The Revolution Comes to Italy 569
“WORLD REVOLUTION” AS SEEN FROM PARIS, 1796When the Directory came into being, France was still at war with Great Britain on
the one hand, and on the other with Austria, Sardinia, and the German states of
the Holy Roman Empire south of the River Main. The new regime, having in-
stalled itself against royalist opposition, was at first inclined to make itself agree-
able to the most determined republicans of the Left. These included the believers
in “international” revolution—Frenchmen who demanded war à outrance against
kings, and patriots of many nationalities who came to Paris to solicit aid for their
respective projects. The mood in the new government was at first to give these
patriots a receptive hearing.
At the French Foreign Office a good many staff studies were prepared in the
various bureaus, some of which, though never officially adopted, breathed the spirit
of Philippe Buonarroti and the atmosphere of the Pantheon Club. One of these,
unsigned and undated, but written shortly after the Directory took over from the
Convention, observed that since counter- revolutionaries sought to subvert the Re-
public (as at Vendé miaire and Quiberon Bay), it was necessary and proper for the
Republic to do the same to its enemies. “If we want quiet at home,” according to
this memorandum, “if we want to make a peaceable end to our Revolution, we
must set fire to Europe with the revolutionary flame, we must raise up rebellion in
Hungary, letting the Turks pay the costs, and sow division among the bandits of
Serbia and Moldavia, who have been armed by the Russians and Germans.” The
author went on to observe that the Committee of Public Safety had been very
foolish in its attitude to the English refugee patriots, whom it had imprisoned in-
stead of making use of. “But these elements still exist. They are ready to set En-
gland ablaze if only the fire is stirred up a little.” And he added that, since the
French Army of the Alps had had a few successes, uprisings should be promoted
in Lom- bardy and Sicily, and, as a final blow to Austria, the crown of the Holy
Roman Empire be transferred to Protestant Prussia.^1
Such was some of the advice that Charles Delacroix, the new foreign minister,
could obtain in his own office. In addition, a wide array of foreign enthusiasts
sought him out. There were men in Paris working for revolution in Ireland, Poland,
Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, and the Foreign Office had full reports on the
signs of disaffection in England, from the Edinburgh Convention of 1792 to the
mass demonstration of 1795, in which King George III, caught in an angry swarm
of two hundred thousand persons, was assailed in his own state coach in the streets
of London.^2 The French government in 1796, until events in Italy determined
otherwise, seems to have had more interest in, and information on, the chances of
revolution in England than in the Italian states.
But no one except a few in the government could see these various agitations in
one view. The “foreign” revolutionaries in Paris had no more than the most sporadic
1 A paper simply headed “Diplomatic” in Archives des affaires étrangères, Mémoires et docu-
ments, France et divers états, vol. 655, fol. 262–63. Dated “An 4–1795” in a later hand.
2 On England see AAE, Mém. et doc., Angleterre, vol. 19, fols. 388–92, and vol. 53, fols., 187–
225; Annual Register for 1795 (London, 1800). Chronicle, 37–38; S. Maccoby, English Radicalism,
1786 –1832 (London, 1955), 94.