The Revolution Comes to Italy 577
to the Italian republicans, had they known of it. It reverted to classic principles of
compensation and balance of power as the way to peace.
The facts determined otherwise. For one thing, Bonaparte had other ideas; he
was getting out of control by the civilian government in Paris, and was intent upon
setting up a new republic in the Po valley. For another, it was not true that there
was no serious revolutionary sentiment in Italy. “The Italians,” reported Cacault,
“want the humiliation of the upper classes, the abolition of feudalisms and titles,
the exclusion of nobles from office; it is necessary for the 200,000 privileged to be
sacrificed to the 16,000,000 of the population.”^25 In any case, could the French,
once they were in Italy, simply abandon those who agreed with them? As Miot
reported in July, even if it were true that the Italian patriots were not ripe for real
republicanism, still we French must do something; we cannot simply hand them
back to Austria, we cannot annex them to France, and we are committed by what
we have already done in Holland; we must let them assemble and set up govern-
ments of their own choosing, while our presence protects them from counter-
revolution both native and foreign.^26
The French at this time, in July, had been at Milan for two months, and Italian
patriots had flocked to that city from all directions. They set up an essay contest,
in good eighteenth- century fashion, on the subject, “Which form of free govern-
ment is best suited to the welfare of Italy?” Fifty- two papers were written. The
prize was awarded a year later to the economist Melchiorre Gioia, who argued
that the only possible free government for Italy was a republic. Gioia insisted,
pointing to the weakness of the American union in the War of Independence,
that the only viable republic must be democratic, centralized, and unitary.^27 This
was contrary to the decision taken by the French Directory at the time when the
contest was announced.
So the basis was laid, in the summer of 1796, for the conflicts and misunder-
standings that were to trouble the following years. There was the Directory, unable
to hold to any positive decisions, yielding before accomplished facts, pursuing in-
compatible ends—to gain a lasting peace, to manipulate the balance of power, to
hold on to Belgium or the Rhine frontier, to keep the support of sympathizers in
Italy but to exploit Italian resources in the war against Austria, to liberate Italy but
to discourage steps toward Italian unification, to make the war a crusade for free-
dom while alleviating the financial problems of France. There were the French
generals, whom the Directory found it increasingly difficult to control, and who,
like Dumouriez in 1792–1793, sought their own glory and riches in republics to
be created under their sponsorship, or who indeed actually believed in liberating
the peoples among whom the fortunes of war had brought them. There were the
Italian partisans of revolution, both moderates whose moderation made them pas-
25 “Extrait d’une dépêche du Citoyen Cacault,” Genoa, 28 Germinal an IV (April 17, 1796),
AAE, Mém. et Docs., Italie 1794–1809, vol. 12, fol. 19.
26 “Extrait d’une déepêche du Citoyen Miot agent francais près du gouvernement de Toscane,
Rome le 9 Thermidor an IV ( July 27, 1796), ibid., fol. 64.
27 M. Gioia, “Dissertazione sul problema: Quale dei governi liberi meglio convenga alia felicità
dell’ Italia,” published at the time, and in Opere minore (Lugano, 1833), IV, 99–311. Gioia meant
unification in the nineteenth- century sense.