The Cisalpine Republic 611
gland, the French favored a democratic coup d’état in that country; and that five
months later, when it seemed that the democrats could not control the Dutch fi-
nancial and naval power, the French sponsored a coup d’état by their more moder-
ate adversaries. The picture in the Cisalpine Republic was analogous but less
clear- cut.
Early in 1798 the French and Cisalpine governments negotiated a treaty. By its
terms, France recognized the independence of the Cisalpine, while offering it pro-
tection; and the Cisalpine, in addition to maintaining its own army of 22,000 men
under French higher command, was to keep a French army of 25,000 and pay
18,000,000 lire a year for its expenses. By additional secret articles, it was to en-
gage in no trade with England, and limit its import tariff to six per cent.^41 The
treaty, though judged unfavorably by most historians as a sign of the cynicism of
the Directory, does not actually seem to have been very unreasonable. The very
existence of the Cisalpine Republic depended on the further abasement of Austria,
which in turn depended on the defeat of Britain. Despite the treaty of Campo
Formio, the Austrians had not yet recognized the new government at Milan. It
was known that, not content with annexing Venetia, they aimed at further annexa-
tions at the expense of the Cisalpine or the Papal States, and that their real desire
was to destroy the Cisalpine altogether, and get the infection of new- style republi-
canism out of Italy. These aims were made perfectly clear a few weeks later at a
secret conference held at Selz.
The Cisalpine Legislature refused to ratify the treaty, which had more support
in the Cisalpine Directory. A constitutional stalemate was therefore imminent, as
in France before 18 Fructidor of the Year V. In the Cisalpine, as a few weeks earlier
in the Batavian Republic, the proposals for a coup d’état originated with the citi-
zens of the state in question, not with the French; the difference was that, where
the Dutch coup of January was meant to end a situation in which no constitution
was possible at all, the Cisalpine coup, which came in March, did violence to a
constitution that seemed not to be satisfactorily working. The Cisalpine minister
to Paris was Francesco Visconti. He was of the ancient Milanese patrician family
of that name, and a democrat. To the Paris government he submitted a list of men
in the Cisalpine legislative chambers and Directory, who he said were aristocrats
and Austrianizers, and whom he proposed for expulsion. There would really be no
violation of liberty, he said, since the incumbents had been appointed, not elected.
The situation became very confused, because Bonaparte, who had left Italy in the
preceding November, objected to the expulsion of men who were his own appoin-
tees. The French Directory, however, agreed with Visconti.
41 For the treaty see Zaghi, “Direttorio francese,” 228–29. In the same year, in India, Lord Morn-
ington made a treaty with the Nizam of Hyderabad, who, as an allied or dependent state, agreed to pay
the equivalent of about 4,000,000 francs a year to support a British army of 6,000 men. It was not
usual, then or later, to see resemblances between such European and extra- European developments,
but parallels can be pointed out in these simultaneous actions of the French in Italy and the British in
India. They would include, besides the terms of treaties and creation of dependent states, the self-
enrichment of French and British individuals, programs of “reform,” and expansion carried out despite
reluctance of the home governments.