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
and Piedmont throbbed with suppressed excitement. Even when the King
of Sardinia, Victor Amadeus III., was waging war against the French
Republic, the men of Turin were with difficulty kept from revolt; and,
as we have seen, the Austro-Sardinian alliance was powerless to
recover Savoy and Nice from the soldiers of liberty or to guard the
Italian Riviera from invasion.

In fact, Bonaparte--for he henceforth spelt his name thus--detected
the political weakness of the Hapsburgs' position in Italy. Masters of
eleven distinct peoples north of the Alps, how could they hope
permanently to dominate a wholly alien people south of that great
mountain barrier? The many failures of the old Ghibelline or Imperial
party in face of any popular impulse which moved the Italian nature to
its depths revealed the artificiality of their rule. Might not such an
impulse be imparted by the French Revolution? And would not the hopes
of national freedom and of emancipation from feudal imposts fire these
peoples with zeal for the French cause? Evidently there were vast
possibilities in a democratic propaganda. At the outset Bonaparte's
racial sympathies were warmly aroused for the liberation of
Italy; and though his judgment was to be warped by the promptings of
ambition, he never lost sight of the welfare of the people whence he
was descended. In his "Memoirs written