Climax and Dénouement 785
In May 1799, soon after the Austro- Russian victory in Italy, the Austrian com-
mander at Milan, who somewhat incongruously was the Count of Hohenzollern,
expecting to make an early entrance into France, issued a manifesto. It was ad-
dressed to the soldiers in the French army, and it told them that their Directory
were a pack of despots, hated in France itself, who had enslaved Italy for their own
advantage. It urged them not to resist their true friends, and pointed to the vast
array of armed forces poised “from the Tiber to the Rhine”—Austrian, Russian,
British, Turkish, aided by the outraged victims of the countries oppressed by
France. “But,” the Count of Hohenzollern continued, still addressing himself to
the French (for something had been learned since the Brunswick Manifesto seven
years before), “it is not a war of the Sovereigns who govern those mighty States. It
is a war of Peoples, who no longer tremble before your armies and who have ceased
to worship your principles.”^16
It remained to be seen whether the peoples would rise in answer to such a call.
The Revolutionary Re- Arousal and Victory
The debacle in Italy precipitated a crisis in France. In part the trouble was parlia-
mentary and constitutional. In mid- April the voters met in their assemblies for the
elections of the Year VII, by which a third of the two legislative councils was to be
renewed. News of Suvorov’s victories was just coming in. The republics had col-
lapsed at Naples, Rome, and Milan. In April, also, near Rastadt, two French dele-
gates to the diplomatic conference at that city were waylaid and murdered. Inva-
sion of France was expected, with which royalist conspirators and insurgents were
known to be in collusion. Zealous republicans threw the blame for these condi-
tions on the Directory, which they accused not only of inefficiency but of venality,
immorality, cynicism, and corruption, exaggerating as much as the royalists the
shortcomings of a regime that no one loved. In the elections the candidates spon-
sored by the Directory did very poorly. The independent candidates, democrats
and “Jacobins,” won most of the seats, so that the incoming third, when added to
the jacobins non- floréalisés, or democrats in the two councils who had survived the
purge of 1798, produced almost a democratic majority in the legislative branch of
the government, composed of the Five Hundred and the Elders. Since even many
moderates had long objected to the way in which the Directory had abused the
constitutional equality of the Legislative Body, the road was open for a legislative
retaliation against the executive.
The military crisis made the Republic more dependent than ever on the army.
The Directory, however, had alienated the generals. It had consented to send
Bonaparte to Egypt in part to get him off the political stage. It was about to try
Championnet for insubordination. Bernadotte, Brune, Masséna, and Joubert had
fausto ingresso fatto in Milano dalla Vittoriosa Armata di sua Maesta l ’Imperatore Franceso II, 5 vols.
(Milan, 1799–1800), I, 247; IV, 148–53; V, 87. See also M. Roberti, Milano capitale napoleonica: la
formazione di uno stato tnoderno, 3 vols. (Milan, 1946–1947), I, 54–56, 234–36. For Gioia’s work see
p. 577 above.
16 Collezione, I, 128. (May 26, 1799.)