784 Chapter XXXII
What happened in the now defunct Cisalpine Republic is worth amplification,
since it suggests the kind of thing that might have happened in France and else-
where if the Coalition had won the war. At first, in April 1799, the Austro-
Russians were welcomed, especially in the countryside. Even at Milan, like the
French in 1796, they met with a friendly reception, signalized by public festivals
and poems written for the occasion. This good feeling did not last long.
The military victory was due mainly to the Russians, but the Austrians assumed
the dominant role in the occupation. It was only in certain ways, chiefly internal,
that the Austrians wished to restore the old order. Having obtained Venetia from
Bonaparte in 1797, they now wished not merely to regain the old Milanese but to
expand it, and they therefore preferred the enlarged boundaries of the Cisalpine
Republic, which gave them a foothold in the papal territories across the Po. In
Piedmont, for which they had ideas of their own, they forbade the King of Sar-
dinia to return. In the Cisalpine they continued to collect taxes as levied by the late
intruso governo democratico; and (being still “Josephist” at least in this respect) they
did not restore to the Church the property confiscated by the Republic, though
they took it away from persons who had begun to buy it. In other ways the work of
the revolution was supposedly undone. “All laws,” according to a proclamation of
the Emperor Francis, “published in fhe time of anarchy of the so- called republic
are totally abrogated.” Austriacanti replaced Cisalpines in office. Eight hundred
giacobini were deported to Austria, other hundreds having fled to France. The
school for teaching the German language at Milan was reopened. Other schools
and universities were closed, notably the University of Pavia; Jansenists were
hunted out; Jews and other non- Catholics lost their recently gained civil rights.
Observance of religious holidays was made compulsory. A strong censorship was
imposed on the press, and the Archbishop of Milan issued a pastoral warning
against bad books, “the fruits of unrestrained liberty,” which sometimes taught that
hell was an invention of priests, and in any case conveyed “the malignity of the
black conspiracy against the Altar and the Throne.” Book- burnings took place in
public squares. For more edifying reading, Mallet du Pan’s British Mercury ap-
peared in Italian. Hunting rights, seigneurial courts, and fidecommessi were re-
stored; but even the Lombard nobles disputed with men sent down from Vienna.
Meanwhile the Austrian and Russian armies, as formerly the French, lived by req-
uisition upon the country, and although the Austrians within a few months ob-
tained the removal of Suvorov and his Russians to Switzerland, the burden of
military occupation remained heavy, and the complaints against arbitrary pillage
and looting remained at least as numerous as under the French. Moderates, and
even former austriacanti, soon turned against Austria. The economist Melchior
Gioia, a year or two later, wrote a book to show that, for agriculture, commerce,
and taxation, not to mention ordinary freedom from censorship and the police, the
Austro- Russian “liberation” had been incomparably worse than the French. The
feeling grew that what northern Italy really needed was independence, but when
the French returned in 1800 there were many Italians who, in the circumstances,
were delighted to see the restoration of the Cisalpine Republic.^15
15 Collezione di proclami, avisi... pubbicati did giorno 28 aprile 1799 in avanti, epoca memorabile del