388. The Ligurian, Roman, and Parthenopæan Republics, 1797-1799.—In the meantime, in June, 1797, the ancient republic of Genoa had undergone a remodelling. The ruling oligarchy, driven from power by Napoleon, gave place to a democracy of a moderate type, the legislative functions being intrusted to two popularly elected chambers, while the executive power was vested in a doge and twelve senators; and to the new commonwealth, French in all but name, was given the designation of the Ligurian Republic. The Ligurian constitution was accepted by the people December 2, 1797. During the winter of 1797-1798 the French Directory, openly hostile to the papacy, persistently encouraged the democratic party at Rome to overthrow the temporal power and to set up an independent republic. February 15, 1798, with the aid of French arms, the democrats secured the upper hand, assembled in the Forum, declared for the restoration of the Roman Republic, and elected as head of the state a body of seven consuls. The aged pontiff, Pius VI., was maltreated and eventually transported to France. For the new Tiberine, or Roman, Republic was promulgated, March 20, 1798, a constitution providing for the customary two councils—a Senate of thirty members and a Tribunate of sixty—and a directory, christened a consulate, consisting of five consuls elected by the councils. Within a twelvemonth thereafter (January 23, 1799), following a clash of arms between the French and the Neapolitan sovereign, Ferdinand IV., Naples was taken and the southern kingdom was converted into the Parthenopæan Republic. A constitution was there promulgated providing for a directory of five members, a Senate of fifty, possessing exclusive right of legislative initiative, and a Tribunate of one hundred twenty.[521]
389. Constitutional Revisions.—During the absence of Napoleon on the Egyptian expedition the armies of France suffered repeated reverses in Italy, and by the end of 1799 all that had been gained for France seemed to be, or about to be, lost. By the campaign which culminated at Marengo (June 14, 1800), however, Napoleon not only clinched his newly won position in France but brought Italy once more to his feet. Under the terms of the treaty of Lunéville (February 9, 1801) Austria recognized the reconstituted Cisalpine and Ligurian republics, while Modena and Tuscany reverted to French control, and French ascendancy elsewhere was securely established. September 21, 1802, Piedmont was organized in six departments and incorporated in the French Republic. During the winter of 1802-1803 the constitutions of the Cisalpine and Ligurian republics were remodelled in the interest of that same autocratic domination which already was fast ripening in France. In each republic were established at first three bodies—an executive consulta,[522] a legislature of 150 members, and a court—which were chosen by three electoral colleges comprising (1) the possidenti, or landed proprietors, (2) the dotti, or scholars and ecclesiastics, and (3) the commercianti, or merchants and traders; but the legislature could be overridden completely by the consulta, and the consulta was little more than the organ of Napoleon. Incidentally, the Cisalpine Republic at this point was renamed the Italian Republic. Within a twelvemonth the new constitutions, proving too democratic, were revised in such a manner that for the legislative body was substituted a senate of thirty members presided over by a doge, in which were concentrated all political and administrative powers.
390. The Kingdom of Italy (1805) and the Napoleonic Kingdom of Naples, 1807.—The stipulation of the treaty of Lunéville to the effect that the Italian republics should remain entirely independent of France was all the while disregarded. Politically and commercially they were but dependencies, and, following the proclamation of the French empire (May 18, 1804), the fact was admitted openly. To Napoleon it seemed incongruous that an emperor of the French should be a patron of republics. How meager was the conqueror's concern for the political liberty of the Italians had been demonstrated many times, never more forcefully than in the cynical treatment which he accorded Venice. No one knew better, furthermore, how ill-equipped were the Italians for self-government. Gradually, therefore, there was framed a project for the conversion of the Italian Republic into a kingdom which should be tributary to France. Napoleon's desire was that his eldest brother, Joseph, should occupy the throne of this kingdom. But Joseph, not caring to jeopardize his chances of succession in France, demurred, as did also the younger brother, Louis. The upshot was that by a constitutional statute of March 17, 1805, the Emperor caused himself to be called to the throne of Italy, and May 26 following, in the cathedral at Milan, he placed upon his own head the iron crown of the old Lombard kings. The sovereign's step-son, Eugène Beauharnais, was designated regent. In June of the same year, in response to a petition which Napoleon himself had instigated, the Ligurian Republic was proclaimed an integral part of the French empire. The annexation of Parma and Piacenza promptly followed.
Against the coalition of Great Britain, Russia, Austria, and Naples, which was prompted immediately by the Ligurian annexation, Napoleon was completely successful. By the treaty of Pressburg (December 26, 1806) Austria ceded to the Italian kingdom her portion of Venetia, together with the provinces of Istria and Dalmatia.[523] Following a vigorous campaign conducted by Joseph Bonaparte, the restored Bourbon family was driven again from Naples, whereupon Joseph allowed himself to be established there as king. In 1808 he was succeeded by Napoleon's ambitious marshal and brother-in-law Murat. From Bayonne, Joseph issued a constitution for his former subjects, providing for a council of state of from twenty-six to thirty-six members and a single legislative chamber of one hundred members, of whom eighty were to be named by the king and twenty were to be chosen by electoral colleges. Not until 1815, however, and then but during the space of a few weeks, was this instrument actually in operation.
391. The End of French Dominance.—Finally, there were brought under complete control the papal territories. Following prolonged friction with the Pope, Napoleon first of all (April 2, 1808) annexed to the kingdom of Italy the papal march of Ancona and the duchies of Urbino, Macerata, and Camerina, and then (by decrees of May 17, 1809, and February 17, 1810) added to the French empire Rome itself and the Patrimonium Petri. The Roman territory was divided into two departments, and in them, as in all of the Italian provinces which fell under Napoleon's rule, a thoroughgoing French system of law and administration was established. To all of the tributary districts alike were extended the Code Napoléon, and in them were organized councils, courts, and agencies of control essentially analogous to those which comprised the Napoleonic governmental régime in France. In them, likewise, were undertaken public works, measures for public education, and social reforms similar to those which in France constituted the most permanent and the most beneficent aspects of the Napoleonic domination. For the first time since the age of Justinian the entire peninsula was brought under what was in fact, if not in name, a single political system.
If the rise of French power in Italy had been brilliant, however, the collapse of that power was speedy and complete. It followed hard upon Napoleon's Russian campaign and the defeat at Leipzig. The final surrender, consequent upon Napoleon's first abdication was made April 16, 1814, by the viceroy Beauharnais, whereupon the Austrians resumed possession in the north, the Bourbons in the south, and the whole problem of permanent adjustment was given over to the congress of the powers at Vienna.[524]
II. The Restoration and the Revolution of 1848
392. Italy in 1815.—By the Final Act of the Congress of Vienna, June 9, 1815, Italy was remanded to a status such that the name of the peninsula could be characterized with aptness by Metternich as merely a geographical expression. In essentials, though not in all respects, there was a return to the situation of pre-Napoleonic times. When the bargainings of the diplomats were concluded it was found that there remained, in all, ten Italian states, as follows: the kingdom of Sardinia, Lombardo-Venetia, Parma, Modena, Lucca, Tuscany, Monaco, San Marino, the kingdom of Naples, and the States of the Church. To the kingdom of Sardinia, reconstituted under Victor Emmanuel I., France retroceded Nice and Savoy, and to it was added the former republic of Genoa. Lombardo-Venetia, comprising the duchy of Milan and all of the continental possessions of the former Venetian republic, including Istria and Dalmatia, was given into the possession of Austria.[525] Tuscany was restored to the grand-duke Ferdinand III. of Hapsburg-Lorraine; the duchy of Modena, to Francis IV., son of the archduke Ferdinand of Austria; Parma and Piacenza were assigned to Maria Louisa, daughter of the Austrian emperor and wife of Napoleon; the duchy of Lucca, to Maria Louisa of Bourbon-Parma. In the south, Ferdinand IV. of Naples, restored to all of his former possessions, was recognized under the new title of Ferdinand I. And, finally, Pope Pius VII., long held semi-prisoner by Napoleon at Fontainebleau, recovered the whole of the dominion which formerly had belonged to the Holy See.
Respecting the entire arrangement two facts are obvious. The first is that there was not, in the Italy of 1815, the semblance, even, of national unity. The second is that the preponderance of Austria was scarcely less thoroughgoing than in Napoleon's time had been that of the French. Lombardo-Venetia Austria possessed outright; Tuscany, Modena, and Parma were ruled by Austrian princes; Ferdinand of Naples was an Austrian ally, and he had pledged himself not to introduce in his possessions principles of government incompatible with those employed by the Austrians in the north; while even Victor Emmanuel of Sardinia—the only important native sovereign, aside from the Pope, in the peninsula—was pledged to a perpetual Austrian alliance.[526]
393. Foreshadowings of Unity.—"Italy," wrote Napoleon some time after his banishment to St. Helena, "isolated between her natural limits, is destined to form a great and powerful nation. Italy is one nation; unity of language, customs, and literature, must, within a period more or less distant, unite her inhabitants under one sole government. And, without the slightest doubt, Rome will be chosen by the Italians as their capital."[527] At the time when this prophecy was written the unification of Italy appeared, upon the surface, the most improbable of events. It was, none the less, impending, and to it Napoleon must be adjudged to have contributed in no unimportant measure. In the words of a recent writer, "the brutalities of Austria's white coats in the north, the unintelligent repression then characteristic of the house of Savoy, the petty spite of the duke of Modena, the mediæval obscurantism of pope and cardinals in the middle of the peninsula, and the clownish excesses of Ferdinand in the south, could not blot out from the minds of the Italians the recollection of the benefits derived from the just laws, vigorous administration, and enlightened aims of the great emperor. The hard but salutary training which they had undergone at his hands had taught them that they were the equals of the northern races both in the council chamber and on the field of battle. It had further revealed to them that truth, which once grasped can never be forgotten, that, despite differences of climate, character, and speech, they were in all essentials a nation."[528] It is not too much to say that Napoleon sowed the seed of Italian unity.