he plains of Lombardy, then by the Austrian Tyrol, or else by
the Venetian Alps. Strangely enough, the plainest and most forcible
exposition of this plan was made by an emigrant in London, a certain
Dutheil, for the benefit of England and Austria. But the Allies were
deaf to his warnings, while in the mean time Bonaparte enforced the
same idea upon the French authorities, and secured their acceptance of
it. Both he and they were the more inclined to the scheme because once
already it had been successfully initiated; because the general,
having studied Italy and its people, thoroughly understood what
contributions might be levied on them; because the Army of the Rhine
was radically republican and knew its own strength; because therefore
the personal ambitions of Bonaparte, and in fact the very existence of
the Directory, alike depended on success elsewhere than in central
Europe.

Having been for centuries the battle-field of rival dynasties, Italy,
though a geographical unit with natural frontiers more marked than
those of any other land, and with inhabitants fairly homogeneous in
birth, speech, and institutions, was neither a nation nor a family of
kindred nations, but a congeries of heterogeneous states. Some of
these, like Venice and Genoa, boasted the proud title of republics;
they were in reality narrow, commercial, even piratical oligarchies,
destitute of any vigorous political life. The Pope, like other petty
rulers, was but a temporal prince, despotic, and not even enlightened,
as was the Grand Duke of Tuscany. Naples and the Milanese both groaned
under the yoke of foreign rulers, and the only passable government in
the length and breadth of the land was that of the house of Savoy in
Piedmont and Sardinia, lands where the revolutionary spirit of liberty
was most extended and active. The petty courts, like those of Parma
and Modena, were nests of intrigue and corruption. There was, of
course, in every place that saving remnant of high-minded men which is
always providentially left as a seed; but the people as a whole were
ignorant and enervated. The accumulations of ages, gained by an
extensive and lucrative commerce, or by the tilling of a generous
soil, had not been altogether dissipated by misrule, and there was
even yet rich store of money in many of the venerable and still
splendid cities. Nowhere in the ancient seats of the Roman
commonwealth, whose memory was now the cherished fashion in France,
could any