps. Hofer became a leader of a militia contingent in Passeier Valley.

Armed rebellion begins

The Tyrolean rebellion began on April 9, 1809. The previous night organizers dumped sacks of sawdust into the River Inn as a sign to start the rebellion. When the sawdust floated through Innsbruck and to the Inntal, it alerted the rebels. Village bells summoned men to fight with muskets and farmyard implements. They soon overran smaller Bavarian garrisons and surprised a column of French infantry that was passing through the area.

On April 11 Tyrolean militia defeated a Bavarian force in Sterzing which led to the occupation of Innsbruck before noon. When the French and Bavarians counterattacked the next night, the Tyroleans fought them in the city until the Tyroleans won on the morning of the 13th. Hofer and his allies advanced south, taking Bozen and Trent.

Hopes of a successful rebellion waned when Napoleon defeated the Austrian forces of Archduke Charles of Austria. Austrian troops withdrew from Tyrol and Hofer pulled back to the mountains. The Bavarians reoccupied Innsbruck on May 19, but when Napoleon's troops left, the rebellion flared again.

Hofer takes command

Hofer became the effective commander-in-chief of the Tyrolean rebels, with the support of other leaders like Josef Speckbacher and Father Joachim Haspinger. He commanded a force of Tyroleans approximately 20,000 strong, together with a couple of hundred Austrian soldiers who had joined them after the retreat of the Austrian army.

In Iselberg on May 25 and May 29 Hofer's troops again defeated the Bavarians and drove them out of the country. Hofer's troops retook Innsbruck on May 30.

On May 29 Hofer received a letter from Emperor Francis in which he promised not to sign any peace treaty that would include giving up Tyrol. An Austrian intendant came to rule Tyrol and Hofer returned to his home.

Napoleon defeated Austrian troops in the Battle of Wagram on July 6. On July 12 the Armistice of Znaim ceded Tyrol to Bavaria again. Napoleon sent 40,000 French and Bavarian troops to take over Tyrol and they reoccupied Innsbruck.

After little hesitation, Hofer joined battle again. The French offered a reward for his head. On August 13-14, his Tyroleans defeated the French troops of Marshal François Joseph Lefebvre, in Bergisel, in a 12-hour battle after a downhill charge. The Tyroleans retook Innsbruck.

Hofer declared himself Imperial Commandant of the Tyrol in the absence of the ruler and for two months ruled the land from Hofburg in the name of the Emperor of Austria. He announced new laws and taxes and minted his own coins. He also sent two men to Britain to ask for assistance. On September 29 he received a medal from the emperor and another promise that Austria would not abandon Tyrol.

Hofer's hopes were dashed on October 14 when the Treaty of Schönbrunn again ceded Tyrol to Bavaria. French and Bavarian troops advanced and Hofer retreated to the mountains. Promised amnesty, Hofer and his followers laid down their weapons November 8. Hofer retreated to his home valley.

Final attempt and capture

On November 12, Hofer received false reports of Austrian victories and tried to summon his troops on November 15. This time he had little following and French troops defeated his forces. His subordinate commanders surrendered and asked him to escape over the mountains.

Hofer hid in a hut in the mountains in the Passeiertal and the French announced a reward of 1500 guilders for his head. His neighbor Franz Raffl betrayed him and revealed his hiding place to the authorities; Hofer was captured by Italian troops on January 19, 1810. He was sent to Mantua in chains to face a court martial. Raffl died impoverished in Bavaria 20 years later.

Court martial and execution

Officers holding the court martial disagreed on the exact sentence until they received a message from Milan. It was supposedly from the Viceroy, transmitting Napoleon's order to "give him a fair trial and then shoot him." Later Napoleon claimed to Prince Metternich that Hofer was executed against his wishes.

Andreas Hofer was executed by a firing squad on February 20, 1810. He refused a blindfold and gave money to a corporal in charge, telling him to "shoot straight". Hofer became a martyr in Germany and Austria and a rallying point against the power of Napoleon.

Legacy and monuments

In 1818, his family was given a patent of nobility by the emperor of Austria. In 1823, Hofer's remains were moved from Mantua to Innsbruck, and in 1834, his tomb was decorated with a marble statue. In 1893, a bronze statue of Hofer was erected in Bergisel (Innsbruck). There is a large painting depicting his arrest which hangs in the Palace of Maria Theresa in Innsbruck. There is an annual open-air play in Meran based on his life.

The song Zu Mantua in Banden (today the anthem of the State of Tyrol) tells the story of his tragic fate and execution.

Literature

Andreas Hofer an historical novel by Luise Mühlbach, 1871

Sources

Tom Pocock - Stopping Napoleon (2004)

External links

Category:1767 births Category:1810 deaths Category:People from Burggrafenamt Category:People executed by firing squad Category:People executed by the First French Empire Category:Austrian Empire people of the Napoleonic Wars Category:Rebels