Italy under Napoleon
The Italian political and territorial picture, which at the end of the 18th century seemed to have stabilised, rapidly disintegrated in the face of Napoleon Bonaparte's first military campaign across the peninsula so as to successfully attack the Austrian Empire on its southern flank. After the Peace of Paris (16 May 1796) reached with the neighbouring kingdom of Savoy, that of Campoformio (17 October 1797) marked the end of the now enfeebled Republic of Venice. The latter was exchanged with Austria for the Duchy of Milan, which went to form the Repubblica Transpadana (November 1796).

With Napoleon's entry into Italy there came also the new ideas of liberty diffused from the French Revolution and these had an immediate effect. But the dream of liberty seemed of brief duration. The absence of Napoleon, on the Egyptian Campaign (1798-99), favoured a coalition of the great European States allied with the Russian czar and the English monarchy. As quickly as it had arrived the French army was forced to withdraw from the peninsula leaving the way open to the restoration that was to be particularly violent at Naples (June 1799).

The Second Italian Campaign began with the resounding victory of Marengo (14 June 1800) and ended with the Peace of Luneville (9 February 1801) whereby France regained control over Italy. The republican ideals having been replaced by Napoleon's dynastic aspirations, the Repubblica Italiana, direct heir of the Cisalpina with the addition of the Venetian domain, was established on 28 December 1805 and then transformed into the Kingdom of Italy on 31 March 1805. The pope's authority over part of his territories was re-established; the Grand Duchy of Tuscany was transformed into the Kingdom of Etruria; the territories of Piombino, Lucca, Massa and Carrara were assigned as a duchy to Napoleon's sister Eloise; the Kingdom of Naples was given (30 March 1806) his brother Joseph; and only Sardinia and Sicily remained for the Savoys and Bourbons.

Successive events further reinforced Napoleon's control of Italy but after a brief interlude, the failure of Napoleon's Russian Campaign and his defeats at Leipzig (1813) and Waterloo (1815), as well as Murat's tragic end (October 1815), brought back to Italy the restoration of the old political and territorial order under the terms of the Congress of Vienna (June 1815).