576 Chapter XXIV
It seems at least equally likely that the French government turned against the
Italian refugee patriots because it held them in contempt. The Babeuf- Buonarroti
conspiracy, once discovered, proved reassuringly easy to repress. Delacroix, Carnot,
and the others, who had remained active during the Terror, were not chiefly char-
acterized by timidity. It is reasonable to suppose that they came to believe that the
Italian refugees were mere dabblers in revolution, conspirators playing with fire-
crackers, that revolution in Italy could not be produced by such methods, and that
republics in Italy, if such there were to be, and if they were to be of any value to
France, must rest upon men of some standing and experience in their own coun-
tries, and not on uprooted exiles.
But the French government was unable to hold to any firm position on the Ital-
ian question. One group, led by the Director Reubell, an Alsatian, preferred to re-
gard conquests in Italy as mere diplomatic counterweights, to be given away in
return for a peace treaty in which Austria should accept the French annexation of
Belgium, and perhaps the Left Bank of the Rhine. This school of thought saw no
danger or strength in the Italian revolutionaries, but emphasized their weakness
and insignificance. As Delacroix wrote to Saliceti, if it should prove that the Mila-
nese “lack the energy to conquer liberty themselves, we should limit our efforts to
obtaining our own advantages, and procuring for the Republic a solid and durable
peace.”^23 On July 25 four of the Directors endorsed a memorandum prepared by
Delacroix, in which it was concluded to be against French interests to set up either
one or several “democratic republics” in Italy, since there were not enough serious
revolutionaries at Milan to support such a program, but that Austria should never-
theless be expelled from Italy through the reinforcement of war by diplomacy. It
was decided that Austria might receive Bavaria, whose Elector might take over
Tuscany, while the Milanese went to the Duke of Parma. Thus Austria could ac-
cept the cession of Belgium to France.^24 No plan could have been more shocking
Babeuf plot. It is a case of the modern preference for attributing political decisions to ideological or
class- oriented interests. Godechot, more than the Italians, believes that unification of Italy at this
time might have been possible had the Directory been willing to support the unitarists. He has prob-
ably read too much nineteenth- century meaning into Delacroix’ language. He quotes Delacroix to
Cacault, March 27, 1796 (Saitta, II, 17): “Let the boundaries separating the various states disappear,
so that only one shall be formed, and the peoples forget their mutual animosities.. .” as if these words
meant that Cacault should favor the unification of all Italy. Not seeing the Poteratz affair in this con-
nection, he has not noted that Delacroix used similar language to Poteratz, May 4, 1796 (Biro, Ger-
man Policy, II, 572–73): “apply yourself to bringing about the disappearance of the petty animosities
which may exist between the inhabitants of the different principalities, to uniting them, to welding
them into a single political body.” (Biro here cites AAE, Allemagne, vol. 672, fol. 259.) No one would
argue from these words that Delacroix favored the unification of Germany. “Unity” meant coopera-
tion of various kinds of revolutionaries, and disregard of local territorial, class, religious, or other
structures, whether in parts of Italy, Germany, the Batavian Republic, or Ireland. For example, Noel
wrote from the Hague, on June 14, 1796, that unitarists like Valckenaer and Vreede must be sup-
ported, “car enfin ce n’est pas à quelques familles de chaque province, mais à la nation entière, sans
distinction de patriciens ou de gouvernés, de juifs ou de chrétiens, de catholiques ou de protestants,
que les armes françaises ont rendu la liberté.” Colenbrander, Gedenkstukken, II, 56.
23 Delacroix to Saliceti, AAE, Mém. et Doc., France, vol. 1965, fol. 93.
24 “Italie 7 thermidor an IV,” in AAE, Mém. et Doc., Italie 1794–1809, vol. 12, fols. 53–63;
Guyot, Directoire et paix de l ’Europe, 193; the document was published by C. Zaghi in Bonaparte, il
Direttorio e il problema politico dell ’ Italia (Ferrara, 1938), 83–91.