bibliographies are printed in Munro, _op. cit._,
380-389, and in Block, Dictionnaire, I., 850-852.]

PART IV. ITALY (p. 353)

CHAPTER XIX

CONSTITUTIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

I. THE ERA OF NAPOLEON

*386. Italy in the Later Eighteenth Century.*--The dominant forces in
the politics of Europe since the French Revolution have been the twin
principles of nationality and democracy; and nowhere have the fruits
of these principles been more strikingly in evidence than in the long
disrupted and misgoverned peninsula of Italy. The awakening of the
Italian people to a new consciousness of unity, strength, and
aspiration may be said to date from the Napoleonic invasion of 1796,
and the first phase of the _Risorgimento_, or "resurrection," may,
therefore, be regarded as coincident with the era of French
domination, i.e., 1796-1814. At the opening of this period two
non-Italian dynasties shared the dominion of much the larger portion
of Italy. To the Austrian Hapsburgs belonged the rich duchies of Milan
(including Mantua) and Tuscany, together with a preponderating
influence in Modena. To the Spanish Bourbons belonged the duchy of
Parma and the important kingdom of Naples, including Sicily. Of
independent states there were six--the kingdom of Sardinia (comprising
Piedmont, the island of Sardinia, and, nominally, Savoy and Nice),
where alone in all Italy there lingered some measure of native
political vitality; the Papal States; the petty monarchies of Lucca
and San Marino; and the two ancient republics of Venice and Genoa,
long since shorn of their empires, their maritime power, and their
economic and political importance. All but universally absolutism held
sway, and in most of the states, especially those of the south,
absolutism was synonymous with corruption and oppression.

*387. The Cisalpine Republic, 1797.*--During the two decades which
comprehended the public career of Napoleon it was the part of the
French to overturn completely the long existing political arrangement
of Italy, to abolish altogether the dominion of Austria and to
substitute therefor that of France, to plant in Italy a wholly new and
revolutionizing set of political and legal institutions, and, quite
unintentionally, to fan to a blaze a patriotic zeal which through (p. 354)
generations had smouldered almost unobserved. The beginning of these