All truly Italian hearts believed that the French victories heralded the dawn of political freedom not only for Lombardy, but for the whole peninsula.
Bonaparte's first actions increased these hopes.

He abolished the Austrian machinery of government, excepting the Council of State, and approved the formation of provisional municipal councils and of a National Guard.

At the same time, he wrote guardedly to the Directors at Paris, asking whether they proposed to organize Lombardy as a republic, as it was much more ripe for this form of government than Piedmont.

Further than this he could not go; but at a later date he did much to redeem his first promises to the people of Northern Italy.
The fair prospect was soon overclouded by the financial measures urged on the young commander from Paris, measures which were disastrous to the Lombards and degrading to the liberators themselves.

The Directors had recently bidden him to press hard on the Milanese, and levy large contributions in money, provisions, and objects of art, seeing that they did not intend to keep this country.[48] Bonaparte accordingly issued a proclamation (May 19th), imposing on Lombardy the sum of twenty million francs, remarking that it was a very light sum for so fertile a country.