From Renaissance To Napoleon
In March 1502, the Spanish fleet of king Ferdinand II of Aragon, allied to Louis XII of France, seized the port and conquered Taranto.
In 1504 King Ferdinand III valiantly defended this extremity of his kingdom, but had to cede it to the Spanish generala Consalvo de Cordoba.
In 1570 Admiral Giovanni Andrea Doria set his fleet of 49 galleys in Mar Grande to repair and supply his ships. Among the people on the fleet was Miguel de Cervantes. The fleet later united with the other parts of the Christian League, and in 1571 defeated the Turkish fleet at Lepanto: also some Tarentine nobles took part in the battle.
In 1647 the insurrection of Masaniello in Naples reached also Taranto. The city joined also the Parthenopaean Republic of 1799, from 8 February and 8 March of that year, though again unluckily.
In 1746 Taranto had 11,526 inhabitants. All of them were packed in the small island, among a high number of religious institutes and churches. Francesco Antonio Calo', a Tarentine nobleman, started in 1765 with two statues the Mysteries of the Holy Week celebrations. They are today the most important and attended event of Taranto.
After the defeat of Ferdinand IV of Naples at Monteregio and the subsequent Peace of Florence, in 1801 the French general Nicolas Soult occupied with 13,000 soldiers the provinces of Bari, Lecce and the harbour of Taranto. Napoleon wanted to build a stronghold to keep under pression the British base of Malta. On 23 April 1801, 6,000 French soldiers of the Armée d'observation du midi entered in Taranto (20.000 inhabitants at the time) and fortified it in order to obtain "a sort of Gibitrair" (Napoleon). On 25 March 1802, France and Great Britain signed the Treaty of Amiens, which required France to leave South Italy, but after UK declaration of war against France, the Armée d'observation du midi returned to Taranto, under the command of general Laurent Gouvion de Saint Cyr, on 23 May 1803. Among the French officers in Taranto, there is also the novelist Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, artillery general and fortification expert, who died in Taranto on 5 September 1803. On 15 February, Joseph Bonaparte became King of Naples, and on 3 May visited the fortifications of Taranto. The presence of the French troops and defensive works benefited the Tarentine economy. In 1805 the Russian fleet, allied with the British, remained there for several months.
On March 30, 1806, Bonaparte's decree created Tarente (the French name for the city) one of six hereditary duchés grand-fiefs in the satellite kingdom of Naples, awarded to maréchal MacDonald in 1809 (line extinguished 1912).
With the fall of Napoleon and the defeat of Joachim Murat at the battle of Tolentino, Southern Italy and Taranto returned under the Bourbon dynasty's rule, forming the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.
Read more about this topic: History Of Taranto
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