The revolt was crushed, and the chief offenders were hanged; but elsewhere the force of democracy made itself felt, especially among the more virile peoples of Northern Italy.

Lombardy and Piedmont throbbed with suppressed excitement.

Even when the King of Sardinia, Victor Amadeus III., was waging war against the French Republic, the men of Turin were with difficulty kept from revolt; and, as we have seen, the Austro-Sardinian alliance was powerless to recover Savoy and Nice from the soldiers of liberty or to guard the Italian Riviera from invasion.
In fact, Bonaparte--for he henceforth spelt his name thus--detected the political weakness of the Hapsburgs' position in Italy.

Masters of eleven distinct peoples north of the Alps, how could they hope permanently to dominate a wholly alien people south of that great mountain barrier?
The many failures of the old Ghibelline or Imperial party in face of any popular impulse which moved the Italian nature to its depths revealed the artificiality of their rule.

Might not such an impulse be imparted by the French Revolution?
And would not the hopes of national freedom and of emancipation from feudal imposts fire these peoples with zeal for the French cause?
Evidently there were vast possibilities in a democratic propaganda.