Editing French Directory (section)

==== Italian campaign ====
[[File:La Bataille du Pont d'Arcole.jpg|thumb|Bonaparte won his first major victory leading his soldiers across a bridge at the [[Battle of Arcole]] (17 November 1796)]]
[[File:Napoleon at the Battle of Rivoli.jpg|thumb|Bonaparte defeats the Austrians at the [[Battle of Rivoli]] (14 January 1797)]]
[[File:Irish-Invasion-Gillray.jpeg|thumb|A British cartoon showed the failure of the French military expedition to Ireland dispersed by storms at sea in 1797]]
The story was very different in Italy. Bonaparte, though he was only twenty-eight years old, was named commander of the Army of Italy on 2 March 1796, through the influence of Barras, his patron in the Directory. Bonaparte faced the combined armies of Austria and Sardinia, which numbered seventy thousand men. Bonaparte slipped his army between them and defeated them in a series of battles, culminating at the [[Battle of Mondovi]] where he defeated the Sardinians on 22 April 1796, and the [[Battle of Lodi]], where he defeated the Austrians on 10 May. King [[Victor Amadeus III of Sardinia]] was forced to make peace in May 1796 and ceded [[Nice]] and [[Savoy]] to France.

At the end of 1796, Austria sent two new armies to Italy to expel Bonaparte, but Bonaparte outmaneuvered them both, winning a first victory at the [[Battle of Arcole]] on 17 November 1796, then at the [[Battle of Rivoli]] on 14 January 1797. He forced Austria to sign the [[Treaty of Campo Formio]] (October 1797), whereby Emperor [[Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor|Francis II]] ceded [[Lombardy]] and the [[Austrian Netherlands]] to the French Republic in exchange for [[Venice]] and urged the [[Diet of the Holy Roman Empire|Imperial Diet]] to surrender the lands beyond the Rhine.<ref name=Black173>Black, p. 173.</ref>