Portrait of Vittorio Alfieri
On 14 July 1789 , day of the storming of the Bastille , the Italian poet Vittorio Alfieri was in Paris.
Here is what his secretary reported about that event which, in fact, marked the beginning of the French Revolution:
“On the day of the storming of the Bastille, Vittorio was seen jumping for joy on the ruins. Then, full of enthusiasm for that first hour of freedom, he wrote the ode to Paris spattered. Two months later, however, he hurried back to Italy. ”
In fact, after that initial exultation, Alfieri, horrified and disgusted by the growing unjustified violence and the turn that events were taking, radically changed his positions, distancing himself from the extremist and bloody ideas advocated by the revolutionary leaders.