Papal States

The Papal States were among the Italian territories drawn into the expansion of revolutionary France during the wars of the late 1790s. In the book’s account, their conquest and the establishment of the Roman Republic in March 1798 mark a stage in a campaign that brought nearly the entire Italian peninsula under French control, directly or through satellite republics.

Conquest and the Roman Republic

The French advance into Italy followed Napoleon’s invasion in April 1796. By early 1797, his forces had conquered almost all of northern Italy, while Venice remained in Austrian hands. The October 1797 Treaty of Campo Formio ended the War of the First Coalition and recognized several French-controlled republics in northern Italy, but it did not halt the advance. French forces subsequently invaded the Papal States, where they established the Roman Republic in March 1798.

French Rule Across Italy

The Roman Republic was part of a broader network of French control rather than an isolated episode. In January 1799, France conquered Naples and created the Parthenopean Republic. With Venice still Austrian, France controlled the rest of the peninsula either directly, as in Savoy, or through satellite states, including the Cisalpine, Ligurian, Roman, and Parthenopean republics. The arrangement tied the Papal States’ fate to the changing military balance of the wider conflict.

Reform and Significance

The French revolutionary armies brought radical institutional changes into conquered lands. They abolished remaining feudal relations and privileges, imposed equality before the law, stripped the clergy of special status and power, and weakened or eliminated urban guilds. The account presents these reforms as part of a general program applied across territories under French control; it does not separately detail their implementation within the Papal States. Their inclusion in the campaign nonetheless places the territory within the book’s larger picture of military expansion reshaping political and economic institutions.