The flight to Switzerland

Before leaving Milan on March 30, Foscolo had arranged for his books and papers to be delivered to some friends in fear of a police search which subsequently came about when news spread that the writer had fled. A chest of personal objects was sent to his family in Venice, with a letter in which Foscolo said the reason for leaving was his refusal to take the oath of loyalty to Austria, reiterated his free thinking and declared that his only goal was to "serve Italy" (Ep. V, p. 373); another chest was entrusted to Silvio Pellico. Foscolo was in Lugano on April 1, the day the officials were scheduled to swear the oath of loyalty to Austria; on the 14th he wrote a draft of Addio all’Italia (Goodbye to Italy) for the “Gazzetta di Lugano”, but it was not published. After spells at Rovereto and at Chur in Grisons, he arrived in Zurich at the end of May: he called himself Lorenzo Alderani like the editor of Jacopo Ortis's letters, to avoid the extradition that the Austrian authorities had requested from Switzerland. After a spell at Baden, he settled at Hottingen, a small town on the banks of Lake Zurich, where he stayed at the home of a Protestant vicar; he stayed there until June 1816, except for a brief spell back in Baden and a short trip to Bern. The decision to live in a small mountain town was dictated by economic factors; the pension the writer received from Milan had been suspended and the help of his friends was occasional; in December 1815 he turned to his friend Quirina Mocenni Maggiotti who sent him some money from Florence. One of the three copies published of Vestigi della storia del sonetto italiano dall’Anno MCC al MDCCC (Vestiges of the History of the Italian Sonnet from year MCC to MDCCC), printed in Zurich at Orell e Füssli January 1 1816, is dedicated to his Florentine friend. Hypercalipseos Liber Singularis came out with the same publisher under the pseudonym of Didimo Chierico as well as the new edition of Le ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortis. In July Foscolo obtained a passport for Britain from the British plenipotentiary minister.