For the chief events of the ensuing campaigns see Napoleonic Campaigns. While Masséna pursued the Austrians into their own lands at the close of 1805, Italian forces under Eugène and Gouvion St Cyr (q.v.) held their ground against allied forces landed at Naples. After Austerlitz (December 2, 1805) Austria made peace by the treaty of Pressburg, ceding to the kingdom of Italy her part of Venetia along with the provinces of Istria and Dalmatia. Napoleon then turned fiercely against Maria Carolina of Naples upbraiding her with her “perfidy.” He sent Joseph Bonaparte and Masséna southwards with a strong column, compelled the Anglo-Russian forces to evacuate Naples, and occupied the south of the peninsula with little opposition except at the fortress of Gaeta. The Bourbon court sailed away to Palermo, where it remained for eight years under the protection afforded by the British fleet and a Joseph Bonaparte in Naples. British army of occupation. On the 15th of February 1806 Joseph Bonaparte entered Naples in triumph, his troops capturing there two hundred pieces of cannon. Gaeta, however, held out stoutly against the French. Sir Sidney Smith with a British squadron captured Capri (February 1806), and the peasants of the Abruzzi and Calabria soon began to give trouble. Worst of all was the arrival of a small British force in Calabria under Sir John Stuart, which beat off with heavy loss an attack imprudently delivered by General Réynier on level ground near the village of Maida (July 4). The steady volleys of Kempt’s light infantry were fatal to the French, who fell back in disorder under a bayonet charge of the victors, with the loss of some 2700 men. Calabria now rose in revolt against King Joseph, and the peasants dealt out savage reprisals to the French troops. On the 18th of July, however, Gaeta surrendered to Masséna, and that marshal, now moving rapidly southwards, extricated Réynier, crushed the Bourbon rising in Calabria with great barbarity, and compelled the British force to re-embark for Sicily. At Palermo Queen Maria Carolina continued to make vehement but futile efforts for the overthrow of King Joseph.
It is more important to observe that under Joseph and his ministers or advisers, including the Frenchmen Roederer, Dumas, Miot de Melito and the Corsican Saliceti, great progress was made in abolishing feudal laws and customs, in reforming the judicial procedure and criminal laws on the model of the Code Napoléon, and in attempting the beginnings of elementary education. More questionable was Joseph’s policy in closing and confiscating the property of 213 of the richer monasteries of the land. The monks were pensioned off, but though the confiscated property helped to fill the empty coffers of the state, the measure aroused widespread alarm and resentment among that superstitious people.
The peace of Tilsit (July 7, 1807) enabled Napoleon to press on his projects for securing the command of the Mediterranean, thenceforth a fundamental axiom of his policy. Consequently, in the autumn of 1807 he urged on Joseph the adoption of vigorous measures for the capture of Sicily. Already, in the negotiations with England during the summer of 1806, the emperor had shown his sense of the extreme importance of gaining possession of that island, which indeed caused the breakdown of the peace proposals then being considered; and now he ordered French squadrons into the Mediterranean in order to secure Corfu and Sicily. His plans respecting Corfu succeeded. That island and some of the adjacent isles fell into the hands of the French (some of them were captured by British troops in 1809-10); but Sicily remained unassailable. Capri, however, fell to the French on the 18th of October 1808, shortly after the arrival at Naples of the new king, Murat.
This ambitious marshal, brother-in-law of Napoleon, foiled in his hope of gaining the crown of Spain, received that of Naples in the summer of 1808, Joseph Bonaparte being moved from Naples to Madrid. This arrangement pleased Murat, King of Naples. neither of the relatives of the emperor; but his will now was law on the continent. Joseph left Naples on the 23rd of May 1808; but it was not until the 6th of September that Joachim Murat made his entry. A fortnight later his consort Caroline arrived, and soon showed a vigour and restlessness of spirit which frequently clashed with the dictates of her brother, the emperor and the showy, unsteady policy of her consort. The Spanish national rising of 1808 and thereafter the Peninsular War diverted Napoleon’s attention from the affairs of south Italy. In June 1809, during his campaign against Austria, Sir John Stuart with an Anglo-Sicilian force sailed northwards, captured Ischia and threw Murat into great alarm; but on the news of the Austrian defeat at Wagram, Stuart sailed back again.
It is now time to turn to the affairs of central Italy. Early in 1808 Napoleon proceeded with plans which he had secretly concerted after the treaty of Tilsit for transferring the infanta of Spain who, after the death of her consort, reigned at Florence Central Italy. on behalf of her young son, Charles Louis, from her kingdom of Etruria to the little principality of Entre Douro e Minho which he proposed to carve out from the north of Portugal. Etruria reverted to the French empire, but the Spanish princess and her son did not receive the promised indemnity. Elisa Bonaparte and her husband, Bacciocchi, rulers of Lucca and Piombino, became the heads of the administration in Tuscany, Elisa showing decided governing capacity.
The last part of the peninsula to undergo the Gallicizing influence was the papal dominion. For some time past the relations between Napoleon and the pope, Pius VII., had been severely strained, chiefly because the emperor insisted Napoleon and the Papacy. on controlling the church, both in France and in the kingdom of Italy, in a way inconsistent with the traditions of the Vatican, but also because the pontiff refused to grant the divorce between Jerome Bonaparte and the former Miss Patterson on which Napoleon early in the year 1806 laid so much stress. These and other disputes led the emperor, as successor of Charlemagne, to treat the pope in a very highhanded way. “Your Holiness (he wrote) is sovereign of Rome, but I am its emperor”; and he threatened to annul the presumed “donation” of Rome by Charlemagne, unless the pope yielded implicit obedience to him in all temporal affairs. He further exploited the Charlemagne tradition for the benefit of the continental system, that great engine of commercial war by which he hoped to assure the ruin of England. This aim prompted the annexation of Tuscany, and his intervention in the affairs of the Papal States. To this the pope assented under pressure from Napoleon; but the latter soon found other pretexts for intervention, and in February 1808 a French column under Miollis occupied Rome, and deposed the papal authorities. Against this violence Pius VII. protested in vain. Napoleon sought to push matters to an extreme, and on the 2nd of April Annexation of the Papal States. he adopted the rigorous measure of annexing to the kingdom of Italy the papal provinces of Ancona, Urbino, Macerata and Camerina. This measure, which seemed to the pious an act of sacrilege, and to Italian patriots an outrage on the only independent sovereign of the peninsula, sufficed for the present. The outbreak of war in Spain, followed by the rupture with Austria in the spring of 1809, distracted the attention of the emperor. But after the occupation of Vienna the conqueror dated from that capital on the 17th of May 1809 a decree virtually annexing Rome and the Patrimonium Petri to the French empire. Here again he cited the action of Charlemagne, his “august predecessor,” who had merely given “certain domains to the bishops of Rome as fiefs, though Rome did not thereby cease to be part of his empire.”
In reply the pope prepared a bull of excommunication against those who should infringe the prerogatives of the Holy See in this matter. Thereupon the French general, Miollis, who still occupied Rome, caused the pope to be arrested and carried him away northwards into Tuscany, thence to Savona; finally he was taken, at Napoleon’s orders, to Fontainebleau. Thus, a second time, fell the temporal power of the papacy. By an imperial decree of the 17th of February 1810, Rome and the neighbouring districts, including Spoleto, became part of the French empire. Rome thenceforth figured as its second city, and entered upon a new life under the administration of French officials. The Roman territory was divided into two departments—the Tiber and Trasimenus; the Code Napoléon was introduced, public works were set on foot and great advance was made in the material sphere. Nevertheless the harshness with which the emperor treated the Roman clergy and suppressed the monasteries caused deep resentment to the orthodox.
There is no need to detail the fortunes of the Napoleonic states in Italy. One and all they underwent the influences emanating from Paris; and in respect to civil administration, law, judicial procedure, education and public works, Character of Napoleon’s rule. they all experienced great benefits, the results of which never wholly disappeared. On the other hand, they suffered from the rigorous measures of the continental system, which seriously crippled trade at the ports and were not compensated by the increased facilities for trade with France which Napoleon opened up. The drain of men to supply his armies in Germany, Spain and Russia was also a serious loss. A powerful Italian corps marched under Eugène Beauharnais to Moscow, and distinguished itself at Malo-Jaroslavitz, as also during the horrors of the retreat in the closing weeks of 1812. It is said that out of 27,000 Italians who entered Russia with Eugène, only 333 saw their country again. That campaign marked the beginning of Collapse of Napoleon’s rule. the end for the Napoleonic domination in Italy as elsewhere. Murat, left in command of the Grand Army at Vilna, abandoned his charge and in the next year made overtures to the allies who coalesced against Napoleon. For his vacillations at this time and his final fate, see Murat. Here it must suffice to say that the uncertainty caused by his policy in 1813-1814 had no small share in embarrassing Napoleon and in precipitating the downfall of his power in Italy. Eugène Beauharnais, viceroy of the kingdom of Italy, showed both constancy and courage; but after the battle of Leipzig (October 16-19, 1813) his power crumbled away under the assaults of the now victorious Austrians. By an arrangement with Bavaria, they were able to march through Tirol and down the valley of the Adige in force, and overpowered the troops of Eugène whose position was fatally compromised by the defection of Murat and the dissensions among the Italians. Very many of them, distrusting both of these kings, sought to act independently in favour of an Italian republic. Lord William Bentinck with an Anglo-Sicilian force landed at Leghorn on the 8th of March 1814, and issued a proclamation to the Italians bidding them rise against Napoleon in the interests of their own freedom. A little later he gained possession of Genoa. Amidst these schisms the defence of Italy collapsed. On the 16th of April 1814 Eugène, on hearing of Napoleon’s overthrow at Paris, signed an armistice at Mantua by which he was enabled to send away the French troops beyond the Alps and entrust himself to the consideration of the allies. The Austrians, under General Bellegarde, entered Milan without resistance; and this event precluded the restoration of the old political order.
The arrangements made by the allies in accordance with the treaty of Paris (June 12, 1814) and the Final Act of the congress of Vienna (June 9, 1815), imposed on Italy boundaries which, roughly speaking, corresponded to those of the pre-Napoleonic era. To the kingdom of Sardinia, now reconstituted under Victor Emmanuel I., France ceded its old provinces, Savoy and Nice; and the allies, especially Great Britain and Austria, insisted on the addition to that monarchy of the territories of the former republic of Genoa, in respect of which the king took the title of duke of Genoa, in order to strengthen it for the duty of acting as a buffer state between France and the smaller states of central Italy. Austria recovered the Milanese, and all the possessions of the old Venetian Republic on the mainland, including Istria and Dalmatia. The Ionian Islands, formerly belonging to Venice, were, by a treaty signed at Paris on the 5th of November 1815, placed under the protection of Great Britain. By an instrument signed on the 24th of April 1815, the Austrian territories in north Italy were erected into the kingdom of Lombardo-Venetia, which, though an integral part of the Austrian empire, was to enjoy a separate administration, the symbol of its separate individuality being the coronation of the emperors with the ancient iron crown of Lombardy (“Proclamation de l’empereur d’Autriche, &c.,” April 7, 1815, State Papers, ii. 906). Francis IV., son of the archduke Ferdinand of Austria and Maria Beatrice, daughter of Ercole Rinaldo, the last of the Estensi, was reinstated as duke of Modena. Parma and Piacenza were assigned to Marie Louise, daughter of the Austrian emperor and wife of Napoleon, on behalf of her son, the little Napoleon, but by subsequent arrangements (1816-1817) the duchy was to revert at her death to the Bourbons of Parma, then reigning at Lucca. Tuscany was restored to the grand-duke Ferdinand III. of Habsburg-Lorraine. The duchy of Lucca was given to Marie Louise of Bourbon-Parma, who, at the death of Marie Louise of Austria, would return to Parma, when Lucca would be handed over to Tuscany. The pope, Pius VII., who had long been kept under restraint by Napoleon at Fontainebleau, returned to Rome in May 1814, and was recognized by the congress of Vienna (not without some demur on the part of Austria) as the sovereign of all the former possessions of the Holy See. Ferdinand IV. of Naples, not long after the death of his consort, Maria Carolina, in Austria, returned from Sicily to take possession of his dominions on the mainland. He received them back in their entirety at the hands of the powers, who recognized his new title of Ferdinand I. of the Two Sicilies. The rash attempt of Murat in the autumn of 1815, which led to his death at Pizzo in Calabria, enabled the Bourbon dynasty to crush malcontents with all the greater severity. The reaction, which was dull and heavy in the dominions of the pope and of Victor Emmanuel, systematically harsh in the Austrian states of the north, and comparatively mild in Parma and Tuscany, excited the greatest loathing in southern Italy and Sicily, because there it was directed by a dynasty which had aroused feelings of hatred mingled with contempt.
There were special reasons why Sicily should harbour these feelings against the Bourbons. During eight years (1806-1814) the chief places of the island had been garrisoned by British troops; and the commander of the force which upheld the tottering rule of Ferdinand at Palermo naturally had great authority. The British government, which awarded a large annual subsidy to the king and queen at Palermo, claimed to have some control over the administration. Lord William Bentinck finally took over large administrative powers, seeing that Ferdinand, owing to his dulness, and Maria Carolina, owing to her very suspicious intrigues with Napoleon, could never be trusted. The contest between the royal power and that of the Sicilian estates threatened to bring matters to a deadlock, until in 1812, under the impulse of Lord William Bentinck, a constitution modelled largely on that of England was passed by the estates. After the retirement of the British troops in 1814 the constitution lapsed, and the royal authority became once more absolute. But the memory of the benefits conferred by “the English constitution” remained fresh and green amidst the arid waste of repression which followed. It lived on as one of the impalpable but powerful influences which spurred on the Sicilians and the democrats of Naples to the efforts which they put forth in 1821, 1830, 1848 and 1860.