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Impressionism

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People decided they wanted to be Italian and not French, so in 1860, the revolutionary and democrat Giuseppe Garibaldi gather up a thousand volunteers and headed to Sicily where he planned to capture the south for a united Italy. In 1861, the kingdom of Italy was declared.

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People decided they wanted to be Italian and not French, so in 1860, the revolutionary and democrat Giuseppe Garibaldi gather up a thousand volunteers and headed to Sicily where he planned to capture the south for a united Italy. In 1861, the kingdom of Italy was declared.

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Italian and German Unification: Crash Course European History #27

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Brazilian Independence | 3 Minute History

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A group of Venezuelan Creoles boldly proclaimed their country an independent republic in 1797. Although their effort failed, it forewarned of the revolutionary movements that were soon to inflame Latin America.

In 1806 Francisco de Miranda-who had earlier fought under George Washington against the British, served as a general in the French Revolution, and fought with the French against Prussia and Russia-tried unsuccessfully to land on the Venezuelan coast with a group of mercenaries whom he had recruited in New York City. Revolutionary leaders recalled him to Gran Colombia four years later to take charge of a ruling junta, which drafted a constitution and established an independent nation. In the ensuing war with royalist forces, however, Miranda signed an armistice with Spain. Other revolutionary leaders viewed this action with contempt, and Miranda was subsequently turned over to the Spaniards, who sent him first to Puerto Rico and later to Spain, where he died in prison in 1816.

Early in 1813 the revolutionary junta appointed Simón Bolívar commander of the Venezuelan forces. Bolívar, a wealthy Creole landowner born in Caracas in 1783, had many reverses in his war against the Spanish. His forces were opposed by large royalist armies including a cavalry unit of llaneros ( cowboys of the Llanos frontier), who were under the command of José Tomás Boves. In 1815 the Spanish general Pablo Morillo landed with an expeditionary force that spearheaded the reconquest of much of New Granada. Morillo administered the region in a heavy-handed fashion, however, and many of the Creole elites who had initially supported him soon conspired for his defeat. Llaneros and blacks also deserted the royalist cause and joined Bolívar, whose army was further augmented by a legion of British and Irish mercenaries; the new republican government of Haiti also sent aid. The Republic of Gran Colombia, with its capital at Bogotá, was proclaimed on December 17, 1819, with Bolívar as president. On June 24, 1821, Bolívar's troops, reinforced by llanero cavalry under General José Antonio Páez, defeated the main royalist army at the Battle of Carabobo. The last of the royalist forces surrendered at Puerto Cabello on October 9, 1823. The following year Bolívar's army marched south to liberate Peru, and in 1825 it freed Upper Peru ( Bolivia) from Spanish rule. Venezuelans suffered greater casualties and endured more privations during the wars than did any other Latin American national group, because of the ferocity of battles on their own soil and the large number of Venezuelan troops who carried the struggle to other regions.

Regional rivalries broke out in Gran Colombia while Bolívar was off leading the final campaigns, and his prestige was not enough to hold the country together after his return. Venezuela broke away in 1829, and Ecuador soon after. Bolívar died in Santa Marta, Colombia, in 1830, penniless and disillusioned.

After the destruction of the colonial system, Venezuela passed through an era of government-by-force that lasted more than a century, until the death of Juan Vicente Gómez in 1935. Backed by their personal armies, a series of warlordlike caudillos (leaders) assumed power, which they exercised for their personal benefit rather than for that of the nation.

Páez and the Conservatives

The first of the military dictators was General José Antonio Páez, who gave the country better government than it would see again for nearly a century. Bolívar had left Páez in charge of the armed forces of Venezuela, and he soon took full control of the country. He led the separation movement from Gran Colombia in 1829 and in 1830 convoked a constitutional convention for Venezuela. Páez dominated Venezuelan politics until 1848, both as president (1831-35 and 1839-43) and as a major political player. He subdued ambitious provincial caudillos and ruled in cooperation with the large landholders and leading merchants of the Conservative Party. The constitution that they enacted in 1830 reflected their social and political philosophy-a centralist state, property qualifications for voting, the death penalty for political crimes, guarantees for the freedom of trade and commerce, and the continuation of slavery. The church lost its tax immunity and its educational monopoly, and the army was shorn of its autonomy; thus, state supremacy was achieved. The government then began to reconstruct the war-torn economy by putting finances in order, establishing firm lines of foreign credit, and amortizing the national debt. It also constructed new roads to promote domestic commerce and facilitate coffee and cacao exports.

In contrast to the troubled times that preceded and followed it, the 1830-48 period of Conservative Party domination was an era of political stability, economic progress, and responsible administration. An opposition movement began to develop in 1840, however, when Antonio Leocadio Guzmán, the leading spokesman for dissident merchants and professional men, founded the Liberal Party. Guzmán's new liberal newspaper, El Venezolano, demanded abolition of slavery, extension of voting rights, and protection for the debtor classes. During the 1840s the demand for Venezuela's agricultural commodities declined on the world market; this produced economic difficulties, which in turn contributed to the increasing opposition to the Conservative oligarchy.

The Monagas and the civil wars

The growing political crisis was brought to a head in 1848 by General José Tadeo Monagas. Although elected president as a Conservative in 1846, he soon gravitated toward the Liberals. He intimidated the Conservative congress and appointed Liberal Party ministers. When Páez rebelled in 1848, Monagas defeated him and forced him into exile.

The decade 1848-58 was one of dictatorial rule by José Tadeo Monagas and his brother, General José Gregorio Monagas, who alternated as president during the period. The Liberal Party passed laws that abolished slavery, extended suffrage, outlawed capital punishment, and limited interest rates, but the laws were not implemented. Integrity in government waned, heavy deficit financing ruined the nation's credit, and the economy began to stagnate and decay. In 1857 the Monagas brothers attempted to impose a new constitution extending the presidential term from four to six years and removing all restrictions on reelection. The Liberal leaders thereupon joined the Conservative opposition, and in March 1858 they brought the Monagas dynasty to an end. This first successful rebellion in Venezuela's national history set off five years of revolutionary turmoil between the Liberals and Conservatives. The issues in these so-called Federalist Wars were, on the Liberal side, federalism, democracy, and social reform and, on the Conservative side, centralism and preservation of the political and social status quo. The conflicts were extremely bloody, and control of the central government changed hands several times. General Páez returned in 1861 to restore Conservative hegemony for two years, but in 1863 final victory went to the Liberals, led by the generals Juan Falcón and Antonio Guzmán Blanco.

A new constitution was enacted in 1864 to incorporate the federalist principles of the victors. Local freedoms quickly disappeared, however, at the hands of provincial caudillos. As president in 1864-68, Falcón appeared content to allow subordinates, many of them irresponsible, to rule at both the state and national levels. Liberal mismanagement and increasing political chaos provided an opportunity for the Conservatives, now led by José Tadeo Monagas, to return to power in 1868. But civil war followed. General Guzmán Blanco rallied the Liberals to his cause, overthrew the Conservatives, and assumed power in 1870.

Guzmán Blanco's triumphal entry into Caracas in April 1870 halted the political chaos and economic stagnation that had plagued the nation since 1858. The new president took to the field himself and subjugated the country in less than two years; he thereupon launched a broad program of reform and development. A new constitution in 1872 proclaimed representative government, suffrage for all males, and direct election of the president. Economic reforms, such as restoration of the nation's credit by means of new bond issues and generous concessions to foreign investors, gave further evidence of Guzmán Blanco's apparent devotion to Liberal Party principles. He established a nationwide system of public primary education and promoted state support for secondary and higher education. In addition, he abolished ecclesiastical privileges, cut off state subsidies to the Roman Catholic church, proclaimed religious liberty, legalized civil marriage, and also confiscated church properties, exiled the archbishop, and closed the convents.

Guzmán Blanco was the popular choice for president in the 1873 election. He departed for Europe in 1877, leaving a puppet successor in charge, but when the opposition rebelled, he returned to crush it and resumed the presidency in 1878. The following year he returned to Europe, leaving General Joaquín Crespo in charge. Guzmán Blanco came back again in 1886 to serve a final two years in the face of growing popular opposition to his policies.

Guzmán Blanco's regime had both positive and negative results for the nation. His admirers point to his political and military genius and to his administrative, economic, educational, and religious reforms. His detractors emphasize his tyrannical ruling methods, financial chicanery, monumental vanity, superficial educational reforms, and unwarranted attacks on the church. For four years after the end of his regime, Venezuela floundered in new political chaos as various civilian political groups tried unsuccessfully to establish responsible representative government. In October 1892 Crespo seized power. His six-year rule was troubled by continued political turmoil, growing economic difficulties, and the nation's first serious diplomatic problem-a dispute with Great Britain over the boundary between eastern Venezuela and western British Guiana. This virtually uninhabited wilderness territory, in which gold was discovered in 1877, had been the object of alternating claims and counterclaims between Venezuela and Great Britain for more than half a century. Great Britain repeatedly refused Venezuela's requests to refer the matter to arbitration, and in 1887 Venezuela suspended diplomatic relations. President Crespo appealed to the United States, and in 1895 U.S. president Grover Cleveland pressured Britain to arbitrate. An international tribunal handed down a decision in 1899 that failed to satisfy Venezuela's demands.

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Venezuela - Independence, Revolution, Bolívar

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Venezuela - Independence, Revolution, Bolívar: A group of Venezuelan Creoles boldly proclaimed their country an independent republic in 1797. Although their effort failed, it forewarned of the revolutionary movements that were soon to inflame Latin America.

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The Italian campaigns of the French Revolutionary Wars (1792-1802) were a series of conflicts fought principally in Northern Italy between the French Revolutionary Army and a Coalition of Austria, Russia, Piedmont-Sardinia, and a number of other Italian states.

First Coalition (1792-1797)

The War of the First Coalition broke out in autumn 1792, when several European powers formed an alliance against Republican France. The first major operation was the annexation of the County of Nice and the Duchy of Savoy (both states of the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia) by 30,000 French troops. This was reversed in mid-1793, when the Republican forces were withdrawn to deal with a revolt in Lyon, triggering a counter-invasion of Savoy by the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia (a member of the First Coalition). After the revolt in Lyon had been suppressed, the French under General Kellermann managed to push back the Piedmontese with just 12,000 troops, winning engagements at Argentines and St Maurice in September and October 1793.

The conflict soon escalated with Austrian and Neapolitan forces being mobilised for an invasion of southern France to recover Nice and strike into Provence. The Allied forces were bolstered by some 45,000 Austrians, Piedmontese, and Neapolitans, with additional support from the British Royal Navy. Before the Allies could launch this assault the French, under tactical command of André Masséna, launched the Saorgio Offensive (April, 1794), which was planned by the army's artillery commander, General Napoleon Bonaparte. This two-pronged French offensive drove back the Allied force, despite their strong positions, and firmly captured the mountain passes that led into Piedmont. A new offensive, again devised by General Bonaparte, was similarly successful[specify ] despite its more complicated nature, calling for the co-ordination of the Army of Italy and the Army of the Alps.

Bonaparte's war

Following a short respite in hostilities Schérer resigned[why? ] and Bonaparte was appointed commander-in-chief on 2 March 1796. The motives for Bonaparte's appointment were most likely political. On 9 March, Bonaparte had married Joséphine de Beauharnais, who had shared her imprisonment (under Robespierre) with the woman who had become wife to Tallien, one of the then Directors of the French Republic. It was "universally believed" that Josephine had been introduced by her friend to the First Director, Barras, and had become his lover. Josephine's letters claim Barras had promised the command to Bonaparte, before she'd consented to marry him. Barras is cited by his colleagues as saying of Bonaparte, "Advance this man or he will advance himself without you." Bonaparte had shown himself to be highly ambitious and had made a name for himself following 13 Vendémiaire in 1795. By placing him in command of the Army of Italy, Bonaparte was being assigned to an obscure front: of the Republic's thirteen principal field armies, the Italian force was the most neglected and was in terrible condition when Bonaparte arrived.

Bonaparte launched attacks almost immediately after he arrived on the front on 27 March. His 37,000 men and 60 guns were facing more than 50,000 Allied troops in the theatre. His only chance of support came from Kellermann's Army of the Alps, which was faced by a further 20,000 Allied troops. Bonaparte had no chance of gaining reinforcements as the Republican war effort was being concentrated on the massive offensives planned on the Rhine.

Bonaparte reorganised his newly enthused army following the short let-up in operations that followed Piedmont's defeat. Following this he manoeuvred his army into more opportune positions along the Po River. A small French victory at Codogno led to a retreat by Coalition forces across the Adda River. At the river, the Austrian army of General Beaulieu was defeated in the Battle of Lodi on 10 May.

The Army of Italy was now reinforced to almost 50,000 men and Bonaparte continued on the offensive, striking at Austrian forces mobilising in the vicinity of the fortress of Mantua. A series of minor Coalition defeats resulted in the garrison at Mantua being reinforced to 12,000. Placing Mantua under siege, Bonaparte then led a French division south to invade and occupy Grand Duchy of Tuscany and the Papal States, defeating Papal forces at Fort Urban. Next he turned north and with 20,000 men defeated some 50,000 Austrians under Field Marshal Wurmser at the battles of Lonato and Castiglione. The Austrian commander was forced back into the Alps.

Additional Austrian forces arrived whilst Bonaparte's army was weakened by disease and his supply lines threatened by rebellion. Government political commissars, especially Cristoforo Saliceti, brutally put down the uprisings, but the French position was weakened. To stabilise the situation Bonaparte created the client states of the Transpadane Republic and the Cispadane Republic.

Following this a new Austrian commander, Joseph Alvinczy, arrived and made another attempt to relieve Mantua. Bonaparte drove back Alvinczy[where? ], but his counter-offensive was seriously hampered by Vaubois' defeat over five days in the villages of Cembra and Calliano. Alvinczy held off a French attack at Caldiero on 12 November and Bonaparte was forced to withdraw. In the following three-day Battle of Arcole, Bonaparte won an important and surprising[to whom? ] victory against Alvinczy.

Both sides were reinforced before Alvinczy launched another attack in January. Bonaparte defeated this renewed assault at the Battle of Rivoli, inflicting some 14,000 casualties. Then he surrounded and captured a second Austrian relief column near Mantua. Soon after, Mantua finally surrendered to the French, making it possible for the French to continue their advance eastwards towards Austria. After a brief campaign during which the Austrian army was commanded by the Emperor's brother, the Archduke Charles, the French advanced to within 100 miles of Vienna, and the Austrians sued for peace. Bonaparte's campaign was important in bringing an end to the War of the First Coalition.[citation needed ]

Campaigns in Central Italy (1797-1799)

Napoleon's invasion of Northern Italy brought disorder in the Papal States. Under the Treaty of Tolentino, Pope Pius VI was forced to cede the Romagna region to the newly founded Cisalpine Republic, and recognize Joseph Bonaparte as ambassador of Rome. Following the dissolution of the First Coalition, a Republican Revolt staged by General Bonaparte and Brig General Mathurin-Leonard Duphot lead to the shooting of Duphot at Joseph's palace by Papal State troops.

An apology was sent by the Pope on December 29, 1797, however it was rejected by the Republic soon after. Napoleon then declared war on the Papal States on for a second time, sending 9,000 troops under General Louis-Alexandre Berthier to occupy Rome and dissolve the state.

Upon his death, Pius VI warned of Napoleon's rise, where he would be sent into exile in Valence, France. Napoleon officially dissolved the Papal States in February 1798 where the Anconine Republic and the Tiberina Republic would be recognized as sister republic. In Rome, Berther would declare a Roman Republic which would overthrow the previous Elective monarchy. However, shortly after, coalition forces would intervene in the Republic. Internal struggles would cause difficulty to the so-called " Roman Council" and would last until the Neapolitan invasion in 1799. Governor Jacques Macdonald defended the city with a small army of 9,000 troops in 19 November, and the Battles of Ferentino, Otricoli, and Civita Castellana, along with an affair at Calvi Risorta and Capua pushed King Ferdinand IV into Castel Sant'Elmo, and declared the Parthenopean Republic at Naples, resulting in some 8,000 Neapolitan casualties and 1,000 French.

Second Coalition (1799-1800)

Some 60,000 French troops under Schérer faced off against an equal number of Austrians. An additional 50,000 Russians were expected to arrive shortly. The French were occupied with the pacification of Naples and this halved their effective strength to face the Austrians. In order to avoid a completely untenable situation arising, Schérer attacked as soon as possible in an attempt to preempt Austrian attacks.

Schérer too was soon replaced by General Moreau, a man of greater fame and prestige. The French defeat at the Battle of Cassano on 26 April was followed by withdrawal from Lombardy and an overall unfavourable situation for the French. General Macdonald's army returned from Naples to support Moreau.

However at that time the Allied high command in Vienna ordered Suvorov to move out of Italy and concentrate on breaking through the Swiss front. The respite thus given the reeling Army of Italy led to a turning point in the war. Melas, who resumed command of Coalition forces in Italy, now almost exclusively Austrian, paused the offensive and consolidated his forces, now that the Russians had been removed from Italy.

By the spring of 1800 Russia had withdrawn entirely from the Coalition. The situation in Italy, however, was still very much on the side of the Coalition. Melas had some 100,000 men under his command, opposed by just 50,000 French troops who were thoroughly dispersed. The Allies prepared for a thrust into southern France and across the Rhine, much further north. Melas moved forward slowly, laying siege to Genoa and halting his advance elsewhere.

Genoa fell before the First Consul could reach it. He concentrated his army and struck at the Austrians in an attempt to beat them before they too concentrated their forces again. The Reserve Army fought a battle at Montebello on 9 June before the main confrontation at Marengo. The consul was almost defeated here until General Desaix made a timely arrival with reinforcements and drove back Melas, thus turning a French rout into a French victory. In this counter-attack Desaix was killed, but Bonaparte later honoured him with monuments commemorating his bravery and his name has the place of honour on the face of the Arc de Triomphe, which was erected to celebrate Napoleon's victories.

Notes and references

Bibliography

Clausewitz, Carl von (2018). Napoleon's 1796 Italian Campaign. Trans and ed. Nicholas Murray and Christopher Pringle. Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas. ISBN 978-0-7006-2676-2

Clausewitz, Carl von (2020). Napoleon Absent, Coalition Ascendant: The 1799 Campaign in Italy and Switzerland, Volume 1. Trans and ed. Nicholas Murray and Christopher Pringle. Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas. ISBN 978-0-7006-3025-7

Clausewitz, Carl von (2021). The Coalition Crumbles, Napoleon Returns: The 1799 Campaign in Italy and Switzerland, Volume 2. Trans and ed. Nicholas Murray and Christopher Pringle. Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas. ISBN 978-0-7006-3034-9

External links

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Italian campaigns of the French Revolutionary Wars - Wikipedia

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The Italian campaigns of the French Revolutionary Wars (1792-1802) were a series of conflicts fought principally in Northern Italy between the French Revolutionary Army and a Coalition of Austria, Russia, Piedmont-Sardinia, and a number of other Italian states. The War of the First Coalition broke out in autumn 1792, when several European powers formed an alliance against Republican France.

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In transforming the Bourbon kingdom into a constitutional state, the French Revolution aroused intense excitement east of the Rhine. Most German intellectuals were at first in sympathy with the new order in France, hoping that the defeat of royal absolutism in western Europe would lead to its decline in central Europe as well. The princes, on the other hand, were from the outset fearful of the Revolution, which they regarded as a serious danger, for the example of unpunished insubordination by the French might encourage demands for reform among the Germans. The result was a growing hostility between the government in Paris and the rulers of the Holy Roman Empire, which led in the spring of 1792 to the outbreak of the War of the First Coalition (1792-97), the first phase of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. The immediate occasion of the conflict was a quarrel over the rights of German princes with holdings in France and over the propagandistic activities of French émigrés in Germany. But the underlying cause was the clash of two incompatible principles of authority divided by profound differences regarding the nature of political and social justice. The course of hostilities soon revealed that the civic ideals and military power of Revolutionary France were more than a match for the decrepit Holy Roman Empire. After 1793 France occupied the German lands on the left bank of the Rhine, and for the next 20 years their inhabitants were governed from Paris. Yet there is no evidence that they were dissatisfied with French rule or at least no evidence that they strongly opposed it. Devoid of a sense of national identity and accustomed to submission to authority, they accepted their new status with the same equanimity with which they had regarded a succession to the throne or a change in the dynasty. The Prussians, moreover, discouraged by defeats in the west and eager for Polish spoils in the east, concluded a separate peace at Basel in 1795 by which they in effect recognized the French acquisition of the Rhineland. The Austrians held out two years longer, but the brilliant successes of the young Napoleon Bonaparte forced them to accept the loss of the left bank in the Treaty of Campo Formio (October 17, 1797).

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Germany - The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic era

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Germany - Germany - The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic era: In transforming the Bourbon kingdom into a constitutional state, the French Revolution aroused intense excitement east of the Rhine. Most German intellectuals were at first in sympathy with the new order in France, hoping that the defeat of royal absolutism in western Europe would lead to its decline in central Europe as well.