Editing French Directory (section)

==== Sister Republics ====
{{main|Sister republic}}
The grand plan of the Directory in 1798, with the assistance of its armies, was the creation of "Sister Republics" in Europe which would share the same revolutionary values and same goals, and would be natural allies of France. In the [[Dutch Republic]] (Republic of the Seven United Netherlands), the French army installed the [[Batavian Republic]] with the same system of a Directory and two elected Councils. In [[Milan]], the [[Cisalpine Republic]] was created, which was governed jointly by a Directory and Councils and by the French army. General [[Louis-Alexandre Berthier]], who had replaced Bonaparte as the commander of the [[Army of Italy (France)|Army of Italy]], imitated the actions of the Directory in Paris, purging the new republic's legislature of members whom he considered too radical. The [[Ligurian Republic]] was formed in [[Genoa]]. [[Piedmont (Italy)|Piedmont]] was also turned by the French army into a sister republic, the [[Piedmontese Republic]]. In [[Turin]], King [[Charles Emmanuel IV of Sardinia|Charles-Emmanuel IV]], (whose wife, [[Marie Clotilde of France|Clotilde]], was [[Louis XVI]]'s youngest sister), fled French dominance and sailed, protected by the British fleet, to [[Sardinia]]. In [[Savoy]], General [[Barthélemy Catherine Joubert]] did not bother to form a sister republic, he simply made the province a department of France.{{sfn|Tulard|Fayard|Fierro|1998|pp=251–253}}

The Directory also directly attacked the authority of [[Pope Pius VI]], who governed [[Rome]] and the [[Papal States]] surrounding it. Shortly after Christmas on 28 December 1797, anti-French riots took place in Rome, and a French Army brigadier general, [[Mathurin-Léonard Duphot]], was assassinated. Pope Pius VI moved quickly and formally apologized to the Directory on 29 December 1797, but the Directory refused his apology. Instead, Berthier's troops entered Rome and occupied the city on 10 February 1798. Thus the [[Roman Republic (18th century)|Roman Republic]] was also proclaimed on 10 February 1798. Pius VI was arrested and confined in the [[Grand Duchy of Tuscany]] before being taken to France in 1799. The Vatican treasury of thirty million francs was sent to Paris, where it helped finance Bonaparte's expedition to Egypt, and five hundred cases of paintings, statues, and other art objects were sent to France and added to the collections of the [[Louvre]].{{sfn|Tulard|Fayard|Fierro|1998|p=252}}

A French army under General [[Guillaume Brune]] occupied much of Switzerland. The [[Helvetic Republic]] was proclaimed on 12 April 1798. On 26 August 1798, [[Geneva]] was detached from the new republic and made part of France. The treasury of [[Bern]] was seized, and, like the treasury of the Vatican, was used to finance Bonaparte's [[French campaign in Egypt and Syria|expedition to Egypt]].

The new military campaigns required thousands of additional soldiers. The Directory approved the first permanent law of [[conscription]], which was unpopular in the countryside, and particularly in Belgium, which had formally become part of France. Riots and peasant uprisings took place in the Belgian countryside. Blaming the unrest on Belgian priests, French authorities ordered the arrest and deportation of several thousands of them.<ref>Thys, Augustin, ''La persécution religieuse en Belgique sous le Directoire exécutif, 1798–99'', d'après des documents inédits, Anvers, 1898, [https://archive.org/stream/laperscutionre00thys#page/n6/mode/1up] (in French)</ref>