Relations of the Russian Troops With the Italians During the Campaign of 1799

The problem of interaction between the Russian army under the command of A. V. Suvorov with the population of Italy in 1799, despite the vastness of the historiography of those events, is still poorly developed. Russian and foreign scholars stated certain facts about the relationship between military personnel and civilians, focusing either on the cooperation of the population with the Russian army, or, on the contrary, on cases of looting. However, in the vast majority of works these facts have no reference to specific historical material. This is partly due to the nature of the surviving sources, the vast majority of which cover the course of military operations or political events, be it official documents from the command of the allied forces or the memoirs of direct participants. In addition, the gap between Russian and foreign historiography, less noticeable in the 19th century, in the 20th–21st centuries is overcoming with great difficulty: researchers actually do not go beyond the framework of national historiographic traditions. Of the surviving data on the behavior of the population, a significant part consists of descriptions of the situations that developed in large fortified cities, which became the site of stubborn resistance of the French garrisons. The means of driving the French out of the region included food blockades of cities by the Allies, which made life difficult for the townspeople and, apparently, embittered them. The facts of looting by military personnel, as well as the command’s measures to suppress them, are confirmed by both unofficial and official Russian documents. The manifestation of hospitality on the part of urbanites in a number of cases was a way not only of demonstrating the loyalty of the population, but also of getting to know strangers

Ancient history · Geography · Political science · European and Russian Geopolitical Military Strategies · History