The Cisalpine Republic 591
known as Emilia on the right bank, and on the left Lombardy and below it the
Terraferma of the Venetian Republic. Politically, on the south bank lay the duchies
of Parma and Modena, then the “legations” of the Papal States, where the cities of
Bologna and Ferrara lived under the rule of papal legates. On the Lombard side
were the duchies of Milan and Mantua with their famous cities, and below them
the Venetian cities of Verona, Vicenza, Padua, and others. It is well to keep these
cities fixed in mind, for it was in them that the Italian revolution mainly took
place.
On May 10, 1796, the very day of the arrest of Babeuf and Buonarroti in Paris,
there occurred at Lodi, a town on a tributary of the Po not far from Milan, an
event of at least equal importance in both actual and symbolic impact. Bonaparte,
the new commander of the Armée d ’Italie, still only twenty- seven years old, so skill-
fully assembled his divisions that he caught the retreating Austrians at the bridge