With the instinct of genius, Napoleon Bonaparte saw the path to power.  The air was vibrating with the word Liberty.  If he would capture France—­which was what he intended to do—­he must move along the line of political freedom.  The note to be struck was the liberation of the oppressed.  Where would he find chains more galling, more unnatural, than in Italy, held by the iron hand of Austria?  And was not Austria the leader of the coalition against France?

Without money or supplies, and with an unclothed army, he obeyed the inspiration, audaciously planning to make the invaded country pay the expenses of the war waged against it.  Pointing to the Italian cities, he said to his soldiers:  “There is your reward.  It is rich and ample, but you must conquer it!” Like Caesar, he knew how, in words brief and concise, to address his followers, and to inspire enthusiasm as few have ever done before or since.  He also knew how to confound the enemy with new and unexpected methods which made unavailing all which military science and experience had taught them.

With the suddenness of a tornado he swept down upon the plains of Lombardy.  The battles of Lodi, Arcola, Rivoli, were won, and in ten months Napoleon was master of Italy.  By the treaty of Campo Formio, October 17, 1797, northern Italy was divided into four republics, with their capitals respectively at Milan, Genoa, Bologna, and Rome.  And in return for her acquiescence in this redistribution of her Italian territory, Austria received Venice.  After fourteen centuries of independence, Venetia, the queen of the Adriatic, was in chains!

[Illustration:  Napoleon at the Battle of Rivoli, January 14, 1797.  From the painting by Philippoteaux.]

Not satisfied with this, Napoleon intended that Paris should wear the jewels which had adorned the fair Italian cities.  The people whose chains he had come to break were at once required to surrender money, jewels, plate, horses, equipments, besides their choicest art collections and rarest manuscripts.  In a private letter to a member of the Directory he wrote:  “I shall send you twenty pictures by some of the first masters, including Correggio and Michael Angelo.”  A later letter said:  “Join all these to what will be sent from Rome, and we shall have all that is beautiful in Italy, except a small number of objects in Turin and Naples.”  Pius VI., without a protest, surrendered his millions of francs, and ancient bronzes, costly pictures, and priceless manuscripts.

Austria had lost fourteen battles, and all her Italian possessions were grouped together into a Cisalpine republic!  Another Helvetic republic was set up in Switzerland, and still another republic created in Holland under a French protectorate.

In other words, this man had accomplished in Italy precisely what he was going to accomplish later in Germany.  He had broken down the lingering traces of mediaevalism, and prepared the soil for a new order of things.