Milan, 24 October 1816, 3 p.m.
Palazzo Diotti in Borgo Monforte, Seat of the Austrian Government
Aged fifty-six and in office for six months, the Governor of Milan, Franz Josef Saurau, came from a storied noble family of Styria.
He had been Governor of Vienna, president of the central commission of the Court responsible for financial administration, Minister of Finance, Ambassador to St Petersburg, and again Governor (Stadthalter) of Vienna with primary policing functions. Thereafter, he assisted Bellegarde in the important position of Governor of Milan, a position he assumed when the Field Marshal was recalled to Vienna.
The prime objective of Saurau, from the very day of his installation, was to repress independentist tensions and to instruct the new province of the Empire in ob
