s halting-place would be either the throne or the scaffold?

* * * * *

CHAPTER V

THE ITALIAN CAMPAIGN

(1796)

In the personality of Napoleon nothing is more remarkable than the
combination of gifts which in most natures are mutually exclusive; his
instincts were both political and military; his survey of a land took
in not only the geographical environment but also the material welfare
of the people. Facts, which his foes ignored, offered a firm fulcrum
for the leverage of his will: and their political edifice or their
military policy crumbled to ruin under an assault planned with
consummate skill and pressed home with relentless force.

For the exercise of all these gifts what land was so fitted as the
mosaic of States which was dignified with the name of Italy?

That land had long been the battle-ground of the Bourbons and the
Hapsburgs; and their rivalries, aided by civic dissensions, had
reduced the people that once had given laws to Europe into a condition
of miserable weakness. Europe was once the battle-field of the Romans:
Italy was now the battle-field of Europe. The Hapsburgs dominated the
north, where they held the rich Duchy of Milan, along with the great
stronghold of Mantua, and some scattered imperial fiefs. A scion of
the House of Austria reigned at Florence over the prosperous Duchy of
Tuscany. Modena and Lucca were under the general control of the Court
of Vienna. The south of the peninsula, along with Sicily, was swayed
by Ferdinand IV., a descendant of the Spanish Bourbons, who kept his
people in a condition of mediaeval ignorance and servitude; and this
dynasty controlled the Duchy of Parma. The Papal States were also sunk
in the torpor of the Middle Ages; but in the northern districts of
Bologna and Ferrara, known as the "Legations," the inhabitants still
remembered the time of their independence, and chafed under the
irritating restraints of Papal rule. This was seen when the leaven of
French revolutionary thought began to ferment in Italian towns. Two
young men of Bologna were so enamoured of the new ideas, as to raise
an Italian tricolour flag, green, white, and red, and summon their
fellow-citizens to revolt against the rule of the Pope's legate
(November, 1794). The revolt was crushed, and the chief offenders were
hanged; but elsewhere the force of democracy made itself felt,
especially among the more virile peoples of Northern Italy. Lombardy