The Cisalpine Republic 599
manded a homogeneous and unitary state. These men already dreamed of a merger
with Lombardy across the Po—some even of an Italian Republic. But the munici-
pal feeling remained strong in the Cispadane. Ferrara, Reggio, and Modena all
resisted the ascendancy of Bologna. Bologna, in turn, fearful of subordination to
Milan, showed the least enthusiasm for a single republic in the Po valley. The sec-
ond congress also created an Italian Legion (like the Lombard Legion at Milan) to
which it gave the tricolor as a standard, and received with much fanfare an enthu-
siastic delegation of “Transpadanes” from the Lombard capital.
A third Cispadane congress became a true constituent assembly, the only one to
meet in Italy during the triennio, since the other Italian republics were to receive
their constitutions from the French, or from Italians whom no one had elected for
the purpose. The resulting Cispadane constitution, the most unquestionably native
to Italy, was of all the constitutions of the years 1796–1799 the most similar to the
French constitution of 1795. It was when they were least pressed by the French
that the Italian democrats most fully agreed with them on constitutional princi-
ples, because they saw in these principles, not “French ideas,” but the distillation
from a body of thought, the Enlightenment, in which national peculiarity counted
for little.^19
The Cispadane declaration of rights repeated the French even more closely than
that of Bologna. A few divergences from the French model, which became charac-
teristic of later such declarations during the triennio, may be worthy of a brief
comment. Where the French said “nation” (as in “the principle of sovereignty rests
essentially in the nation”) the Italians said universalità de’ cittadini, “the citizens as
a whole,” perhaps because “nation” would suggest a consolidation of all Italy, which
would give offense not only to the French, but to many locally rooted Italian inter-
ests. The Italians were careful to specify the rights of man “in society,” as if to em-
phasize that “nature” had nothing to do with the question. The Cispadane and later
Italian declarations omitted the assurance of consent to taxation, which, however,
they said must be reasonable, equitable, and within the bounds of necessity. Equal-
ity they explicitly defined as excluding privileges of birth and inheritance. No
peaceful citizen was to be disturbed for his religious opinions, but among non-
Catholics only the Jews were allowed to have any public signs of their worship. The
Cispadane constitution, as if to show its thoroughly “bourgeois” character, not only
guaranteed property but offered “special protection to manufacturers, merchants,
artists and men of letters of all nations who may wish to come and settle among
us.”
An Executive Directory of three persons, a Legislative Body in two elected
houses, together with machinery for judicial, administrative, financial, military, and
electoral functions were set up. The constitution was ratified by a popular vote,
76,382 to 14,259, the size of the minority being large enough to suggest that,
though the French urged its adoption, they did not force it on a reluctant or in-
timidated country. In April 1797 the constitution went into effect, and the new
organs of government began to establish themselves.
19 For the Cispadane constitution see Aquarone, 42–79; Ghisalberti, 20, and the whole account
of Italian constitutional thought before 1796, pp. 23–78.