Bonaparte did not evince great impatience to seize the Crown of Italy, which he well knew could not escape him.  He stayed a considerable time at Turin, where he resided in the Stupinis Palace, which may be called the St. Cloud of the Kings of Sardinia.  The Emperor cajoled the Piedmontese.  General Menou, who was made Governor of Piedmont, remained there till Napoleon founded the general government of the Transalpine departments in favour of his brother-in-law, the Prince Borghese, of whom he would have, found it difficult to make anything else than a Roman Prince.  Napoleon was still at Turin when the Pope passed through that city on his return to Rome.  Napoleon had a final interview with His Holiness to whom he now affected to show the greatest personal deference.  From Turin Bonaparte proceeded to Alessandria, where he commenced those immense works on which such vast sums were expended.  He had many times spoken to me of his projects respecting Alessandria, as I have already observed, all his great measures as Emperor were merely the execution of projects conceived at a time when his future elevation could have been only a dream of the imagination.  He one day said to Berthier, in my presence, during our sojurn at Milan after the battle of Marengo, “With Alessandria in my possession I should always be master of Italy.  It might be made the strongest fortress in the world; it is capable of containing a garrison of 40,000 men, with provisions for six months.  Should insurrection take place, should Austria send a formidable force here, the French troops might retire to Alessandria, and stand a six months’ siege.  Six months would be more than sufficient, wherever I might be, to enable me to fall upon Italy, rout the Austrians, and raise the siege of Alessandria!”

As he was so near the field of Marengo the Emperor did not fail to visit it, and to add to this solemnity he reviewed on the field all the corps of French troops which were in Italy.  Rapp told me afterwards that the Emperor had taken with him from Paris the dress and the hat which he wore on the day of that memorable battle, with the intention of wearing them on the field where it was fought.  He afterwards proceeded by the way of Casal to Milan.

There the most brilliant reception he had yet experienced awaited him.  His sojourn at Milan was not distinguished by outward demonstrations of enthusiasm alone.  M. Durszzo, the last Doge of Genoa, added another gem to the Crown of Italy by supplicating the Emperor in the name of the Republic, of which he was the representative, to permit Genoa to exchange her independence for the honour of becoming a department of France.  This offer, as may be guessed, was merely a plan contrived beforehand.  It was accepted with an air of protecting kindness, and at the same moment that the country of Andrea Doria was effaced from the list of nations its last Doge was included among the number of French Senators.  Genoa, which formerly prided herself in her surname, the Superb, became the chief station of the twenty-seventh military division.  The Emperor went to take possession of the city in person, and slept in the Doria Palace, in the bed where Charles V. had lain.  He left M. le Brun at Genoa as Governor-General.