612 Chapter XXV
A purge in the Cisalpine was therefore ordered from Paris, and it was carried
out, although word arrived, soon after the dispatch of the order to Milan, that the
Cisalpine legislature had accepted the treaty. As the diplomatic and constitutional
crisis thus abated, the purge at Milan took on more the color of ideology and party
strife. General Berthier, Bonaparte’s successor in Italy, resisted full compliance
with the order from Paris. He was replaced by General Brune.
Brune was the very type of the democratic or firmly republican general. A law
student and typesetter in his youth, he had joined one of the volunteer battalions
in 1791, and was one of the men (he later became Marshal Brune) for whom the
Revolution had most obviously provided careers open to talent. When transferred
to Italy in March 1798, he had just been involved in the revolution in Switzerland,
where the Helvetic Republic had just been proclaimed. Brune was a believer in
international democratization, and he entered with gusto into the purge at Milan.
The effect, as in France with the Fructidor coup, and in Holland by the staatsgreep
of January, was to bring forward the advanced democrats in Italy, where also,
through a chain of events to be related later, a Roman Republic was set up at about
this same time.
Brune consorted at Milan with the most vociferous revolutionaries, those who
looked eagerly to a unification of all Italy, and favored strong language and strong
measures against the Church. In France, meanwhile, the democratic revival had
shown its strength in the April elections. The French Directory became nervous
about the upsurge of “anarchists.” By the coup d’état of Floréal it crushed the
movement in France. Italian, Dutch and French democrats all denounced this ma-
neuver, accusing the French Directory of moderatism. The Directory therefore de-
cided to “florealize” the two sister- republics also.
Events in the Cisalpine became too complex for lucid narration. The Directory
sent a moderate civilian, Trouvé, as minister to Milan to serve as a check upon
Brune. He was instructed to work with Italian moderates for a change in the con-
stitution, so that the agitation of democrats, unitarists, and anti- clericals could be
allayed. Brune refused the military support necessary for such an action. He went
to Paris to plead the Italian democrats’ case. The Directory, seeing an issue not only
of “sound republicanism” against “anarchy,” but of civilian authority against mili-
tary interference, ordered Brune to uphold Trouvé. Brune returned to Milan but
still refused to co- operate. He gave secret information to the Cisalpine democrats
on the measures designed against them, while in Paris the democratic press de-
nounced the intimidation of Italy. Trouvé, nevertheless, managed to drive through
a new constitution. The one promulgated by Bonaparte a year before was discarded.
The new one, dated September 10, 1798, confined the vote to adult males who
paid a direct tax, and strengthened the executive with respect to the legislative
power.
Trouvé was replaced by Fouché, a man of ambiguous views, still better known as
an extremist of the Terror than as the police official that he later became. Fouché
sided with Brune. The two together continued to favor the Cisalpine democrats,
and by still another coup d’état, the third since March, recalled a great many of
them into the government. The French Directory, its orders thus flatly defied, re-
called both Fouché and Brune, transferring Brune to Holland. A new set of French