Napoleonic Italy

Southern Italy Series

-----Napoleonic Italy-----

In March 1799 the War of the Second Coalition commenced when the Russian Black Seas fleet seized the Ionian Islands from France. Then on the 19th of April the Russian General Alexander Suvorov began a whirlwind offensive against the French in Lombardy. Suvorov took Milan ten days later, so the French rushed troops north from Naples leaving it to the republican Neapolitans to defend.

All the while unrest was brewing in a countryside that refused to accept the republic. Already in January King Ferdinand IV appointed Cardinal Fabrizio Ruffo as leader of his army to recover Naples. With only 8 men he landed in Calabria on February 7th. Within a month he gathered together 17,000 Calabrian peasants into the Army of Holy Faith in our Lord Jesus Christ (Armate della Santa Fede) and led them against the Parthenopean Republic. The Sanfedisti marched north into Apuglia and by June had begun a siege of Naples. Supported from the sea by the British navy commanded by Horatio Nelson, the siege ended on June 19th 1799 with the fall of Naples. On July 8th King Ferdinand returned from Palermo, Sicily. Not long after Suvorov won the decisive Battle of Novi, expelling the French from Italy.

On the 24th Napoleon secretly left Egypt, returning to France in October and leading a coup against the Directory on the 9th of November. By then Suvorov’s army had been defeated at Zurich in September. With Lombardy now held just by Austrians, Napoleon attacked over the snow-covered Alps in May and on June 14th 1800 won the Battle of Marengo. Italy was once again in French hands. The north was subsequently reorganized into the Republic of Italy.


On May 18th 1804 Napoleon became Emperor of the French and formally crowned himself such on December 2nd. After his victory at the Battle of Austerlitz, exactly one year after his coronation, Napoleon moved to consolidate his Empire in Italy. A French army marched south to Naples. On January 23rd 1806 Ferdinand IV fled to Palermo, just as he had done years earlier. But unlike in 1799 there would be no Russian or Austrian army to distract Napoleon in northern Italy while he could recover his throne in Naples.

On the 14th of February the French entered Naples yet again. Napoleon decided that Ferdinand had forfeited his crown and on the 30th of March proclaimed his brother, Joseph Bonaparte, King of Naples and Sicily. In the meantime Ferdinand could count on the support of the British navy, docked to the south at their newly acquired base of Malta, to patrol the Strait of Messina and prevent a French invasion of Sicily.

On the 6th of June 1808 Joseph Bonaparte rule ended. He left to rule the newly acquired Kingdom of Spain. So, on the 1st of August 1808 General Joachim Murat was crowned king of Naples. Though a king, he continued to serve with Napoleon’s army, even the disastrous retreat in the Russian winter. The Battle of the Nations in October 1813 finally delt Napoleon a battlefield defeat.

Murat signed a separate peace with Austria in January of 1814 and saved his throne. On the 11th of April Napoleon abdicated as Allied armies closed in on Paris. He was sent into exile on the isle of Elba.

Then, on the 26th of February 1815 Napoleon escaped Elba. He quickly raised an army and went after the Bourbon monarchs who had fled in to Belgium, near the town of Waterloo. Murat, astounded at the news that Napoleon had returned declared war on Austria [link] . Murat hoped to gain the support of the Italians who were fearful of Austrian domination. But the Italians had tired of war and refused to support a Frenchman in retaining an Italian crown.

Murat advanced north anyway. He reached the Po but failed to cross it and defeat the Austrian army or take Milan. Murat’s fighting retreat down the peninsula had a bad break at the Battle of Tolentino in May 1815. By the end of the month Murat had fled Naples for Corsica and France. The Neapolitans surrendered to the Austrians and Ferdinand IV returned from Sicily to rule.

Napoleon also had a reversal of luck at the Battle of Waterloo on the 18th of June.

Murat returned to the Kingdom of Naples by landing in Calabria with 28 men on the 8th of October. He was captured and later executed by a firing squad on the 13th of October 1815 at age 48.

Peace restored King Ferdinand now took the opportunity to combine his two realms into one, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.

Southern Italy Series

500 BC [link] Origins
264 BC [link] The Punic Wars
115 AD [link] The Roman Empire
405 [link] East and West
526 [link] Collapse of the West
565 [link] Reconquest
572 [link] Lombard Invasion
751 [link] Lombard Italy
814 [link] Charlemagne’s Empire
1000 [link] Italy and the Holy Roman Empire
1095 [link] The Norman Conquest
1154 [link] The Kingdom of Sicily
1250 [link] Hohenstaufen Italy
1280 [link] Anjou Sicily
1300 [link] War of the Vespers
1400 [link] Black Death
1492 [link] Renaissance Italy
1559 [link] Italian Wars
1715 [link] Habsburg Italy
1780 [link] Bourbon Italy
1799 [link] Revolutionary Italy
1812 Napoleonic Italy
1860 [link] United Italy

2/19/12 EDIT:
map base source [link]
map base created by Citypeek [link]