Italy At The Commencement Of The French Revolution

( Originally Published Early 1900's )

FROM A.D. 1600 TO A.D. 1796

THE emperor Charles V. placed Cosmo de Medici, in the ducal chair of Florence, and pope Pius V. granted him the title of grand duke of Tuscany. He was a cruel and perfidious tyrant.

Cosmo was succeeded by Francisco, a duke who governed through the instrumentality of the poisoned cup and the dagger, and who lapped blood with the greed of a bloodhound. He married Bianca Cabello, the daughter of a nobleman of Venice. She was the wife of a young Florentine. Francisco saw her, and, inflamed by her marvelous beauty, invited het and her husband to his palace, and assassinated her husband. His own wife died just at that time, probably by poison, and the grand duke married Bianca. His brother, the cardinal Ferdinando, displeased with the union, presented them each with a goblet of poisoned wine, and they sank into the grave together. Ferdinando, the cardinal, by this treachery and fratricide, became grand duke.

During the whole of the seventeenth century Italy remained essentially unchanged. Chastised into submission, impover shed, and unarmed, she forgot her former glory, and seemed almost into the most debased condition. The several despotic governments, into which the peninsula was divided, became permanently established. The people became submissive slaves, and the rulers having but little occasion for violence, sank into effeminate debauched voluptuaries. Italian vitality had subsided into the repose of the tomb. All social ties were loosened, domestic life lost all its sacredness, adultery in high life became the rule, not the exception, and universal corruption seems to have reigned throughout the peninsula.

During the whole of this century, Naples, Sicily, Milan, and Sardinia were under the dominion of Spain, governed by viceroys, whose rapacity was boundless. From the kingdom of Naples alone, Spain extorted an annual revenue of fifteen millions of dollars. Ten millions of this were sent to Spain. Everything was taxed upon which a tax could be laid ; and the young men were drawn into the Spanish armies to fight the battles of the emperor all over Europe.

The papal states remained essentially unchanged. Four-teen popes occupied, during the century, the chair of St. Peter; but no one of these attained any special prominence. The pontifical power was all the time slowly but surely decaying.

The little duchy of Parma had a succession of dukes, whose lives were shortened by their dissipation, and not one of whom merits any notice except for his crimes. During their short reigns they rioted in all the licentious indulgence which their limited incomes and their obscure courts could afford.

The duchy of Modena had been gradually formed with varying fortunes of enlargement and curtailment, until it consisted of an area of about two thousand square miles, with a population of about half a million. In size, population, revenue, and in the character of its rulers it was much like Parma.

Mantua and Tuscany were also duchies during this century, now in alliance with one power and again with another; but never independent. There was in their inglorious history during this century nothing worthy of notice. Duke Ferdinand I., to attract the trade of the Mediterranean to the shores of Tuscany, selected the castle of Leghorn for a free port, greatly improved its harbor, and a town rapidly arose from this site, which eventually became one of the most prosperous maritime cities of Italy.

It so chanced that the duchy of Savoy inherited a succession of very able dukes, men bold, energetic, ambitious, and ever greedy for encroachments. Its dukes were thorough despots, and yet far more respectable despots than most of the other rulers of Italy. The duchies of Savoy and Piedmont had been united in one dukedom, containing an area of about ten thousand square miles, and a population of two millions. It was thus in population and extent of territory, a rival even of the grand duchy of Tuscany. As Savoy was much the smaller province, and was eut of from Piedmont by the Alps, the dukes of Savoy, to use the language of an Italian historian, regarded their transmontane domain much as a nobleman, moving in the splendor of a court, regards the ancient and neglected fief, from which he derives his title.

The duke Charles Emanuel, with energy, made a mid-night attack upon Genoa, hoping to add that republic to his domain ; but he failed. This duke, an intriguing politician and an unprincipled warrior, reigned fifty years. His son, Victor Amadeus I., who succeeded him, married a daughter of Henry IV. of France. Ile died leaving the succession to a son four years of age, under the regency of his duchess, the child's mother. This gave France great influence in Piedmont.

At nine years of age the young duke of Savoy nominally commenced his reign, with the title of Victor Amadeus IL He developed great strength of character, and resisting the arrogant demands of Louis XIV. of France, for six years, aided by Spain, repelled army after army of French invaders and at length made peace without the loss of any of his territory By this war Piedmont acquired much military renown.

Genoa was on the decline. Though nominally a republic, it was governed by seven hundred privileged nobility, who exclusively possessed the rights of citizenship. But there was a moneyed aristocracy excluded from these privileges, between whom and the nobility of birth, there were bitter feuds.

The merchant princes, led by one of the most opulent of their number, Vachero, and encouraged by promises of aid from the duke of Savoy, conspired for the entire extermination of the oligarchy by sword and dagger, and the introduction of a more democratic republic. But the plot was discovered, and, notwithstanding the threats of the duke of Savoy, all who were implicated in it were sent to the scaffold.

On the first of November, 1699, Charles II., the wretched king of Spain, a semi-idiot, died on a bed of mental and bodily anguish. In his will, which had been extorted from him by all the terrors of superstition, he bequeathed his crown of Spain to a French prince, Philip of Anjou, a grandson of his sister, with the title of Philip V. By the rule of hereditary descent, the crown should have passed to an Austrian prince, the son of the emperor Leopold I. and his wife Margaret. The Austrian prince was consequently crowned in Vienna king of Spain, with the title of Charles III. And now commenced the renowned war, which put all the armies of Europe on the march, called the war of the Spanish succession, and which for fourteen years deluged the continent in blood.

Both of these newly-crowned kings were mere boys. Louis XIV. of France was the prime agent for the one; Leopold I. of Austria for the other. The Spanish court immediately sent orders to the viceroys and governors of Naples, Milan, Sicily, Sardinia, and the Tuscan governors, to acknowledge the authority of Philip V., and to prepare to defend his claims. At the same time Louis XIV. sent to Victor Amadeus II., duke of Savoy, to be ready to support the same cause. England and Holland allied themselves with Austria. Nearly all the other monarchies of Europe were with France. Never before had Europe been plunged into such embroilment. Italy became the great battle-field, swept by the French and the Austrian allied armies, in the most desolating and sanguinary war.

In this long contest the Bourbon prince was nominally victor. All parties, exhausted, bleeding, impoverished, were glad to come to terms. By the peace of Utrecht, on the seventh of September, 1714, though Philip V. was recognized as king of Spain, all of his Italian possessions he was compelled to surrender to Austria. Victor Amadeus II., duke of Savoy and Piedmont, gained the island of Sicily, and, with this enlargement of his domain, was entitled to encircle his brow with a regal crown. The Neapolitan kingdom, the island of Sardinia, and the duchies of Milan, Mantua, and Tuscany, all passed under the scepter of Austria. Italy merely changed masters.

Four years after the peace of Utrecht, a new quarrel sprung up among the European monarchies, and as one of the results of the war, the duke of Savoy relinquished Sicily for the nearer island of Sardinia, and embracing his three realms of Savoy, Piedmont, and Sardinia into one kingdom, gave the name of the last acquisition to the whole, and assumed the title of king of Sardinia. The entire kingdom, as thus organized, contained a population of a little more than four millions, and was spread over an area of twenty-eight thousand square miles, being not quite half as large as the state of Virginia. It was the only portion of the Italian peninsula, if we except the papal states, which was even nominally independent. Its independence, however, could only be secured by allying itself with some one of tie great monarchies—France, Spain, or Austria.

Italy, thus shackled, enjoyed a sort of sepulchral repose for thirteen years. But the other great powers of Europe, in incessant intrigues, were continually endeavoring to wrest from each other these Italian provinces. In the process of these efforts Spain gained Parma and Tuscany ; and then after a short war, took possession of both Naples and Sicily while France and Sardinia united, wrested Milan and Lombardy from Austria. All Europe was embroiled in war in the struggle for these prizes. After deluging the continent in blood and misery until all parties were weary, the great powers met again in congress at Vienna, in 1738, to agree to terms of peace. The kingdom of Naples, including Sicily, was surrendered to Spain. France took Lombardy and Parma, with which duchy Placentia had been united. Austria retained only Milan and Mantua. But an Austrian prince, Francis, duke of Lorraine, who had married Maria Theresa, afterward the renowned empress of Austria, received the grand duchy of Tuscany in forcible exchange for his hereditary estates, which were grasped by the emperor Charles VI., the father of Maria Theresa.

In two years Charles VI. died, and again Europe sprang to arms ; and again for seven years wretched, helpless Italy was grasped by the belligerents, as they attempted to tear her limb from limb. In 1748, having buried their dead and wiped their gory swords, the monarchs sat down together at Aix la Chapelle, to talk over terms of peace. After much deliberation they agreed that Austria should retain Milan and Mantua; but that Francis of Lorraine, who had now become emperor, should renounce Tuscany, and that it should be an independent state, under the government of a younger member of the imperial house. The kingdom of Naples was also declared to be independent, but to be placed under a king of the Spanish house of Bourbon. The united duchy of Parma and Placentia was also nominally independent, though it was surrendered to the dominion of a Spanish prince. It con tained a population of five hundred thousand, an army of three thousand troops, and furnished a revenue of one million two hundred thousand dollars. Sardinia received very considerable accessions from the duchy of Milan. The other states of Italy remained in their former condition. Thus Italy again enjoyed peace, but it was the peace of abject slavery. The peninsula was cut up into petty provinces, and over nearly all of them foreign rulers were stationed.

The peace of Aix la Chapelle settled the destiny of Italy for forty years. During all this time hardly anything occurred worthy of notice. Religion had sunk into a debasing superstition; popular education was frowned down. The only object of the rulers was, by every form of taxation, to wrest as much money as possible from their subjects ; and consequently Italy made but little more progress than might have been expected in the same time from a plantation of American or Cuban slaves. Still peace brought a measure of prosperity, and in several of the states, where there chanced to be rulers of some little patriotism and enlightenment, there was considerable progress.

The Spanish prince, Charles VII., governed Naples for twenty-one years. Though not a man of much ability, he was well meaning, and Naples had not been so well governed for ages. Many noble public works still embellish the capital, which are the honorable trophies of his reign. By the death of his elder brother, Ferdinand IV., of Spain, in 1759, Charles VII. of Naples succeeded to the Spanish throne, which he ascended with the title of Charles III. His eldest son was almost an idiot. His second son, in consequence, would be the lawful successor of Charles to the crown. Therefore to the third son, who was then a boy of but nine years of age, the scepter of the kingdom of Naples was assigned. He took the title of Ferdinand IV. The king of Spain was regent during the minority of his son, and ever after continued to exert a controlling influence over the councils of the Neapolitan kingdom. Thus though Naples was nominally independent, it was virtually but a province of Spain.

Soon, however, another element of influence was intro duced which essentially modified this Spanish control. Per. dinand VII., when in his nineteenth year married the princess Caroline of Austria, daughter of the imperial Maria Theresa, and sister of Marie Antoinette, who subsequently married Louis XVI. of France. She was an ambitious woman, impassioned, and dictatorial, and she soon gained absolute control over the mind of her feeble husband. Such was the condition of Naples when the French Revolution dawned upon Europe. Nominally independent, it was so connected with Spain and Austria, that it was sure to cooperate with those two despotisms in the endeavor to arrest the progress of free institutions. The kingdom consisted of two somewhat distinct portions,—the continental, and the island of Sicily. The continental embraced an area of thirty-one thousand square miles, and a population of six millions. Sicily had nearly two millions of inhabitants spread over ten thousand square miles. The army of the kingdom amounted to forty thousand regular troops, and fifteen thousand militia. Its revenue amounted to twenty-two million dollars.

The papal states were never so well governed as during the eighteenth century. Several popes, in succession, were intrusted with the keys and the tiara, who, notwithstanding the inherent vices of the papal imposture, were men of great moral excellence, and high intellectual accomplishments. But their good intentions could not obviate the inevitable evils of a system whose strength consists in the ignorance of the populace, and in the abrogation of free inquiry, and of the rights of private judgment. The progress of mind in the other king doms of Europe, had so weakened both the temporal and th spiritual powers of the popes, that they could no longe domineer over princes and nations. In the wars which desolated Italy, the only safety of the popes was to remain as neutral as possible, while they threw themselves upon the protection of the strongest side. Still the papal states were repeatedly ravaged.

In 1775, Pius VI. ascended the papal throne. The popu ration of the papal states was then about two million five hundred thousand. The army numbered five thousand men. All the territory of the pope united, consisting of states of various names and sizes, embracing an area of seventeen thousand square miles, being equal to a little more than one half of the state of Maine. The revenue of the pope amounted to about nine million of dollars.

"Italy," said Victor Amadeus II., "is like an artichoke. We must eat it leaf by leaf." The dukes of Savoy first ate Piedmont, then the island of Sardinia, and thus established the kingdom of Sardinia. But their appetite was not yet appeased. They then consumed the duchy of Montferrat, and several other important contiguous territories, to round out and consolidate their prosperous kingdom. By the peace of Utrecht, in 1733, Sardinia gained a large slice. of the duchy of Milan. By the treaty of Aix la Chapelle, in 1748, the eastern frontier of Sardinia was extended to lake Maggiore, and to the river Ticino. Victor Amadeus II. was a very able man, and he devoted his reign of sixteen years energetically to the promotion of the prosperity of his people. At the same time he paid especial attention to the construction of fortresses, and to the discipline of his army. He thus, small as his kingdom was in territorial extent, attained a prominent position among the second class monarchies of Europe.

He was succeeded by his son Charles Emanuel III, who was equally illustrious as a general, a politician, and a king. His military power was such that, at a day's warning he could take the field with an army of forty thousand men, highly disciplined, and supplied with all the materials of scientific warfare. He could also promptly call into military array a militia of fifteen thousand men. Under his reign a very magnificent chain of fortresses was reared along the Alpine frontier, to protect him from encroachments on the side of France. Victor Amadeus III. succeeded Charles Emanuel III, and it was during his reign that the storm of war, which the French revolution originated, burst upon Europe. The whole area of the kingdom of Sardinia, amounted to twenty-nine thousand square miles, being very nearly of the same size with the state of Maine. The united population of the three provinces of Savoy, Piedmont, and the island of Sardinia, was about four millions, producing a revenue to the monarchy of fourteen millions of dollars.

Tuscany, in past ages, had been cursed, almost beyond endurance, with miserable dukes, debauched, and tyrannical. Cosmo III. and Giovan Castone were thoroughly despicable men. Francis, duke of Lorraine, to whom the duchy was assigned by the peace of Vienna, had married Maria Theresa, heiress of the Austrian throne. He seldom visited Tuscany, assigning the administration to his agents. Upon his death in 1765, he bequeathed the grand duchy to his second son, Peter Leopold, a young man but eighteen years of age. Under his sway the little realm was prosperous and happy. He was a prince truly devoted to the welfare of his people, and history can speak of him with reverence and affection. In 1790, after a reign of twenty-seven years, he succeeded to the empire of Austria, and transferred Tuscany, in a highly flourishing condition, to his second son, Ferdinand Joseph. He also, though reigning with absolute power, proved an excellent prince, and Tuscany was happy. The snug, compact duchy contained a million of inhabitants, with a regular army of six thousand troops, and a revenue of one-and-a-half million of dollars. Its area was about equal to that of the state of Massachusetts.

The little duchy of Modena had been pillaged again and again during the wars of the Spanish and Austrian succession. With exceedingly varied fortunes Francisco III. reigned over Modena for forty-three years, until 1780, when he died, and his son, Ercole III., already an old man, succeeded him. His only daughter had married one of the Austrian archduke% and he had married an elder sister of the unhappy Marie Antomette. Thus he was, by the strong ties of relationship, m sympathy with Austria, and prepared to cooperate with the emperor in his political measures. The duchy embraced about fifteen hundred square miles, containing four hundred thou sand inhabitants. Nearly six thousand men were kept constantly under arms.

Genoa had not then been incorporated with Sardinia, but existed in nominal independence, calling itself a republic. The little realm was governed by an oligarchy of hereditary nobles, who, with vigilance never surpassed by duke or king, guarded against the extension of political power to the people. In fact, this world has, perhaps, never seen despotisms more absolute and unrelenting than were the republics of Genoa and Venice. The people were so crushed that they ventured not even to squirm beneath the heel which trampled them.

In the war of the Austrian succession, waged by France and Spain with other allied powers against Maria Theresa, Genoa joined the allies against Austria. In one of the campaigns the French and Spaniards were driven out of Italy. Genoa was captured by th . Austrians, all her troops taken prisoners of war; all her military and warlike stores captured ; and the doge and six of his fellows were compelled to go to Vienna, in a body, and implore the pardon of the queen. The exactions and outrages perpetrated by the Austrians in Genoa exceeded all bounds.

At length, goaded to utter desperation, the whole city, men, women, and children rose in revolt. Stones, furniture, clubs, weapons of every kind the hand could seize were brought into action. In twenty-four hours eight thousand Austrians were killed in the streets ; and, with the loss of all their artillery and much of the material of war, the remnant was driven from the territory. The oligarchal republic em-braced an area of about twenty-five hundred square miles being a little larger than the state of Delaware. Its inhabit-ants did not exceed six hundred thousand. This heroic deed achieved by the energies of the populace alone, immediately brought France to the aid of Genoa, and Austria was baffled in all her attempts to regain the city—though aided by the army of Sardinia. The peace of Aix la Chapelle, which soon followed, left Genoa to independence, but still under the sway of its degraded and debased aristocracy.

The island of Corsica had belonged to Genoa. It is situated about one hundred miles south of the city, and contained a population of nearly thirty thousand, spread over a mountainous region one hundred miles long and forty-four miles broad. The tyranny of the Genoese oligarchy had driven the Corsicans to insurrection. For many years a war of exceeding barbarity devastated the island. But the Corsicans, in campaign after campaign, repelled their assailants with heroism, which gave them world-wide renown. At length Genoa applied to France for help; and in the course of negotiations agreed to cede Corsica to France for a valuable pecuniary consideration. Still three campaigns of the troops of Louis XV. were found necessary to bring the island in subjection to France. Paoli was the illustrious leader who was at the head of the Corsican troops in their battles for independence.

Among the most distinguished of the families of Corsica at that time, was that of the Bonapartes. Charles Bonaparte, the father of Napoleon, then a young lawyer, fought heroic-ally in these wars until, overwhelmed by superior forces, the island surrendered itself to the government of France. The Genoese ceded this island to France in the year 1768 ; but a few months after this, on the fifteenth of August, 1769, Napoleon Bonaparte was born, in the city of Ajaccio.

Twelve hundred thousand people, inhabiting the rich and beautiful plains of Lombardy, had been organized into a duchy, embracing an area of nearly eight thousand square miles, being about the size of the state of Massachusetts. Milan was its enlightened capital. The state belonged to Austria, and was governed by an archduke.

Venice, despoiled alternately by Turk, Spaniard, French man, and Austrian, had fallen into weakness and disgrace. It was called a republic, since, instead of having one ruler, it was governed by a senate of hereditary nobles, under the presidency of a doge or duke. Though the Venetian territory at this time embraced a population of three millions, there were but twenty-five hundred entitled to rights of citizenship.

Such was the condition of Italy when the French revolution roused the hopes of the masses of the people all over Europe, that the hour had arrived for throwing off the yoke of aristocratic domination. The enslaved Italians, hating their foreign masters, watched with peculiar interest the progress of events in France, and were eager for an opportunity to grasp their arms and strike for independence. But disarmed, shackled, overawed by foreign troops, and watched with the utmost vigilance, that they might have no opportunity to confer upon united action, their case was manifestly hopeless without some foreign aid. Nearly the whole of the Italian peninsula was at that time directly or indirectly subject to Austria or to Spain; not one state of Italy being held by France.

As soon as the French people had thrown off the intolerable yoke of the Bourbons, and established a free government under a written constitution, all the despotisms in Europe combined for the overthrow of that constitutional liberty, the reestablishment of the Bourbons, and the reënslavement of the French people. Austria was naturally very prominent in this coalition, for the reigning emperor was brother of Marie Antoinette Naples and Tuscany were also eager to march upon France, for the queen of Naples and the duchess of Tuscany were sisters of the French queen. Austria, consequently, not only put all the armies of the empire in motion, but called into requisition all her resources in Italy. The Austrian rulers of Naples, Tuscany, and Lombardy, with all those who gather around the dispensers of place and powers were eager to put down all the advocates of popular liberty. But the masses of the Italian people were equally eager to call the French to their aid, that they might drive out their Austrian oppressors, and establish, in beautiful Italy also, free institutions.

Five separate armies were soon organized to force the Bourbon despotism upon the French people. One of these was collected on the plains of Piedmont. The little province of Savoy, cut off from Piedmont by the Alps, seemed naturally to belong to France. Joyfully the Savoyards availed themselves of this opportunity of escaping from Sardinia, and throwing themselves into the arms of the great republic. The court of Turin, which was the capital of the Sardinian kingdom, cordially espoused the cause of the despots of Europe against French freedom. The National Assembly in Paris welcomed Savoy in a decree which forcibly states :

That all considerations, physical, moral, and political, call for the incorporation of Savoy. All attempts to connect it with Piedmont are fruitless. The Alps eternally force it back into the domains of France. The order of nature would be violated if they were to live under different laws."

An army of forty thousand Piedmontese and Austrians, was posted along the summits of the Alps, menacing France with invasion so soon as the Austrians and Prussians on the Rhine should so engage the attention of the republican forces as to prepare the way for their march. A few French battalions, poorly organized and provided, watched their foe, with occasional skirmishes on those arid heights. The French, however, succeeded in wresting from Sardinia a small province of Piedmont, called Nice, situated on the southwestern declivity of the maritime Alps. It embraced about thirteen hundred square miles, and contained one hundred and twenty thousand inhabitants. Gradually the French drove the Austrio-Sardinian back, and gained command of the ridge of the Alps, and of the two renowned passes of Mt. Cenis and of the Little St. Bernard. The counsel of the young general, Napoleon Bonaparte, led to these important movements.

Early in the year 1795, Austria sent fifteen thousand troops to strengthen the Piedmontese army, thus raising an effective force of fifty thousand men. The French, scattered along the ridges or the Alps, freezing and starving, amounted to forty-five thousand. The Austrians were encamped in he warm and fertile valleys which descend into the Italian plains. Some fierce battles were fought, in which the French gradually drove the Austrians back, and made some little progress toward the plains of Piedmont.

On the twenty-seventh of March, 1796, Napoleon Bonaparte was placed in command of the army of Italy. He was then in the twenty-sixth year of his age. The army consisted of forty-two thousand men, with sixty pieces of artillery. Perched on the summits of the mountains, they were in a state of extreme exhaustion, having for some time existed on half a ration a day. The officers were receiving a dollar and sixty cents a month ; the cavalry horses were nearly all dead, and the staff was entirely on foot. Napoleon, with beardless cheek and fragile frame, presenting an aspect of almost girlish beauty, hastened to head-quarters and thus addressed his ragged and starving veterans :

" Soldiers ! you are almost naked ; half starved. The government owes you much and can give you nothing. Your patience, your courage, in the midst of these rocks are admirable ; but they reflect no splendor on your arms. I am to conduct you into the most fertile plains on earth. Fertile provinces, opulent cities will soon be in your power. There you will find rich harvests, honor and glory. Soldiers of Italy ! will you fail in courage ?"

On the twelfth of April, he commenced his triumphant campaign, which still excites the wonder of the world. By the first of May the Austrians were driven out of Piedmo and the king of Sardinia entered into a treaty, by which he renounced the coalition against France ; surrendered, as in demnity for the war, Nice and Savoy to France, and granted Napoleon a free passage through his territories, to pursue his foes, the Austrians, into the duchy of Lombardy. Sweeping all opposition before him, he marched through the duchy of Parma to Milan, the capital of Lombardy, which he entered on the fifteenth of May, in triumph, greeted with the most enthusiastic acclaim of the people. The proclamation which Napoleon addressed to his soldiers, rang, like bugle peals through Europe.

" Soldiers," said he, " you have descended like a torrent from the Apennines. You have overwhelmed everything which has opposed you. Piedmont, delivered from the tyranny of Austria, has felt at liberty to indulge its natural inclination for peace and for a French alliance. Milan is in your hands, and the republican standards wave over the whole of Lombardy. The dukes of Parma and Modena owe their existence only to your generosity. . . .

" The hour of vengeance has struck; but the people of all nations may rest in peace. We are the friends of every people, and especially of the descendants of Brutus, Scipio, and the other great men whom we have taken for examples. To restore the capital; to replace there the statues of the heroes who have rendered it immortal; to rouse the Romans from centuries of slavery, —such will be the fruit of our victories. To you will belong the glory of having changed the face of the most beautiful part of Europe."

The Italian people panting for liberty and independence, greeted these words with unbounded joy. To them Napoleon appeared as the regenerator of Italy., and the enthusiasm with which the patriots from all parts of Italy crowded around him, has, perhaps, never been paralleled. The Austrians re, treated into the Venetian territory, and Napoleon pursued them.

The king of Naples, who had taken up arms against France, alarmed by the progress of Napoleon, solicited an armistice. Napoleon consented, and the Neapolitan troops were withdrawn from the coalition. Naples had furnished five sail of the line, a large number of frigates, and two thou-sand four hundred horsemen to aid in the iniquitous war against the right of the French people to establish their own form of government.

Venice, while assuming neutrality, was in warm sympathy with the allies. They had allowed the Austrians to take refuge in their territory, and even to seize the fortress of Peschiera, which had exposed the French army to the loss of a great number of valuable lives. They had even granted an asylum in Verona to the brother of Louis XVI., who, assuming the title of Louis XVIII., claimed to be monarch of France, and issued his decrees accordingly to the army he was collecting for the invasion of the French territory.

"Venice," said Napoleon to the commissioners sent to implore his clemency, "by daring to give an asylum to the Count de Lille, a pretender to the throne of France, has declared war against the republic. I know not why I should not re-duce Verona to ashes—a town which has had presumption to esteem itself the capital of France."

The Austrians had now fled through the Venetian territory into the Tyrol, and were driven out of Italy. The Venetian senate professed their inability to prevent the Austrians from taking refuge in their territory, and, seizing one of their for-tresses, begged to be allowed to remain neutral. Napoleon, knowing full well that they would stab him in the back if possible, consented to their neutrality, saying :