ccordance with "the law
of nature," a pure democracy; while others had the same faith that the
result would be constitutional monarchy. Moreover, things appear
simpler in the perspective of distance than they do near at hand. The
sincerity of Bonaparte's republicanism was like the sincerity of his
conduct--an affair of time and place, a consistency with conditions
and not with abstractions. He knew the Italian mob, and faithfully
described it in his letters as dull, ignorant, and unreliable, without
preparation or fitness for self-government. He was willing to
establish the forms of constitutional administration; but in spite of
hearty support from many disciples of the Revolution, he found those
forms likely, if not certain, to crumble under their own weight, and
was convinced that the real sovereignty must for years to come reside
in a strong protectorate of some kind. It appeared to him a necessity
of war that these peoples should relieve the destitution of the French
treasury and army, a necessity of circumstances that France should be
restored to vigor and health by laying tribute on their treasures of
art and science, as on those of all the world, and a necessity of
political science that artificial boundaries should be destroyed, as
they had been in France, to produce the homogeneity of condition
essential to national or administrative unity.

The Italians themselves understood neither the policy of the French
executive nor that of their conqueror. The transitional position in
which the latter had left them produced great uneasiness. The
terrified local authorities asked nothing better than to be left as
they were, with a view to profiting by the event, whatever it might
be. After every Austrian success there were numerous local revolts,
which the French garrison commanders suppressed with severity.
Provisional governments soon come to the end of their usefulness, and
the enemies of France began to take advantage of the disorder in order
to undo what had been done. The English, for example, had seized Porto
Ferrajo in place of Leghorn; the Pope had gone further, and, in spite
of the armistice, was assembling an army for the recovery of Bologna,
Ferrara, and his other lost legations. Thus it happened that in the
intervals of the most laborious military operations, a political
activity, both comprehensive and feverish, kept pace in Bonaparte's
mind with that which was needed to regulate his campaigning.

At the v