Abstract
Revolution as Humanitarian Intervention: Suvorov in Italy, 1799
In 1799, under Tsar Paul I, the Russian Empire played a leading role in the War of the Second Coalition against revolutionary France. Leading a large army of mixed Russian, Austrian, and émigré French troops into French-controlled Italy, the Russian general Suvorov comprehensively defeated the republican forces, driving them out of the northern parts of the peninsula by the summer of that year. The paper examines the ideology and rhetoric deployed by Paul and Suvorov to justify the invasion as a form of humanitarian intervention, but one that differed in crucial ways from better-known nineteenth-century examples of liberal interventionism. The war, they argued, was an intervention on behalf of Italians designed not for conquest or territorial aggrandizement but to protect social order, religion, and property against revolutionary French anarchy. These ideological motivations shaped the Russian approach to the campaign and helped frame the disagreements that emerged between the Austrian and Russian monarchies in the course of the war. In these discussions, Paul and Suvorov cast the Austrians as self-interested and bent on expanding their own influence in the Italian lands at the expense of local monarchies like Piedmont-Sardinia. The Russian depiction of the campaign as a disinterested attempt to save Europe from anarchy and tyranny and to protect thrones, altars, and aristocratic power found wide resonance among counterrevolutionary writers and other figures across the continent. In Italy itself, Suvorov was seen by some locals as a liberator; Italians staged triumphal ceremonies praising the Russian general. After Russian forces were defeated in Switzerland in the autumn, Paul pulled out of the coalition and aligned with Napoleon, arguing that Austrian selfishness had betrayed the cause of European unity. Ultimately, the paper argues, a military-historical or diplomatic approach to the campaign is insufficient if it does not take into account the campaign’s framing as a different and nobler form of war.
– Gregory D. Afinogenov, Georgetown University
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