Introduction

Abstract

Napoleon's First Italian Campaign, 1796–97, brought the Italian peninsula directly into the Revolutionary wars and then under French control. By 1798, the mainland was effectively in French hands; the Italian rulers had been expelled and new, pro-French sister republics created almost everywhere, the most important of which was the Cispadane (later Cisalpine) Republic centred on the ex-Austrian-ruled province of Lombardy, around Milan. By 1799, Austro–Russian forces had pushed the French out of the peninsula completely, except for the Ligurian coast, where the Ligurian Republic (the Revolutionary successor to the Republic of St George), held out. 1799 saw revolts against the French and their local collaborators all over Italy, from the Army of the Holy Faith (the Sanfedisti) led by Cardinal Ruffo in Calabria, to the rebels of the peasant valleys of the Piedmontese Alps, in the north-west. The violence and widespread nature of these revolts left bitter divisions between pro- and anti-French factions at every level of Italian society, everywhere.