eon Bonaparte, a little man from the
island of Corsica, of Italian parentage, but a French citizen, for the
island had been forcibly The annexed to France shortly before his
birth. As a young lieutenant in the army, he had seen the storming of
the Bastille. Later on, being in charge of the cannon which defended
the House of Parliament, he had saved one of the numerous governments
set up during this period. A Paris mob was trying to storm this
building, as they had the castle of the king. As a reward, he had been
put in charge of the French army in Italy, which was engaged in
fighting the Austrians.

In order to understand the situation it is necessity at this point to
devote some attention to the past history of the Italian peninsula.

Italy had not been a united country since the days of the Roman
Empire. The southern part of the peninsula had formed, with Sicily, a
small nation called the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. The northern part
had belonged to the Ostrogoths, the Lombards, the Franks, and the Holy
Roman Empire in turn. The Italian people wanted to become one nation,
but they were divided up among many little princes, each with his
separate dominions. The cities of Genoa and Venice had each formed a
republic, which was strong on the sea only, for both cities had large
navies and had acquired practically all their wealth by their trade
with Constantinople, Egypt, and the far East. In 1796 the Hapsburg
family held the control of northern Italy except the lands around the
city of Venice and the county of Piedmont. The latter formed a
separate kingdom with the island of Sardinia, much as Sicily was
joined with the southern end of the peninsula.

Italy had been the battlefield where Goths, Franks, Huns, Lombards,
Germans, Austrians, French, and Spaniards had fought their battles for
the control of the civilized world. (See the following maps.) At one
time, the Austrian House of Hapsburg controlled the greater part of
the peninsula. This was especially true when Charles V was elected
emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. As a Hapsburg, he was ruler of
Austria. As a descendant of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, he was
Lord of the Low Countries (what is now Holland and Belgium). He was
also king of Spain, being the oldest living grandson of Ferdinand and
Isabella. When he became ruler of the two Sicilies, and defeated the
French king for the control of northern Italy, there were only four
powers in Europe which were