tics, and with the Austrian
negotiations. We will consider these affairs in the order here
indicated.

The future of Lombardy had long been a matter of concern to Bonaparte.
He knew that its people were the _fittest_ in all Italy to benefit by
_constitutional rule_, but it must be dependent on France. He felt
little confidence in the Lombards if left to themselves, as is seen in
his conversation with Melzi and Miot de Melito at the Castle of
Montebello. He was in one of those humours, frequent at this time of
dawning splendour, when confidence in his own genius betrayed him into
quite piquant indiscretions. After referring to the Directory, he
turned abruptly to Melzi, a Lombard nobleman:

"As for your country, Monsieur de Melzi, it possesses still fewer
elements of republicanism than France, and can be managed more
easily than any other. You know better than anyone that we shall do
what we like with Italy. But the time has not yet come. We must
give way to the fever of the moment. We are going to have one or
two republics here of our own sort. Monge will arrange that for
us."

He had some reason for distrusting the strength of the democrats in
Italy. At the close of 1796 he had written that there were three
parties in Lombardy, one which accepted French guidance, another which
desired liberty even with some impatience, and a third faction,
friendly to the Austrians: he encouraged the first, checked the
second, and repressed the last. He now complained that the Cispadanes
and Cisalpines had behaved very badly in their first elections, which
had been conducted in his absence; for they had allowed clerical
influence to override all French predilections. And, a little later,
he wrote to Talleyrand that the genuine love of liberty was feeble in
Italy, and that, as soon as French influences were withdrawn, the
Italian Jacobins would be murdered by the populace. The sequel was to
justify his misgivings, and therefore to refute the charges of those
who see in his conduct respecting the Cisalpine Republic nothing but
calculating egotism. The difficulty of freeing a populace that had
learnt to hug its chains was so great that the temporary and partial
success which his new creation achieved may be regarded as a proof of
his political sagacity.

After long preparations by four committees, which Bonaparte kept at
Milan closely engaged in the drafting of laws, the constitution of the
Cisalpi