Treaty of Campo Formio
The Treaty of Campo Formio was signed on 17 October 1797, ending the War of the First Coalition and made almost entirely by a twenty-eight-year-old general acting well beyond his authority. Napoleon Bonaparte had taken command of the Army of Italy in 1796 and destroyed the Austrian and Piedmontese forces in a year of campaigning, and by early 1797 was within a hundred miles of Vienna. The Directory in Paris wanted to trade Italy for the Rhineland; Bonaparte negotiated on his own terms and presented the result as a fait accompli. Austria ceded the Austrian Netherlands — modern Belgium — and recognised the Cisalpine and Ligurian Republics that Bonaparte had created in northern Italy. Secret articles conceded the left bank of the Rhine. The compensation was Venice. The Republic of Saint Mark had existed for eleven hundred years and was neutral. Bonaparte manufactured a pretext, occupied it in May 1797, ended the government, and then handed the city, its mainland territories, Istria and Dalmatia to Austria as the price of the settlement. Venetians have not forgiven it. The Bucintoro was burned for its gold and the horses of Saint Mark were taken to Paris. The treaty left Britain alone at war and made Bonaparte the most powerful figure in France, having demonstrated that a successful general could conduct foreign policy without the government. The peace lasted about eighteen months, until the Second Coalition formed while he was in Egypt. Austria lost the Netherlands it had held for eighty years and gained an Adriatic coast it kept, with one interruption, until 1918. The republics Bonaparte created in Italy are the beginning of the Italian national question.
- Year: 1797 CE
- Category: Diplomatic
