CHAPTER XXIV
THE REVOLUTION COMES TO ITALY
The Italians want to unite and they want a revolution; they want the Emperor to
rule in his own house, the Austrians in Germany, the Bourbons in Spain, the Pope
in matters of the Gospel; perpetual friendship and gratitude to France; in short,
everything in its place. These are the sentiments of the Italians.
—GIUSEPPE POGGI, MILAN, 1797
The year 1796 is chiefly remembered for Napoleon Bonaparte’s brilliant victories
in North Italy. In this book, however, Bonaparte will remain no more than one of
many generals in the service of the French Republic, and his first Italian campaign
will be presented, not as the public initiation of his own career, but as a turning
point in the larger revolutionary movement of the European world. It was not the
first such turning point. Of such grand events, if we consider only those subse-
quent to the Terror in France, the first had been the Dutch revolution and estab-
lishment of the Batavian Republic, with the consequent alliance of Holland and
France against Great Britain. The French victories in Italy made possible the cre-
ation of the Cisalpine Republic in the Po valley. Milan immediately became, in
1796, a center to which patriots and revolutionaries congregated from all parts of
Italy. Other Italian republics were soon set up on the model of the Cisalpine, and
in fact, by the turn of 1797–1798, there was a general alarm at the prospect of a
“Cisalpinization” of Europe.
The Cisalpine Republic is best understood in a broad perspective. In the present
chapter we begin with a view of “world revolution” as seen in 1796 from Paris, then
turn to the French attitude to revolution in Italy, then shift the point of observa-
tion to Italy itself, in an attempt to describe the sources of revolutionary agitation
in that country from an Italian standpoint. The closing section may seem a digres-
sion at first sight, being an account of the Kingdom of Corsica. This “kingdom,”
existing under British auspices from 1794 to 1796, offers an illuminating counter-
part to the Cisalpine Republic, which is treated in the chapter that follows.