[1796 A.D.]
The Italians were soon to learn that their wishes and interests were matters of as absolute indifference to those who now contended on their soil, as they had been during the whole preceding course of their modern history. Their future master, the French general Bonaparte, receiving from the Directory the command of the army of Italy, avowed on quitting Paris his determination to finish the war in a month by complete success or utter defeat. That which seemed to others an idle bravado, suggested by sudden elevation to a young and self-confident man, was, in the mind of the speaker himself, a pledge to be literally fulfilled. He began his attack on the 12th of April, 1796, and on the 15th of May he entered Milan in triumph as the conqueror of all Lombardy and Piedmont.
This wonderful campaign embraced several of Napoleon’s most celebrated victories. The battles of Montenotte, Millesimo, and Dego, fought on three successive days in April, amidst the mountains which lie northwest from Genoa, drove back into the plain Beaulieu’s Austrian army, and its Piedmontese allies under Colli. Victor Amadeus, not less inconstant than imprudent, deserted the contest in premature despair; and in May his ambassadors at Paris signed a discreditable peace, by which he gave up Savoy and Nice to the French Republic, admitted garrisons into some of his fortresses, dismantled the rest, and paid heavy contributions to the invaders. Bonaparte, pursuing the Austrians into Lombardy, intimidated the duke of Parma into an armistice, which was purchased by a large payment in money, and the surrender of twenty works of art, to be selected by French commissioners, and placed in the museum at Paris. The bloody passage of the bridge of Lodi, where Napoleon himself, with the generals of his staff, charged in person up to the mouths of the enemy’s guns, left the plain of the Po completely open to his armies, and kindled among the young conqueror’s soldiers that devoted confidence which bore them onward through years of victory. Milan received a provisional government and national guard, but had to contribute heavily for the support of the republican troops; and the duke of Modena, also, could not obtain an armistice without furnishing liberal supplies, to which, according to the rule thenceforth invariably followed by the invaders, was added the surrender of the choicest pictures from his gallery.
Already feared as well as honoured abroad, General Bonaparte next proceeded to intimidate the government at home. To Carnot’s order for marching upon Rome and Naples with one division of the army, while Kellermann, with another, should keep his hold of Lombardy, he replied by transmitting his resignation, and denouncing the project as ruinous. In the south, said he, there are no enemies worth conquering; the possession of Italy must be contested with the Austrians, and the plains of the Po ought to be the scene of the struggle. While he waited for the answer to his bold remonstrance, the peasantry, excited by the priests and some of the nobles, rose in several quarters against him. At Milan the disturbance was easily quieted; but at Pavia it was not suppressed till the town was taken by storm, and given up to be plundered by the soldiery. This terrible example produced its effect; the Italians trembled and submitted, and the French and Germans were left to fight their battles undisturbed. Meanwhile, the Directory, aware, as their general well knew, that they could not dispense with his services, sent an approval of all his plans, and confirmed him in the undivided command of the army, stipulating only that he should satisfy the honour of France by humbling, in his own way, the pope and the king of Naples. He received these instructions while occupying the line of the Adige; and, after having distributed troops on different points in the north, he himself prepared to march as far southwards as might be necessary for frightening his adversaries in that quarter. Before he had time to cross the Apennines, the king of Naples had lost heart, and made humiliating submissions, concluding an armistice, afterwards changed into a treaty of peace. The pope, left totally defenceless, and seeing the conqueror holding Bologna in person, concluded a truce on harder terms than any which had been yet exacted. The citadel of Ancona was to be given up with all its stores; the French were also to retain possession of the provinces of Bologna and Ferrara, where both the chief cities had organised free governments for themselves; the papal treasury was to pay large contributions in money and provisions; and Paris was to be adorned by a hundred works of art, and five hundred manuscripts from the Vatican. Having thus dealt with the enemies of the republic, Bonaparte next proceeded to dispose of the grand duke of Tuscany, its earliest friend. On a pretence that the neutrality had been violated, he seized the port of Leghorn, confiscated the goods of English traders which lay there, and attempted, though unsuccessfully, to capture their merchant-ships.
The wars of 1796 were not yet at an end. In September a second Austrian army of sixty thousand men, under the veteran marshal Wurmser, marched through the Tyrol; but his active adversary had already returned northwards; and a campaign of six days in the neighbourhood of the Lake of Garda, and along the valley of the Brenta, forced the shattered remains of the imperial forces to take refuge in the strong fortress of Mantua, which the French had already attacked, and now invested anew. In November a third Austrian army, under Alvinzi, placed its enemy in extreme peril; but the desperate battle of Arcola, fought near Verona during three whole days, drove this host likewise back into the mountains. The military events of the year were closed by the revolt of the Corsicans against the English, after which the French envoy Saliceti established in the island a provisional democratic government.
[1796-1797 A.D.]
But there were yet other tasks to be performed. The French had excited in the minds of all the Italians wishes which it was very far from easy to gratify. The Lombards demanded an independent and republican organisation; but the Directory, anticipating the chances of war, which might make it necessary to buy a peace with Austria, dared not as yet to do more than throw out vague encouragements. The pope, whose eastern provinces entertained similar desires, was not so dangerous; and Bonaparte, without consulting his masters, freed them from any embarrassment into which they might have been thrown by their recent treaty with the duke of Modena. That prince’s capital was disaffected, and Reggio had already openly revolted. Napoleon, professing to have discovered that the duke had violated the neutrality, deposed his administration, and declared the provinces free. By his instigation, also, deputies from Bologna, Ferrara, Reggio, Mirandola, and Modena, chosen respectively by the lawyers, landholders, and merchants, assembled in the end of 1796, and erected the two papal legations with the Modenese duchy into a commonwealth. This state, lying wholly between the Po and Rome, was called the Cispadane Republic.
The contest among the foreigners for the soil of Italy was ended in the spring of 1797. In January of that year, Alvinzi’s army, increased by reinforcements to fifty thousand men, attacked that under Bonaparte, amounting to about forty-five thousand, at Rivoli, between the river Adige and the Lake of Garda. This bravely fought battle closed in the total rout of the Austrians; and early next month, Wurmser, compelled by disease and famine, surrendered Mantua. The last effort of the emperor, who sent the archduke Charles across the northeastern frontier of Italy, was as unfortunate as the preceding ones; the hereditary states of Austria were invaded by the victorious general in person; and their sovereign submitted in April, when the French army lay within twenty-five leagues of Vienna.
But, before crossing the Alps, the young conqueror had humbled another enemy. Pius VI, not altogether without provocation, had broken the convention of Bologna, and raised troops to assist the emperor; upon which, Bonaparte, after his victory over Alvinzi, marching rapidly southward, overthrew the papal troops under Colli, and dictated at Tolentino, in February, the terms of a humiliating peace. The pope formally relinquished to the Cispadane Republic, not only the legation of Bologna and Ferrara, already ceded, but the province of Romagna in addition; he yielded to the French Republic his territories of Avignon and the neighbouring Venaissin; he left Ancona in the hands of its troops, till a general peace should be concluded; he engaged to pay large contributions as the ransom of those other provinces which the enemy had just seized; and he renewed the obligation to deliver manuscripts and works of art, which accordingly were soon carried away.
The peace with the emperor was not arranged so easily. Its outlines were contained in the preliminaries of Leoben, signed on the 18th of April, 1797; and the main difficulties were obviated at the expense of Venice, whose government, regarded with dislike by both parties, had acted so as to forfeit all claims on the indulgence of the one, without being able to earn much gratitude from the other. Besides yielding the Austrian Netherlands and the frontier of the Rhine, Francis entirely renounced his provinces in Lombardy, and agreed to acknowledge the new Italian republics. In compensation for these sacrifices, he was to receive, almost entire, the mainland provinces of Venice, including Illyria, Istria, and upper Italy as far west as the Oglio; the districts of Bergamo and Brescia, with the Polesine, all lying beyond that river, being intended to form part of the Cispadane Republic. These Venetian territories were already in revolt, and had declared themselves free commonwealths, demanding protection from the French, who had excited them to insurrection, and now coolly abandoned most of them to a new master. For the injustice contemplated towards these unfortunate Lombards no palliation could be offered, and none was ever attempted; but for the wrong threatened to the Venetian Republic itself, pretexts speedily presented themselves.