FRANCIS IV. (1779-1846), duke of Modena, was the son of the archduke Ferdinand, Austrian governor of Lombardy, who acquired the duchy of Modena through his wife Marie Beatrice, heiress of the house of Este as well as of many fiefs of the Mala spina, Pio da Carpi, Pico della Mirandola, Cibo, and other fam ilies. At the time of the French invasion (1796) Francis was sent to Vienna to be educated, and in 1809 was appointed governor of Galicia. He married the daughter of the exiled king of Sardinia, Victor Emmanuel I., and a secret family compact was made whereby if the king and his two brothers died without male issue, the Salic law would be changed so that Francis should succeed to the kingdom instead of Charles Albert of Carignano (N. Bianchi, Storia della diplomazia europea in Italia, vol. i. ; . (For the family connection see the genealogical table s.v. SAvoY.) On the fall of Napoleon in 1814 Francis received the duchy of Modena, including Massa-Carrara and Lunigiana.
The duke soon showed himself one of the most reactionary despots in Italy. Against the Carbonari and other Liberals he issued the severest edicts, and although there was no revolt at Modena in 1821 as in Piedmont and Naples, he immediately insti tuted judicial proceedings against the supposed conspirators. Some 35o persons were arrested and tortured, 56 being con demned to death (only a few of them were executed) and 237 to imprisonment ; a large number, however, escaped, including An tonio Panizzi (afterwards director of the British Museum). The ferocious police official Besini who conducted the trials was after wards murdered. The duke actually proposed to Prince Metter nich, the Austrian chancellor, an agreement whereby the various Italian rulers were to arrest every Liberal in the country on a certain day, but the project fell through owing to opposition from the courts of Florence and Rome. At the congress of Verona Metternich made another attempt to secure the Piedmontese suc cession for Francis, but without success. Modena swarmed with spies and informers, and the least expression of liberalism, or even failure to denounce a Carbonaro, involved arrest and im prisonment.
But strange to say, in 1830 we find Francis actually coquetting with revolution, in the person of Ciro Menotti, who seems to have offered help in the matter of the Piedmontese succession. But Menotti failed, and after the abortive revolution of 1831 Francis had him executed.
On Feb. 20, 1846, Francis died. He was certainly the ablest of the Italian despots, but Liberalism was in his eyes the most heinous of crimes, and his reign is one long record of barbarous persecution.