574 Chapter XXIV
but only against states with which France was at war. “You understand,” wrote
Delacroix to Cacault, “that it is the duty of every French agent to refrain from at-
tempts against allied or neutral powers.”^18
So Delacroix, in March 1796, expressed the view that Lebrun had expressed in
1792, and the Committee of Public Safety in 1794, that, whatever grand and en-
thusiastic language might be in vogue, the provocation of revolution was to be
used as a weapon against actual enemies in the war.^19 It was only the more naive
foreign patriots, or the few actual international revolutionaries like Buonarroti, or
editors of radical newspapers—or spokesmen of the extreme Right, like Burke and
Barruel—who imagined that the French government was intent on indiscriminate
world revolutionism. Delacroix also remarked of the Italian friends of Liberty (and
the same had often been said of the Dutch) that they should be willing to supply
the needs of the French army—“to pay, by sharing some of their wealth, for the
blood that is to cement their independence.”^20
During these talks between Buonarroti and Delacroix, the Pantheon Club, of
which Buonarroti had been president, was closed by order of the Directory and
through the action of General Bonaparte, just before his departure to take com-
mand of the Army of Italy. Buonarroti lost confidence in Bonaparte, and in the
usefulness of the existing French government to the cause of the Italian revolution.
He and Babeuf organized the Conspiracy of Equals. Meanwhile, as Bonaparte
inflicted defeats upon the Sardinian army, the Italian patriots went into action and
proclaimed the republic at Alba, some thirty miles from Turin. The republic thus
proclaimed was not at all “communistic,” but it did envisage the end of seigneurial
dues, the nobility and the monarchy; and the Italian revolutionaries intended it to
be a first step toward a Sardinian or even a larger Italian republic. Bonaparte, how-
ever, acting on his own authority, and without orders from Paris, signed the armi-
stice of Cherasco with the King of Sardinia, and so recognized the continuing ex-
istence of the Sardinian monarchy. Buonarroti in Paris had added reason to
overthrow the Directory at the earliest possible moment.
Buonarroti and Babeuf were arrested on May 10. With the discovery of their
conspiracy, the balance of arguments in the minds of Delacroix and the Directors
underwent a change. The conjunction in time between the plot in Paris, the initia-
tive of the Italian republicans at Alba, the agitation in Swabia of which Poteratz
seemed to be the agent, and the disturbances in Holland marked by the revolt of
the Amsterdam cannoneers—especially in the absence of any clear evidence—cre-
ated a mystery for the French government, as for historians. It seemed that there
might be not only a plot in Paris to overthrow the Directory, which was evident,
but a great concerted movement of international revolution. The Directory reacted
18 See the documents published by Saitta, Buonarroti, II, 1–33, especially Buonarroti to Delac-
roix, 5 Germinal IV (March 25, 1796), 13–15; Delacroix de Cacault, 7 Germinal (March 27), 16–18;
and Cacault to Delacroix, 20 Germinal (April 9), 20–24. In effect, France was at war only with Milan
and Sardinia among the Italian states. Naples was inactively at war with France until the signing of
peace in October 1796; the papal states and Tuscany were non- belligerent but hardly neutral; Venice
and Genoa clung to a precarious neutrality subject to demands from both sides.
19 Above, pp. 569, 573.
20 Saitta, II, 17; above, p. 549.