Treaty of Campo Formio

On 17 October 1797, France, led by the young general Napoleon Bonaparte, and Austria signed the Treaty of Campo Formio, at a village in northeastern Italy, ending the War of the First Coalition. Napoleon had won a series of brilliant victories in Italy against Austria, and earlier that year his forces had brought about the fall of the Republic of Venice after more than a thousand years of independence. Under the treaty, the former Venetian territories were divided. Austria received the city of Venice and most of its lands on the Italian mainland and along the Adriatic coast. In return, Austria recognized French control of Belgium and French influence over northern Italy. France received the Ionian Islands, including Corfu, Zakynthos and Kefalonia, which had been Venice's last territories in Greece, along with Venetian possessions on the nearby mainland coast. French troops had already occupied the islands that summer. Napoleon was keenly interested in the islands, seeing them as strategically valuable for controlling the eastern Mediterranean. French rule, however, proved brief.