MIOLLIS, SIXTE-ALEXANDRE. - General, b. at Aix on 18 Sept. 1759, d. there on 18 June 1828. Fifth of sixteen children - among them Charles François, bishop of Digne - he embraced the career of arms at a very young age and followed Lafayette on the American expedition. A captain in 1789, although he came from an aristocratic family he adhered to the Revolution and fought in the republican armies first and then in the Napoleonic ones, distinguishing himself particularly in the Italian campaigns from 1796 to 1801. Subsequently governor of Mantua, of Dalmatia and of Livorno, he protected archaeology and the arts: he inaugurated a bust of Virgil in Mantua, had the arena of Verona restored and had the remains of Ariosto honored in Ferrara.
Entrusted in 1808 with carrying out the occupation of Rome and the arrest of Pius VII, to whom he was nonetheless most devoted, he did not have the dignity and the boldness to withdraw from a mission so sad and ignominious especially for a soldier and a believer, and he remained in Rome as governor general until 1814. He exercised that office not without tact and moderation, giving broad impetus to cultural events. Important excavations in the Forum are owed to him, as well as works of consolidation and restoration of the Colosseum, of the temple of Vesta, of the cloaca maxima and of other monuments. He was a friend of Canova, whose advice he used for the reorganization of numerous institutes of art and of education; the stipends relating to the comital title, with which Napoleon invested him, he devoted entirely to the embellishment of the city. After the fall of the Empire, he swore an oath of fidelity to Louis XVIII, who entrusted him with the command of the division of Marseille, but during the Hundred Days he returned to the Napoleonic ranks, assuming command of the fortress of Metz. Struck from the army in 1815, he devoted the last thirteen years of his life to archaeological studies and to practices of piety.
Bibliography
Renzo U. Montini