Duchy of Modena and Reggio

The Duchy of Modena and Reggio was the Este principality of Emilia, an independent Italian state from 1452 to 1859. The House of Este, old lords of Ferrara, received the ducal titles and built at Modena a court that outshone its size: Tasso wrote, Correggio painted, and the Este library gathered manuscripts that scholars still travel to read. Small but stubbornly independent, the duchy survived the Italian Wars, the Spanish predominance and the Napoleonic storm, which briefly replaced it with sister republics and then a kingdom of Italy, before the Congress of Vienna restored it to the Austria-Este branch of the family. The restored dukes ruled as model reactionaries, censoring presses and drilling soldiers, while their subjects read smuggled newspapers from Piedmont. In 1859, as Garibaldi's volunteers and the Piedmontese army unmade the old map, the last duke fled and his state voted itself into central Italy, ending four centuries of Este rule in Modena.