The Cisalpine Republic 609
ethic, its own sense of regeneration, and its own theory of what had happened in
history. It laid great stress on education, and it took education away from the
Church.
The whole Cisalpine Republic may be thought of as an educational enterprise.
Those who governed it saw in its constitution, not only a structure of government
(as such it never worked well) but a vehicle of public enlightenment on the nature
of the modern state. They publicized the constitution extensively. They set up, at
the universities of Bologna, Pavia, and Ferrara, new chairs in “Cisalpine constitu-
tional law and universal jurisprudence.”^37 The constitution, like the French consti-
tution of 1795, specified that the right to vote should in twelve years become de-
pendent on literacy, and it provided that common schools should be maintained at
public expense. The Cisalpine legislature spent a good deal of time in the discus-
sion of schools, and was debating this problem when the Russians, under Marshal
Suvorov, broke into Lombardy and put an end to the republic.
Politics and Vicissitudes of the Cisalpine
In the Cisalpine, as elsewhere, three kinds of people could be roughly identified:
the standard democrats, the moderates, and the reactionaries.^38 The bulk of the
people remained passive, for the Italian revolution, unlike the French of 1789, did
little or nothing to relieve the problems of any large number among the rural
masses. Complaining of any regime that caused them trouble, victimized by requi-
sitions and pillaging, suspicious of neighboring townspeople, and disliking any
change in religion, the rural population remained generally non- political or con-
servative in a negative way. Among notables, real reactionaries were not much in
evidence. A few, from attachment to their former privileges and advantages, be-
came austriacanti or “ Austrianizers.” Of truly reactionary literature the best ex-
ample was Barzoni’s I Romani nella Grecia, published, at least ostensibly, at Lon-
don in 1797. Its message was that the French were like the ancient Romans, the
Italians like the ancient Greeks (some Germans at the time thought the same of
themselves); the “Greeks” were cultured and flourishing but weak and divided into
small states, so that the cruder “Romans” easily conquered them, subjecting them
to wanton extortion and plunder, ruthlessly imposing themselves while forever
talking of “liberty.” When the Austrians returned in 1799 they strongly recom-
mended this work, which was then reprinted in Italy.^39
Among moderates, there were some who were very conservative. Thus Melzi
d’Eril, a liberal patrician who had been among the first to greet Bonaparte after
37 Ghisalberti, 190.
38 On parties and politics in the Cisalpine see C. Zaghi, Bonaparte e il Direttorio dopo Campoformio
(Naples, 1956), 152–84, and the same author’s “Il Direttorio francese e l’ltalia: il primo colpo di stato
nella Cisalpina” in Rivista storica italiana (1950), 218–56; also Godechot, Commissaires, II, 34–37,
178–94, and his Grande nation, II, 451–77, where a valuable comparative survey of coups d’état in
France and the sister- republics is given; Candeloro, 237–43; Ghisalberti, 129–35.
39 Ghisalberti, 170; Morandi, 282–83; Collezione di proclami avvisi, editti... pubblicati dal giorno
28 Aprile 1799 , 5 vols. (Milan, 1799–1800), III, the book notices between pp. 148 and 149.