The Last Medici

Harold Acton's entertaining and lively account of the last decades of the great Medici dynasty, and its decadent decline. From the dust jacket flap: "The death rattle of the dynasty was first audible when Cosimo III succeeded to the throne in 1670. A bigoted, weak and tyrannical character, Cosimo was permanently warped by his marriage to Marguerite-Louise of Orleans, who detested him. Mr Acton does full justice to the pathos and humours of this domestic tragi-comedy as well as to its disastrous effects. The last act closes with Gian Gastone who, married to a coarse and ignorant widow, the Princess of Saxe-Lauenburg, tried to drown his disgust in drink and dissipation. While the European Powers were haggling over the Tuscan Succession he spent his last years bedridden in cynical debauchery until his death in 1737." Book and dust jacket in very good condition (dust jacket has a little rubbing at extremities).