In 1765, at the age of eighteen, Pietro Leopoldo, son of Francesco II, became the "Ninth Grand Duke".
He immediately dismissed all the Lorenese people, hated by the Florentines, from any official charge, replacing them with assistants of Tuscan origin, preferably from the middle class, which was more open towards reformist ideas.
Even though he was very young, Leopoldo nonetheless was able to choose the right men to achieve the plans he had in mind.
Among these was the abolishing of jurisdictions and of feudal laws such as serfdom, the right of primogeniture and the ecclesiastical mortmain, and the promoting of the unification of the law code, the reclaiming of marshes.
Although Tuscan economy based its strength on agriculture, Leopoldo was well aware that farming in itself would not have been enough to avoid the threat of starvation. He therefore decided on two resolutions, one to abolish privileges and duties, the other to promote farming in uncultivated areas, including those which had been taken over by swamp land and malaria for centuries.
For this purpose, Leopoldo restructured the administration of Grosseto and its province and gave independence to the local government: he left the people of Maremma free to collect salt, to work iron and to grow and manufacture tobacco plants. He also gave patches of land for free to those willing to cultivate it, to build houses (or to repair old ones), offering free wood, tools at low price and awarding monetary prizes.
This unrivalled, enlighted government of the Grand Duke lasted 24 years, as is reported by Repetti in his "Dizionario": ĞAfter Leopoldo I abolished..(click here to read the letter) In 1790 Pietro Leopoldo was forced to go back to Austria to succeed to the throne left vacant by his brother's death.
His son, the Grand Duke Ferdinand III, took over the governing of Tuscany. We owe to him the restoration and the widening of the strongholds as they are today. Also the fortress of Troia Nuova was enlarged on the three sides facing the sea, to which new rooms were added together with a long underground corridor that, crossing the level surface, brought to small basement apartments, that soldiers could use as storerooms, houses for their families, quarters, kitchens or other. In March 1799, Ferdinand III was obliged to surrender to the arrogance of the French and leave.
In 1806 Napoleon gave Piombino, the islands of Elba, Pianosa and Montecristo to his sister Elisa and her husband Felice Baciocchi, who three years before had already been appointed Princes of Lucca.
With the fall of Napoleon, in 1814, the whole state of Piombino became part of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany to which Castiglione della Pescaia had already been included.
The Napoleonic code was reviewed and modified, and Tuscany became the most independent of all Italian states, a refuge for many victims of political persecution. The economy grew stronger with the measures adopted by Leopoldo - the abolition of taxes and duties, the opening of customs boundaries to importation and the building of new roads. The economic upturn favoured the war against the malaria fever that infested the Maremma area. Many considered the struggle a useless effort.
The reclamation system adopted by Fossombroni was the so called "a colmata" or "delle colmare" (by landfill), a highly reliable but very expensive method, which consisted in the raising of the swamp floor with soil taken from the rivers. In order to avoid the mixing of fresh water with sea water, Fossombroni, in 1827, had a bridge built along the torrent of Castiglione della Pescaia. This three-span bridge - named after his maker, Giorgini - had sluice-gates which closed with the incoming of sea water towards the torrent, and reopened to let stagnant water flow from the inland to the open sea. He also decided for the building of other sluice-ways and drains, bank ups, locks and floodgates: sometimes these works proved useless, but they were rarely harmful.
In 1824 Ferdinand III died, killed by the same malaria he had tried to wipe out with the reclamation of Maremma.
His son, Leopold II, affectionately called "Canapino" and then "Canapone" (the Italian for "hemp"), because of the very light color of his hair, continued the plan that his father could but begin.