644 Chapter XXVII
governments of the old order. In France the democrats remained very vociferous,
were indignant when the Directory referred to them as “anarchists,” expressed
sympathy in their newspapers for democrats in other countries, and criticized the
Directors for failing to support “world revolution.” Had the revolutionary distur-
bance been French alone it would have been easier for a French government to
control it. It would also have been easier to maintain the advantages of a victorious
peace. But the revolutionary movement in Italy in 1798 (as in Switzerland or Ire-
land) was native, genuine, and significant. Patriots in those countries did not in-
tend to serve merely as tools of French policy, to turn hot or cold as the French
Directory might desire.
Many French generals, especially those in Italy, thought of themselves as repre-
sentatives less of a government than of an international revolutionary movement.
They were flattered and excited by the solicitations of the native patriots in the
various theaters of war. Since Dumouriez’ campaign in Belgium, in 1792, the
problem of civilian- military relations had thrown its shadow over the French Re-
public. Dumouriez, in seeking to please the Belgian Statists, had been reactionary
from the French point of view of 1792. The case of Bonaparte in north Italy was
more equivocal. In his armistice with the King of Sardinia and repudiation of the
Sardinian republicans and in the peace that he dictated to Austria at Campo
Formio, involving the cession of Venice and abandonment of the Venetian revolu-
tion, Bonaparte outraged the wishes of the most vehement French and Italian
democrats, who like Buonarroti believed that there could be no peace with kings.
Yet it was to Bonaparte, among the French, that the Cisalpine Republic mainly
owed its existence. Bonaparte had befriended Italian revolutionaries in Lombardy,
and such was his prestige that the French Directory received most of the blame for
not befriending them elsewhere, while the hero of the Lodi bridge was hailed as
the liberator of Italy. After his departure from Italy, Italian patriots flocked about
other French generals, notably Brune, Joubert and Championnet.
The persistent question, in its crudest form, was: who was to benefit from the
wealth which military occupation and local revolution made available? There were
requisitions to be levied, and property confiscated from former governments and
from the church. Here again the question had existed since 1792. There were vari-
ous possible answers. The French government might regard the occupied areas
simply as temporarily conquered countries, exploiting their resources during the
period of occupation for its own purposes in time of war, and keeping power in its
own hands and those of its civilian emissaries. This policy required the mainte-
nance of firm civilian control over the military, and of French control over the pa-
triots of occupied countries—neither of which proved possible. A second course
was for the French generals in the field to make fortunes for themselves (as
Bonaparte had done, and Brune and others did on a lesser scale), by taking the
control of army supply away from civilian commissioners from Paris, and lodging
it in their own headquarters. In pursuing this line the French military commanders
in Italy sought support among the most enthusiastic Italian Jacobins, with whom
they combined to resist and discredit French civilians and the French Directory. At
the same time, the Italian revolutionaries (like the Dutch a few years before)
wanted to enjoy the fruits of revolution themselves; to set up new republics, not be