The French owed this result in some measure to their own misconduct; for, little as the Italians were able to influence permanently the destiny of their native land, the resentment which was kindled throughout the country by the behaviour of the foreigners, aided materially in precipitating their second change of masters. The policy pursued systematically by the French Republic towards those new commonwealths, which she professed to regard as her independent allies, would have been insufferably irritating even though it had been administered by agents prudent and honourable. Each state was obliged not only to receive a large body of French soldiers, but to defray the expenses of their subsistence. The Cisalpine Republic, by a treaty which its legislative councils long refused to ratify, was compelled to admit an army of twenty-five thousand men, and to pay annually for its support eighteen millions of francs; even its own native troops were placed under the command of the French generals; the members of its administration were forcibly displaced if, like Moscati and Paradisi, they refused to obey orders transmitted from Paris; and some of the most patriotic Lombards, such as Baron Custodi and the poet Fantoni, were imprisoned for that opposition which the foreign rulers called incivism. The constitution itself soon gave way; for, on the last day of August, 1798, an irregular meeting of the councils substituted for it a new one, dictated by Trouvé the French envoy at Milan; and his plan again made room for other changes, enforced by his successor the notorious Fouché, and by Fouché’s successor Rivaud. The opposition party in Paris remonstrated in vain; and the Lombards began to hate equally the French nation, and those of themselves who were unfortunate enough to hold places of authority. A few honest patriots, headed by General Lahoz of Mantua, and the Cremonese Birago, who had been minister at war, organised a secret society for establishing Italian independence; and in the Ligurian and Roman states a similar spirit was rapidly spreading, although it worked less strongly. There, indeed, the grievances were not of so outrageous a kind, and consisted mainly in the extortions and oppressions practised incessantly by the generals and agents of the Directory, than which no government on earth had ever servants more shamefully dishonest.
But the French Republic, before losing its hold of Italy, had the fortune for a short time to possess the whole peninsula. The sovereigns of continental Europe, having lost sight of Napoleon, began to recover courage; and no sooner did the intelligence arrive that Nelson had destroyed the enemy’s fleet at Abukir, than a new league was formed, in which Italy was made one of the principal objects. The first move was made, imprudently and prematurely, by the king of Naples, or rather by his queen and her advisers, who, raising an army of eighty thousand men, invaded the Roman territories. In November, 1798, they seized the capital, where their soldiers behaved with an insolent cruelty which made the citizens, although heartily sick of the French, wish fervently to have them back again. The Austrian general Mack, who had been placed at the head of the Neapolitan troops, showed on a small scale that incapacity which afterwards more signally disgraced him; his soldiers were undisciplined, indolent, and lukewarm; and Championnet, reconquering the papal provinces with a French army not half so large as that of his adversary, pursued him southward, and, almost without striking a blow, became master of the kingdom of Naples.
The only resistance really formidable was offered when the republican troops approached the metropolis. The weak king had already fled, and, embarking on board the English fleet, crossed into Sicily. The peasantry hung on the rear of the invaders, and massacred stragglers; and the lazzaroni, that wild race who formed in those days so large a proportion of the populace, rose in fury on the report that a convention was concluded by the governor Prince Pignatelli. The fierce rabble filled the streets, howling acclamations to the king, the holy Catholic faith, and their tutelary saint Januarius; they drove out the regency, butchered the suspected democrats, and, with arms, though without either discipline or officers, poured out to meet the enemy on the plains. The French cannon mowed them down like grass; but for three whole days they again and again returned to meet the charge, and several thousands of them fell before they gave way. The wrecks of this irrationally brave multitude next defended the city, which the assailants had to gain street by street. Championnet, accompanied by Faypoult, the commissioner of the Directory, took formal possession of Naples, divided all the mainland provinces into departments, and formed them into one state, called the Parthenopean Republic. A commission of citizens was appointed to prepare a constitution, in which the chief part of the task was performed by Mario Pagano. The plan which was finally approved was in substance the same as the other Italian charters; but its author had added to the ordinary features two original ones—a tribunal of five censors, whose functions as correctors of vice were not likely to do much good, and an ephorate or court of supreme revision for laws and magistracies, which promised better fruits.
The nobles in the provinces were much divided in their opinions; but many of them still fondly remembered the lessons which they had learned from Filangieri and his scholars; and the middle classes, having yet experienced no evils but those of absolute and feudal monarchy, listened with eagerness to the promises held out by the republicans. In the huge metropolis the adherents of the king were powerless; many were willing, from the usual motives, to worship the rising sun; a few lettered enthusiasts were sincere in their hopes of witnessing at length that regeneration which their country so greatly needed; and the lazzaroni themselves became submissive and well-disposed, as soon as the saints, through the agency of their accredited servants, had declared in favour of freedom and democracy.
Says Botta:[i] “Championnet understood perfectly the importance which those fiery spirits attached to their religious belief. Accordingly he placed a guard of honour at the church of St. Januarius, and sent to those who had charge of it a polite message, intimating that he should be particularly obliged if the saint would perform the usual miracle of the liquefaction of his blood. The saint did perform the miracle; and the lazzaroni hailed it with loud applause, exclaiming, that after all it was not true that the French were a godless race, as the court had wished them to think; and that now nothing should ever make them believe but that it was the will of heaven that the French should possess Naples, since in their presence the blood of the saint had melted.”
Piedmont had already fallen. Ginguené, who afterwards wrote the history of Italian literature, had failed, as ambassador at Turin, in executing with proper cunning the plans of Talleyrand; but his successor soon contrived to irritate into open resistance the new prince Charles Emmanuel, a weak, bigoted, conscientious man. General Joubert seized the province and citadel of Turin; and the king, executing on the 9th of December, 1798, a formal act of abdication of his sovereignty over the mainland, was allowed to retire into Sardinia. The provisional government named for Piedmont, among whom was the historian Botta, found it impossible to rule the impoverished and distracted country; repose was the universal wish, and a union with the all-powerful neighbour seemed the only probable means of obtaining it. Early in the ensuing spring Piedmont was organised on the model of the French Republic, as the last step but one towards a final incorporation.
There remained to be destroyed no more than two of the old Italian governments. In January, 1799, Lucca, then occupied by French troops under General Miollis, abolished its oligarchy, and assumed a directorial and democratic constitution, after the fashionable example. In March, the Directory, now assured of a fresh war with Austria, seized all the large towns in Tuscany, placed the duchy under the protection of a French commissioner, and allowed the grand-duke Ferdinand to retire to Vienna with a part of his personal property.
But a storm was now about to break upon the heads of the French in every quarter of Italy; and the year 1799 became for the grim Suvaroff that which 1796 had been for Bonaparte. In the end of March the Austrian general Bellegarde crossed the Alps, beat back the republican forces in the north, and joined the Russians, raising the allied army to a strength of sixty thousand, while its opponents in the peninsula did not amount to a third of the number. The gallant Moreau, the French commander-in-chief, had the hard task of fighting for the honour of his nation without a chance of victory; and Macdonald, the new commandant of Naples, was ordered to cut his way to his superior through the whole length of Italy; an undertaking which he accomplished with great loss but signal bravery. The allies overran the Milanese and Piedmont; and the Directory sent two new armies under Championnet and Joubert, both of which were defeated. Most of those Italians who had taken a lead in the republican governments fled into France, and those who remained behind were imprisoned and otherwise punished. The peasantry in almost every province rose and aided the allies. Naples was lost in June, and Rome immediately followed. Ancona, desperately defended by General Monnier, capitulated in October; and at the end of the year Masséna commanded, within the walls of Genoa, besieged, famished, and about to surrender, the only French troops that were left in Italy.
Although the military events of this year do not possess such importance as to deserve minute recital, yet one chapter of its history, embracing the horrible fate which befell Naples, is both painfully interesting in itself, and strikingly illustrative of the disorganised state of society in that quarter. The spectacle which was exhibited in the overgrown metropolis of that kingdom was indeed so unlike anything we should expect to witness in modern times that we endeavour to find a partial solution of the problem in the moral and statistical position of the city. We can find no parallel without reverting to the period of the Roman Empire.
The municipal constitution of Naples, whose main features have already been incidentally described, was the model for all the cities in the kingdom, except Aquila, whose polity was copied from Rome. Thefts and robberies were rare, the homicides were estimated at about forty annually, and some vices the government chose to overlook. The municipal administration, with a jurisdiction extending only over the markets and the university, belonged to the eletti or representatives of the piazze, seggi, or sedili, of which there were six, composed exclusively of nobles. These patricians, meeting in open porticoes, several of which may still be seen in ruins, chose annually deputies in each piazza, and the deputies chose the eletto. A seventh piazza was formed for the popolo or plebeian burghers; but care was taken that this class should have no real power. They were divided locally into twenty-nine wards, for each of which the king every year named a capitano; and the twenty-nine captains, who were held to compose the piazza of the people, appointed as the eletto del popolo a citizen, not noble, suggested by the crown. The seven eletti, with a syndic chosen by the six noble eletti, formed the municipal council, and met twice a week in a convent, from which the board derived its usual name of the tribunal of San Lorenzo. Many functions of the municipality were devolved upon nine deputations of citizens, chosen periodically by the patrician piazze.