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Bonaparte in Italy

In 1796, post-Revolutionary France was emerging from years of terror, war and turmoil. The government - the Directory - was weak and unpopular. France had been at war with a coalition of states for years. She was exhausted, nearly bankrupt and the Revolution was threatened by both internal and external forces. Her armies sat on the Rhine, unable to move from lack of funds to pay the troops or feed their horses. Having risen through this period of dangerous instability by showing loyalty and an inflexible will, Napoleon Bonaparte was now handed the command of the Army of Italy, a ragged, ill-equipped and unruly collection of soldiers with failing faith in their generals. As far as the Directory was concerned, Italy was a rich land, full of treasure and ripe for pillage and not, as might have been expected, a land ready to be freed from the chains of Popish, Bourbon and Hapsburg reaction. They wanted loot and lots of it, and Bonaparte was the man to get it for them. And so began a campaign that marked Bonaparte as perhaps a man of destiny, perhaps another of those wild, reckless opportunists that history sometimes throws into high position and power. Military genius allied with diplomatic skill swept aside the armies of Austria and Piedmont. Within months Bonaparte had filled French coffers, destroyed five Austrian armies, brought the Pope to submission and created new republics, the first steps on the road to eventual unification of Italy as an independent state. Sorel shows us a man coming to realise the scope of opportunity opening before him, and learning through practical experience how to govern and command. But also, as Bonaparte moves to secure his destiny, he shows us that his chosen path is fraught with so much danger only a man of such stature, with such startling breadth of vision and deep contempt for old corruption, could contemplate setting out along it without faltering. Sorel presents the standard historical account of Napoleon's rise to power through his diplomatic and military successes in Italy

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