Outside the Treaty of Aranjuez, Spain also secretly agreed to retrocede the Louisiana territory (over 2 million square kilometers) back to France in order to secure the Kingdom of Etruria as a client state for Spain; Louisiana was first ceded by France to Spain in 1763 at the end of the Seven Years' War. Louisiana was duly transferred to France on 15 October 1802, after the signing of the Treaty of Aranjuez. Napoleon subsequently sold Louisiana to the United States in the Louisiana Purchase on April 30, 1803, in order to pay for his French armies during the War of the Third Coalition.
The first king (Louis I) died young in 1803, and his underage son Charles Louis succeeded him. His mother, Maria Luisa of Spain, was appointed regent. However, since Etruria was troubled with smuggling and espionage, Napoleon annexed the territory, thus it was the last non-Bonaparte Italian kingdom on the Peninsula to be absorbed into the French Empire. Since Spain's only hope of compensation lay in Portugal, co-operation with the emperor became more important.[2]
In 1807, Napoleon dissolved the kingdom and integrated it into France, turning it into three French departments: Arno, Méditerranée and Ombrone. The king and his mother were promised the throne of a new Kingdom of Northern Lusitania (in northern Portugal), but this plan was never realized due to the break between Napoleon and the Spanish Bourbons in 1808. After Napoleon's downfall in 1814, Tuscany was restored to its Habsburg grand dukes. In 1815, the Duchy of Lucca was carved out of Tuscany, on the lands of the former Republic of Lucca, as compensation for the Bourbons of Parma until they resumed their rule in 1847.[3] As stipulated in the Treaty of Paris of 1817, in execution of the art. 99 of the Final Act of the Congress of Vienna, the Duchy of Lucca was then annexed by the Grand Duchy of Tuscany.[4]
Flags and coats of arms
Flags
State flag with the greater coat of arms
State flag with the lesser coat of arms
Merchant flag with the lesser coat of arms
Merchant flag (used by little tonnage ships)
Coat of arms
Greater coat of arms
Middle coat of arms
Lesser coat of arms
References
^Norman Davies, Vanished Kingdoms: The History of Half-Forgotten Europe, Penguin, 2012, chapter 10, "Etruria: French Snake in the Tuscan Grass
(1801–1814)".
^Atto Finale 1859, p. 77, Article 3 of the Treaty concluded in Paris on 10 June 1817 about the reversion of the Duchies of Parma, Piacenza e Guastalla.