He succeeded to a troublous heritage.

Threatened by democratic republics at Milan and Genoa, and still more by the effervescence of his own subjects, he strove to gain an offensive and defensive alliance with France, as the sole safeguard against revolution.

To this end he offered 10,000 Piedmontese for service with Bonaparte, and even secretly covenanted to cede the island of Sardinia to France.

But these offers could not divert Barras and his colleagues from their revolutionary policy.

They spurned the alliance with the House of Savoy, and, despite the remonstrances of Bonaparte, they fomented civil discords in Piedmont such as endangered his communications with France.