Grand Duke Of Tuscany Leopoldo Ii

Grand Duke of Tuscany from 1824 to 1859, recognized contemporarily as a liberal monarch, authorizing the Tuscan Constitution of 1848, and allowing a degree of free press. 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. Leopoldo 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, in Papal territory. Tuscany was occupied by soldiers of Vittorio Emanuel 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 Leopoldo himself was considered too unpopular to be accepted, so on 21 July 1859 he abdicated the throne in favour of his son, Ferdinando. Ferdinando 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-Lorraine on 16 August. Leopoldo II was the son of Ferdinando III, Grand Duke of Tuscany and Princess Luisa Maria Amelia Teresa of the Two Sicilies, who were double first cousins. Leopoldo married twice; first to Maria Anna of Saxony (with whom he had three children), and after her death in 1832, to Maria Antonia of the Two-Sicilies. By the latter, he begat ten children including his eventual successor, Ferdinando (IV). Leopoldo spent his last years in Austria, and died in Rome on 29 January 1870, aged 72. Link to Wikipedia biography