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 not under his sway:  Russia, Turkey, Poland, and England. (See map.)

[Map:  Italy in 525 A.D.]

[Map:  Italy in 650 A.D.]

[Map:  Italy in 1175 A.D.]

[Illustration:  Charles the Fifth]

Three hundred years after this, the Austrians were again invading Italy, and at the time when Bonaparte entered it (1796), they had overrun and controlled the entire valley of the Po.  The cause of the war was still the deposing of the French monarch.  The Austrian armies were fighting to force the people of France to take back the rule of the hated kings.  The armies of France, on the other hand, represented the rights of the people to choose their own form of government.

Of course the French, intoxicated by the success of the Revolution, were eager to spread the republican form of government all over Europe.  There was a real possibility that they might do so, and the kings were fighting in defense of their thrones. (The map shows the conquests of the new republic up to this time.)

[Map:  Europe in 1796]

Such was the situation when young Bonaparte, twenty-six years of age, went down into Italy to take command of the French army.  The generals, many of them as old as his father, began offering him advice, but he impatiently waved them aside and announced that he was going to wage war on a plan hitherto unheard of.  He made good his boast, and after a short campaign in which he inspired his ragged, hungry army to perform wonders in fighting, he had driven the Austrians out of northern Italy, broken up the Republic of Venice, and forced the emperor to make peace with France.  After a brilliant but unsuccessful campaign in Egypt and Syria, Bonaparte returned to France, where, as the popular military hero, he had little difficulty in overthrowing the five Directors of the French government and having himself elected “First Consul” or president of France.