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The story of Risorgimento often recalls images of a distant, dusty past, or the grand, rhetorical myths repeated at countless public commemorations. Seen up close, however, Risorgimento was quite a different tale, part of what we broadly describe as the “age of revolutions”: a saga of passionate, often reckless lives, suspended between a world that was collapsing and one that was being born. Our world. The follow itineraries explore this transformation through the lens of the city of Mantua, recounting the role it played and giving voice to the people and places involved.
The Winds of Revolution
Suddenly, war
The French Revolution changed the face of Europe. Across the Italian states, the Netherlands and the rest of the continent, there were many who longed for a radical overhaul of the Ancien Régime and planned to “do as they had done in France.” Europe’s rulers, meanwhile, feared that the revolutionary contagion would spread to their realms and considered military intervention. For their part, the French felt duty-bound to “export” the revolution. A European war was inevitable.
In April 1792, France went to war with the major European powers and would remain at war for almost 20 years. At first, the revolutionary forces were improvised and often struggled, but circumstances soon changed: improved organisation and a new generation of generals enabled the French army to secure victories on several fronts. Commanding the French army in Italy was a young general, Napoleon Bonaparte.
Annexed to the Habsburg Monarchy in 1707, Mantua was immediately recognised as a strategic stronghold for defending the Empire’s Italian territories. Over the following decades, significant work was undertaken to reorganise its southern defences. The Citadel was reinforced, and the city reshaped for military purposes, with new barracks, hospitals and warehouses. On the eve of the Revolution, Mantua appeared impregnable.
«Its proximity to the borders of Germany […] the difficulty of blocking it […] and the ease with which it can be relieved […] together make it unlike any other city.»
Nicolò Baschiera, 1752 (engineer responsible for building the fortress)
The Revolution Reaches Mantua
The Siege
Following their defeat at Lodi, the Austrians effectively abandoned the Lombardy plain, leaving only Mantua under their control. General Wurmser’s 12,000 army prepared to withstand Bonaparte’s assault. The siege began on 3 June 1796 and lasted eight months, characterised by Austrian attempts to relieve the city, temporary French withdrawals, and pitched battles.
The siege was marked by rationing and severe hardship. A contemporary chronicle records: “3 October: the killing of dogs ordered; 7 October: a quantity of printed money coupons introduced; 10 November: extreme cold, with some soldiers found dead on the palisades; 21 December: horses slaughtered for the first time; 30 December: death spreads and begins to wreak havoc among the citizens.”
In January 1797, the Austrians made one final attempt to relieve Mantua. General Provera crossed the River Adige with 9,000 men, intending to join forces with the troops inside the city. Bonaparte hurried to Mantua to prevent the Austrian breakout. On 16 January, at Villa La Favorita, the battle that sealed the city’s fate took place. Provera’s forces were wiped out, and Wurmser’s troops were driven back behind the walls.
«A foul atmosphere, corpses everywhere poorly buried, air that never moved or cleared, and a shortage of wine and vegetables.»
Anonymous, Description of what happened in Mantua during its second siege, beginning on September 12, 1796, until the day of surrender
After their defeat at La Favorita, the Austrians held out for a further two weeks in a city where, as period accounts remind us, conditions had become desperate: «A foul atmosphere, corpses everywhere poorly buried, air that never moved or cleared, and a shortage of wine and vegetables.» With no hope of external assistance, General Wurmser surrendered on 2 February 1797. He was granted the honours of war and permitted to withdraw to Austria with the 700 surviving men.
Republican Mantua
In February 1797, Mantua became a republic. The symbols of the Ancien Régime were removed, and the nobility was formally abolished. The city was governed by a democratic municipality led by “patriots”, men drawn from the “regenerated” aristocracy and the middle and professional classes, who looked to revolutionary France as their model. The future was greeted with great optimism, and the city’s illustrious past was revived.
The republican authorities promoted new revolutionary values and imagery throughout Mantua, through architectural projects, civic festivities and public ceremonies. Under French military supervision, public spaces were filled with republican symbols, friezes, tricolour flags, liberty trees, while celebrating a local hero: the Latin poet Virgil.
The Cisalpine Republic was established by Bonaparte in June 1797 and encompassed most of central and northern Italy. Mantua joined later, in October 1797, following the Peace of Campoformio. Although the Cisalpine Republic possessed a constitution, representative institutions and republican ideals, it remained heavily dependent on France, and Napoleon’s political and military decisions.
Bonaparte in the Media
For Bonaparte, the Italian campaign was a remarkable opportunity to present himself to the public as a general and political leader. He devoted considerable energy to founding newspapers that would recount his exploits and promote his perspective. Foremost among these was the Courrier de l’armée d’Italie: distributed free to soldiers and sold in Milan and Paris, it boasted attractive design and a modern journalistic tone.
Bonaparte quickly grasped the importance of depicting his deeds through images. He sought out established artists such as Andrea Appiani and Antonio Canova, and even acted as a talent scout, discovering the young Antoine-Jean Gros, who went on to become one of the era’s major painters. With these associations, portraits of the young republican general were produced almost in real time.
Between Revolution and Counter-Revolution
A French Fortress
At the end of October 1797, before departing the peninsula, Bonaparte visited Mantua, where he was hailed as the «father and guardian of a people who had received their freedom from him.» But the general’s chief concern was to ensure that Mantua once again became an impregnable military stronghold. The city remained under French military occupation and was required to «provide the necessary accommodation for the army»: house, feed and pay the soldiers. Over the next two years, these considerable costs did little to endear the transalpine army to the local population.
In 1799, a new coalition of European powers, including Russia, launched a major counter-offensive, concentrated largely on the Italian peninsula. While Bonaparte was occupied in Egypt, Austro-Russian forces swiftly reconquered Lombardy and Piedmont. Mantua held out and once again became the scene of a siege, this time with the roles reversed.
The Return of the Austrians
This second siege was shorter than that of 1797 and lasted four months, from April to July 1799. The city, encircled by nearly 40,000 Austrian and Russian troops, was subjected to heavy bombardment that shattered the defensive walls and caused significant French casualties. With the garrison decimated and no prospect of relief, its commander, General François Philippe de Latour-Foissac, finally surrendered. As in 1797, the defeated troops were granted military honours and permitted to return home.
The Austrian return was welcomed by the clergy, aristocracy and those sections of the population who had borne the heavy financial burdens of the French occupation. The Austrians abolished the institutions created during the preceding three years, dismissed civil servants who had sworn loyalty to the republic, and arrested dozens of democrats, who were forced into exile in France or into deportation and imprisonment in distant lands of the Habsburg monarchy.
The General Who Became King
From Bonaparte to Napoleon
Between 9 and 10 November 1799 (18–19 Brumaire in the revolutionary calendar), Bonaparte made his dramatic entrance onto the political stage. The French government was faltering, beset by political instability and military setbacks. Emmanuel Sieyès, one of its leading figures, planned a coup d’état with the support of the immensely popular general. Bonaparte, however, went further. He dissolved Parliament and, within weeks, assumed the title of First Consul. The Napoleonic era had begun.
The undisputed leader of France, Bonaparte once again assumed military command to confront Austria on the Italian front. With an audacious strategy, he crossed the Alps at the head of 50,000 men, outflanking the Austrian forces. After entering Milan in triumph, he defeated the Habsburg army at the Battle of Marengo (14 June 1800). The Treaty of Lunéville (1801) restored French dominance in northern Italy, including Mantua.
Between 1802 and 1804, the French Republic gave way to the Empire. On 2 December 1804, Napoleon crowned himself Emperor in a ceremony reminiscent of earlier coronations. Only this time it wasn’t the Pope placing the crown on the emperor’s and his wife’s heads. It was Napoleon. The message was unmistakable: his sacred power came from God and, at the same time, himself.
The scene was repeated in Milan a few months later. On 26 May 1805, inside the Cathedral, Napoleon crowned himself King of Italy. In the presence of the leading religious, political and military authorities, he placed upon his head the ancient Iron Crown, symbol of Italian sovereigns since the Lombard age. As the ceremony concluded, the hall rang with the acclamation: “Long live the Emperor and King!”
The Emperor King in Mantua
From his first entrance into Mantua in 1797, Bonaparte developed a fascination with the Zodiac Room of the Ducal Palace, whose vault Lorenzo Costa the Younger had painted around 1580 with the horoscope of Duke Guglielmo Gonzaga. Napoleon stayed there several times; after his coronation, when the palace was elevated to a royal residence, he had an imperial four-poster bed brought from Milan in July 1811, though he never slept in it.
During the same purge of Napoleonic artefacts in the Ducal Palace, officials discovered a print reproducing one of the many copies of Jacques-Louis David’s celebrated painting of Bonaparte crossing the Alps. The engraving was by Giuseppe Longhi, who since 1796 had specialised in rendering large commemorative canvases into formats affordable to a wider public.
In April 1811, a marble bust of the emperor was installed in the architect’s apartment of the Ducal Palace. The sculpture was one of numerous anonymous replicas of Antonio Canova’s celebrated portrait. Many copies were produced in a Carrara workshop at the initiative of Elisa Bonaparte Baciocchi, the emperor’s sister and, from 1805, ruler of the Principality of Lucca and Piombino, and from 1809 the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, annexed to the French Empire.
Alongside the marble Napoleons, engraved Napoleons multiplied. Basilio Lasinio, who had already illustrated the beginning of Bonaparte’s Mantuan venture, used the new technique of color copperplate engraving to portray the emperor, who seems almost to fly on his horse, celebrating the victory of 2 December 1805 at Austerlitz (Moravia) against the Austro-Russian forces—a triumph that consolidated French domination over Europe.
For roughly a decade, Napoleon ruled the Kingdom of Italy. The peninsula, especially the northern region, was a battleground and strategic base for his later campaigns. His Grande Armée extended French hegemony across much of Europe until the disastrous Russian campaign triggered the beginning of his downfall. The defeat opened the way for the anti-French coalition to march on Paris. In April 1814 Napoleon abdicated for the first time, and the satellite kingdoms under French control, including the Kingdom of Italy, collapsed. Mantua returned to Austrian rule.
