The world of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Venice is revealed through the life of Lucia Mocenigo and her letters to her sister as she details the milieu of the Venetian aristocracy, fall of Venice to Napoleon, relationship with the Empress Josephine, affair with an Austrian officer, and firsthand account of the 1814 defeat of Bonaparte in Paris. Reprint. 25,000 first printing.
In 1787, the beautiful Lucia is married off to Alvise Mocenigo, scion of one of the most powerful Venetian families. But their life as a golden couple will be suddenly transformed when Venice falls to Bonaparte. We witness Lucia's painful series of miscarriages and the pressure on her to produce an heir; her impassioned affair with an Austrian officer; the glamour and strain of her career as a hostess in Vienna; and her amazing firsthand account of the defeat of Napoleon in 1814. With his brave and articulate heroine, Andrea di Robilant has once again reached across the centuries, and deep into his own past, to bring history to rich and vivid life on the page.
