Italian Republic (1802–1805)

The Italian Republic of Napoleon was the three-year French sister in Lombardy and Romagna, living from January 1802 to 1805 with Milan its capital and Napoleon its president. The Cisalpine Consulta at Lyon voted the First Consul the presidency and a less revolutionary tricolour; Melzi d'Eril governed as vice-president over twelve departments, a National Guard, gendarmes, a Concordat with Rome and a friendship treaty with San Marino, with prefects in every chef-lieu. Cereal plains, cattle and silk looms paid for the ministries despite the French requisitions of the nineties, and the new codes pleased the Milanese bourgeoisie. Forty-two thousand square kilometres and almost four million people made it the model satellite: codified, conscripted and taxed in the French manner, with Milanese silk merchants funding the new ministries. When empire required a crown, the presidency became the Iron Crown in 1805, Napoleon crowned king at Milan, and the republic dissolved upward into the Kingdom of Italy.