'769 



STROZZL 



STEUENSEE AND BRANDT. 



770 



resist the influence and wealth and power of these ambitious leaders.'' 

 (Varchi; Segni; Adrian! ; the ' Life of Filippo,' by his brother Lorenzo 

 Strozzi ; and Botta, ' Storia d'ltalia.') A curious manuscript was dis- 

 covered not many years since in the possession of the Cavalier G. F. 

 TJguccioni of Florence, which is an iueditcd history of Oian Girolamo 

 de Rossi, a friend of Filippo Strozzi, which contains several particulars 

 concerning his untimely end. ('Antologia di Firenze,' No. 127, July 

 1831.) The author says that Cardinal Cibo and Cosmo's mother were 

 the great instigators of Filippo's death, because they thought that his 

 great wealth was dangerous in his hands, but would be less so when 

 divided among his children. Filippo had still at his death 50,000 

 scudi, or crowns, of income, chiefly in the banks of France, which his 

 enemies could not touch, after the emperor had confiscated the funds 

 which he possessed in Spain, Germany, and Italy. 



PIEUO STROZZI, son of Filippo, after escaping from Tuscany, returned 

 to France, where he was patronised by Henri II. and his consort 

 Catherine de' Medici, and rose to high rank in the French army. In 

 1553 he was sent, with the title of ' Lieutenant of the King in Italy,' 

 to Siena, which republic was then at war with Cosmo, duke of Florence, 

 and where there was already a French auxiliary force, joined by a 

 number of Florentine emigrants. His brother Leone Strozzi went 

 also with a French naval force to the coast of Piombino, but was 

 killed while attacking a small fortress near the shore. Piero Strozzi 

 mismanaged the defence of Siena; his great object being to attack 

 Florence, he neglected the main matter, which was to defend Siena ; 

 he made useless incursions into the Florentine territory. Being 

 defeated, after a desperate fight near Marciano, by the Marquis of 

 Marignano, he retired to Montalcino ; and the city of Siena, after sus- 

 taining the horrors of famine, was obliged to surrender to Duke 

 Cosmo, in April 1555. Piero Strozzi, who in the meantime had been 

 made marshal of France by Henry II., retired to Rome. Soon after, 

 Pope Paul IV. having quarrelled with King Philip II. of Spain, the 

 latter sent the Duke of Alba from Naples to attack Rome in 1556, and 

 Piero Strozzi was entrusted by the pope with the defence of the city. 

 Strozzi stood out bravely against the Spaniards, till the arrival of the 

 Duke of Guise with a French army obliged the Duke of Alba to with- 

 draw to Naples. After this Strozzi returned to France, and repaired 

 to the French camp in Picardy to fight against the Spaniards and 

 English. In 1558 he and the Duke of Guise took Calais from the 

 English, but shortly after Piero Strozzi was killed by a musket-shot at 

 the taking of Thionville. His son Philippe attained high rank in the 

 French service, and was killed in 1587, in the Azores Islands, whither 

 he had been sent with an expedition by Henri III., or rather by Queen 

 Catherine de' Medici, to favour the claims of Don Antonio, claimant 

 of the crown of Portugal against Philip II. of Spain. 



GIAMBATTISTA STROZZI, son of Lorenzo and nephew to Piero, was 

 born at Florence in 1551, and was celebrated during a long life for 

 his learning, his upright character, and his encouragement of useful 

 knowledge. His house was a kind of school, to which young men 

 fond of study resorted, and he gave them lessons gratuitously, and 

 held disputations with them on various subjects of science. Those 

 who were assiduous but poor he supplied with books, board, and 

 other necessaries, and by so doing he greatly reduced his property. 

 He was very intimate with the Grand-Duke Ferdinand I. and his son 

 Cosmo II. Wuen Urban VIII. was elected pope in 1623, he invited 

 Giambattista Strozzi to Rome, gave him apartments in the Vatican, 

 and delighted in his conversation ; and when Strozzi departed to 

 return to Florence, the pope sent him a letter, in which, among other 

 expre-sions of esteem, he said that he wished that every town of 

 Italy possessed a man like him. After his return to Florence he 

 became blind, but continued to receive in his house and converse with 

 studious men who resorted to him from all parts. He died in 1634, 

 at eighty-three years of age. He was an elegant writer both in prose 

 and in verse; sume of his poems and dissertations have been published, 

 but most of his works remain in manuscript. He began a poem 

 entitled ' L'America,' concerning the discoveries of his countryman 

 Amerigo Vespucci, but left it unfinished. Professor Rosini has 

 inserted many interesting particulars of the life of Giambattista 

 Strozzi in his historical novel ' La Monaca di Monza.' 



There are several other individuals of the name of Strozzi belonging 

 to various branches of the family, who became known in different 

 pai'ts of Italy for their learning. Francesco di Soldo Strozzi, a Flo- 

 rentine, but residing at Venice, translated into Italian Xenophon's 

 ' History of Greece, 1 Venice, 1550, and also Thucydides, which last he 

 dedicated to Duke Cosmo, Venice, 1545, reprinted in 1563, but of 

 which a much bttter edition was published at Verona in 1735. Oberto 

 Strozzi of Mantua, a descendant of Tommnso above mentioned, was a 

 patron of literature. He lived in the 16th century, and was a friend 

 of Berni, Mauro della Casa, and other learned men. He founded a 

 poetical academy at Rome, called 'Dei Vignajuoli,' about 1534, which 

 as.-embled in his own house, and whose meetings are recorded in high 

 terms by Marco Sabino in his dedication to Strozzi of the poetical 

 ' In-tituzioui* of Mario Equicola in 1541. 



Giulio Strozzi, born at Venice about the latter part of the 16th 

 century, wrote poema among others an epic entitled ' Veuezia Edifi- 

 cata.' He afterwards went to Rome, when he and Cardinal Deti 

 founded an academy called Degli Ordinati, in opposition to that of 

 the Urnoristi. Strozzi was made papal prothonotary, and die I at 



BIOG. DIV. VOL. V. 



Rome. Ciriaco or Chirico Strozzi, a Florentine, lived in the 16th 

 century ; he was professor of philosophy and of Greek at Bologna, and 

 afterwards at Pisa, where he died in 1565. He composed a supple- 

 ment to the 'Polities' of Aristotle, to supply the loss of the ninth 

 and tenth books. Pietro Strozzi, also a Florentine, lived in the 17th 

 century, and wrote a theological and controvert ial work, ' De Dog- 

 matibus Chaldseorum,' with the view of converting the Nestorians 

 of Mesopotamia to the Church of Rome. (Tiraboschi ; Pignotti ; 

 Fontanini.) 



The palace Strozzi at Florence, built by the architects Da Majano 

 and Pollajolo, in the time of the republic, is a remarkable specimen of 

 the massive and stern style of Tuscan architecture of the middle ages. 

 After the lapse of nearly four centuries it appears aa perfect as if it 

 were a recent structure. The colossal entablature which crowns the 

 building is much admired. 



STRUKNSEE AND BRANDT, have acquired celebrity from their 

 extraordinary rise to rank and power, and still more so from their 

 common fate. Their names are inseparably blended in history, and 

 the life of the one can hardly be told apart from that of the other. 



JOHN FREDERICK COUNT STRDENSEE was born at Halle in Saxony, 

 on the 5th of August 1 737. His father, a divine of some eminence, 

 respected alike for his good qualities and for the orthodoxy of bis 

 principles, was professor of theology at the university of Halle, and 

 his mother was the only daughter of John Samuel Karl, physician in 

 ordinary to the king of Denmark. Both his parents took great pains 

 in educating young Struensee, who, after the ordinary course of 

 studies at the school attached to the orphan-house of Dr. Franke, 

 entered the university in 1754, and applied himself to physic. The 

 extraordinary talei.ts which he possessed, and the facility with which 

 he acquired everything bearing upon the science he had chosen, were 

 strongly counterbalanced by licentious habits and a loose way of 

 thinking on matters of religion. Being however under the control of 

 his father, he obtained, with some distinction, his degree of doctor 

 in medicine in 1757. In the same year his father was made pastor 

 primarius at the principal church of Altona, where young Struenaee 

 himself obtained the appointment of public physician. Singular 

 success attended him in the practice of his profession, and shortly 

 after his arrival a few literary productions procured him the reputa- 

 tion of an author. He remained in this situation after his father's 

 removal to Rendsburg in 1760, where he had been appointed super- 

 intendant-general of Sleswig and Holstein. It is to Struensee's stay 

 in Altona that we must ascribe his knowledge of politics, little as it 

 was, which he so ably employed afterwards in the days of his greatest 

 prosperity. Here also he laid the foundation of that pernicious 

 system of licentiousness which was at once the stimulus of his 

 ambition and the cause of his ruin. 



It does not appear when he left Altona; but in 1768 we find him 

 appointed to attend the King of Denmark, Christian VII., in his tour 

 through Germany, France, and England. Struensee soon insinuated 

 himself into tbe good graces of the king, with whose profligacy the 

 loose principles and easy manners of his new physician were in perfect 

 accordance ; and such was the ascendancy he gained over his royal 

 master, that, shortly after his introduction to him, he ventured to 

 promise Brandt, whose acquaintance he made at Paris, to use hia 

 influence in order to procure his recal from banishment. About the 

 same time he met Count Rautzau, who afterwards played so con- 

 spicuous a part in the revolution which involved his ruin. At Paris 

 a frequent intercourse with D'Aletubert and Voltaire confirmed him 

 in his infidelity, whil<: the profligacy of the higher ranks gave exemp- 

 tion from the fear of scandal. We must not omit that it was during 

 this journey of Christian VII. that the degree of D.C.L. was conferred 

 on the king by the University of Oxford, and that of M.D. on 

 Struensee. Soon after their return to Copenhagen the king himself 

 presented Struensee to the Queen Caroline Matilda, the posthumous 

 daughter of Frederic, Prince of Wales, and sister of George III., and 

 promoted him to the rank of privy councillor. It appears however 

 that the queen did not receiva this new favourite of her husband 

 with any marks of attention. It was only through the address with 

 which Strueusee reconciled her with the king, from whom she had 

 been alienated in consequence of his excesses, that he became as 

 acceptable to her as to her husband. He received evt-ry day from 

 both of them new marks of consideration and esteem, and in 1775, 

 having inoculated the crown prince (Frederic VI., born in 1768), he 

 was entrusted with his physical education. In his capacity of lecturer 

 to the king, Struensee found ample opportunities of realising his 

 ambitious plans. In order to supplant Count Berustorff, or rather, to 

 deprive him of his seat in the council of state, he recommended 

 Count Rantzau-Aschbach. Soon afterwards he obtained the recal of 

 his friend Enewold von Brandt, who was raised to the dignity of 

 ' maltre des plaisirs ' and director of tbe plays, instead of the old 

 favourite Count von Hoik. Brandt's polished manners, his easy 

 address, and his lively conversation, were qualities well calculated to 

 promote his favour with the court, where it was of the greatest 

 importance to Struensee that none but his friends should have any 

 influence. It was chiefly through Brandt that he finally succeeded in 

 dismissing Count Bernstorff from the service; mauy other men of 

 quality were obliged to leave their situations, and the queen-dowager 

 Juliana Maria soon found herself without, power, neglected by her 



3D 



