Geneva’s Italian side
The rise of Geneva, the home of Calvinism, owed much to the Turrettini family. Arriving there from Tuscany in the 16th century with ready money and access to an international network, they played no small part in buoying the city’s economy.
Christophe Vuilleumier
Christophe Vuilleumier is a historian and board member of the Schweizerische Gesellschaft für Geschichte (Swiss Historical Society). He has published a number of articles on 17th and 20th century Swiss history.
Francesco Turrettini (1547-1628), a Protestant, was forced to flee Lucca and the Inquisition in 1574. He made his way to Geneva via Lyon and several other cities in Germany, Belgium and Switzerland, finally deciding to settle there permanently in 1592. The Italian silk merchant continued to run his business from this new base, amassing a considerable fortune in just a few years. By 1628 Turrettini had even became a member of the Council of Two Hundred, Geneva’s supreme legislative authority at the time. In other words, he played a prominent role in the city’s political life, a sign that he was now fully integrated in his adopted home town.
His son Jean had the imposing Château des Bois built just outside Geneva in 1631. From that point on, the manor house formed the centre of the Turrettin seigneury, an area in which the family held the power to administer high, middle and low justice until 1794.
In 1715, at the age of 22, Françoise Turrettini married David Vasserot (1690-1727), a prosperous Dutch banker who had settled in Geneva. The scion of a rich and influential Huguenot family, Vasserot acquired a piece of land not far from the city in 1719. At that time, the estate, known as the Domaine de la Bâtie-Beauregard, fell under the rule of the Kingdom of France. The original de la Bâtie castle, built in 1278, had passed into the ownership of the House of Savoy in 1353 and been turned into a castellany. A little under 200 years later, the Savoyards were forced to yield the area to advancing Bernese troops, who elevated it to the status of a barony. Following several changes of ownership, the estate finally became part of French territory at the beginning of the 17th century, before passing into the hands of the Turrettini family just over a century later. As David Vasserot spent much of his time away on business, his wife Françoise became the de facto owner and lady of the manor, whose lands stretched from the villages of Collex and Bossy to the hamlet of Bellevue and covered a large area outside the gates of the city.
In 1747, Françoise Turrettini married for a second time. Her new husband was Baron Auguste Maurice de Donop, Minister of State and Foreign Affairs of Hesse-Kassel and knight of the Swedish Royal Order of the Seraphim. He knew Geneva well thanks to the religious links between the city and the Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel, which had been Calvinist since the end of the 16th century. Auguste Maurice de Donop and Prince Frederick II of Hesse-Kassel had received a very warm welcome from Geneva’s clergymen in 1735, for which the two Germans were especially grateful to Jean-Alphonse Turrettini, the cousin of the Baroness. Françoise Turrettini’s subsequent marriage to the German nobleman was thus more of a political than an emotional alliance: it was intended to establish even closer ties between Geneva and Hesse-Kassel.
For eight whole years, from 1760 to 1768, Françoise Turrettini argued with the poet over the delicate subject of money. The Baroness had gifted Voltaire a piece of land near Collex, but he refused to pay the taxes on it. Unfortunately, we do not know how the disagreement was resolved. But it is safe to assume that ‘Madame la Générale de Donop’ stood her ground.
The Baroness died in 1771 at the age of 78. She had run a vast estate for more than 50 years and been welcomed at Europe’s royal courts. Françoise Turrettini played as prominent a role in Geneva’s development as her male relations and, like other members of this exalted family, left her mark on the city associated with Calvin.
