652 Chapter XXVII
force, and the “departments,” as drawn by the constitution, proved recalcitrant vil-
lage republics, when they were revolutionary at all.
Hardly had the French arrived, and begun to requisition housing, jewelry, cash,
and miscellaneous property, when a mutiny broke out against the troop com-
mander, Masséna. The men and their lesser officers objected to being unpaid, and
to lacking lodging and proper rations, while the military higher- ups, by abuse of
the requisitions, lived at ease or laid by little fortunes for themselves. (There was a
saying at Rome that nothing was so honest as a French soldier, from private to
captain inclusive.^18 ) While the troops were out of control, revolt broke out among
the populace on the right bank of the Tiber, who hated the French, loved the Pope,
and engaged in anti- Semitic outbursts. Discipline was restored to the army, and
obedience to the population, when a few of the latter were shot by a firing squad.
A few weeks later the rural areas fell into insurrection and “brigandage,” especially
in the most civilized regions along the main road from Rome to the north, where
the repeated passage of soldiers made the requisition and pillage especially bur-
densome. It is estimated that in the end the French levied some 70,000,000 francs
in the Roman Republic. They used these sums (apart from illicit private enrich-
ment) in part to support the troops in Rome, in part to supply and pay the main
body of the army at Milan, and in part to finance the expedition to Egypt.
When the government was set up the five Consuls, or executive, tended to take
sides with the French civilian commissioners, while the two legislative chambers,
and especially the lower house or Tribunate, found friends among the French sol-
diers and generals. The latter were also favored by most of the journalists, many of
whom were not Romans, but migrants from the Cisalpine or refugees from Na-
ples, like Vincenzo Russo, the editor of the Monitore di Roma.^19 Patriots divided
between moderates and extremists. Disillusionment set in very soon, with the
moderates aghast at radical demands, and the radicals impatient that so little prog-
ress was being made.
“I am tired of politics,” wrote a moderate as early as March 29. “I would like to
go somewhere where I could hate men in peace, and die.” The more ardent demo-
crats were well aware that democracy had not yet been gained. “When people tell
me that Rome is democratized,” wrote one of them in the Monitore, “I answer that
the horses are more democratized than the people. These poor beasts, which were
accustomed to the grave, majestic pace of the empurpled tyrants [the cardinals] or
the Roman matrons, must now run at a brisk trot or furious gallop, with the plain-
est harness, under the democratic whip of the French warriors.”^20
The more advanced Jacobins, especially in the clubs and the newspapers, called
for revolution in Naples, or wanted all Italy consolidated into one unified republic.
Many were from other parts of the country, and they wanted all Italian states of
the Old Regime to be dissolved. Consuls and other officials, put by the French in
the government, were by contrast moderate Jacobins. Natives of Rome, by the
Revolution they meant certain practical reforms in taxation, administration, and
18 Godechot, Commissaires, II, 189.
19 Russo’s Pensieri politici and other writings from the Monitore di Roma are reprinted in D. Can-
timori, Giacobini italiani (Bari, 1956), 255–398.
20 Giuntella, Giacobina repubblica, 8 and 20.