The first period of French rule in the Ionian Islands (, ; ) lasted from June 1797 to March 1799. Following the fall of the Republic of Venice in May 1797, the Ionian Islands, a Venetian possession, were occupied by Revolutionary France. The French instituted a new, democratic regime and, following the Treaty of Campo Formio, annexed the islands to France, forming the three departments of (Corfu), (Ithaca) and (Aegean Sea).
Originally widely welcomed, French rule began to grow oppressive to the islanders, and aroused the enmity of the Ottoman and Russian Empires. In 1798, a joint Russo-Ottoman campaign was launched against the islands, culminating in the four-month siege of Corfu. Its fall in March 1799 signalled the end of French rule, and the islands were reorganized as the Russo-Ottoman protectorate of the Septinsular Republic. The islands were again annexed to France in 1807 after the Treaty of Tilsit, but retained many of the institutions of the Septinsular Republic. The French were evicted from most of the islands by the British in 1809–10; only Corfu resisted until 1814. In 1815, the British established the United States of the Ionian Islands.
Background
At the end of the 18th century, the Ionian Islands (Corfu, Zakynthos, Cephalonia, Lefkada, Ithaca, and Kythira) along with a handful of exclaves on the Epirote mainland, namely the coastal towns of Parga, Preveza, Vonitsa, and Butrint, were the sole remaining overseas possessions of the once mighty Republic of Venice in the East. In 1795, the Islands' population was counted as 152,722.
Under Venetian rule, the society of the Ionian Islands was divided into three classes, analogous to those of Venice itself: the privileged nobility, the urban middle class () and the commoners (). The noble families, who enjoyed full Venetian citizenship, were on top of the pyramid, and provided the members of the ruling council of each island. Originally restricted to Italian settler families, from the 16th century on this group also included Greek families. As in Venice, Corfu, Cephalonia, and Zakynthos each had a , where the aristocratic families were inscribed. Their nature differed from island to island: in Corfu, they were obliged to reside in Corfu city; likewise in Kythira and Zakynthos they mostly dwelled in the capital, whereas in Cephalonia a rural nobility persisted, and no clear distinction was evident in Lefkada. Nevertheless, the power of the nobility rested on the ownership of land, and as a class they derided mercantile activity, which was left to the urban burghers; as a result, the latter also came to amass wealth and land. The burghers in turn challenged the nobility's claim to monopolize local authority and aspired to join the ruling class, while the peasantry was largely politically marginalized.
The Venetian authorities were left in a position of mediator, but still had to acknowledge the power of the noble families, who often were a law on themselves and could even raise military corps of their own; while the nobles were content to pursue their private feuds and plot and conspire against each other for local office, they were also able of concerted action against the Venetian authorities, when they felt their interests threatened. Venetian writ ran lightly in the cities, and was almost non-existent in the countryside; not infrequently, Venetian official who ventured to the country to arrest some outlaw, were forced back in humiliation. The Venetian regime was more concerned with maintaining its rule than providing efficient administration. Thus ten murders were punished with ten years in prison, while speaking ill of the Venetian governor—the —was punished with twenty. Out of a mix of governmental ineffectiveness and deliberate policy, the bulk of the local populace was kept in a state of ignorance: there were no printing presses or schools, and the majority of the population was illiterate. Only the privileged classes, who could send their sons to study abroad, had access to higher education. As the medievalist William Miller remarked, "If the Corfiotes of that day seemed [...] to be ignorant and superstitious, poor and indolent, they were what Venice had made them".
A further distinguishing feature between rulers and ruled was religion, where the official Roman Catholicism of the Venetian authorities was opposed by the popular Greek Orthodox identity, expressed in the veneration of each island's saint or saints. Increasingly during the 18th century, Orthodoxy also provided a link to a rising European power, the Russian Empire. A pro-Russian current emerged, and several Islanders entered Russian service, especially during Catherine the Great's "Greek Project". Disregarding Venetian neutrality, many Isladers, including nobles, participated in attempts to provoke a Greek uprising against Ottoman rule, such as the Orlov Revolt or the raids of Lambros Katsonis and . Others, especially from Cephalonia, settled in the Crimea, recently conquered by the Russian Empire. Nevertheless, support for the Venetian regime was still widespread enough that when the new , Carlo Aurelio Widmann, arrived in 1795, he could rely on the assistance of the local communes, leading nobles, the Jewish community of Corfu, and both Orthodox and Catholic clergy, to raise the necessary funds to pay for the garrisons and administrative personnel. This also shows the parlous state of Venetian defences of the Islands at that time, crippled by lack of money, interest, and supplies from the metropole.
As the French Revolutionary Wars erupted into northern Italy, Venice was shaken to its core: the spread of radical Jacobin ideals among her subjects, the undisguised hostility of the victorious French armies to the ancient aristocratic republic, and the dismal state of Venetian finances and military preparedness led to the gradual erosion of Venetian rule in its mainland possessions (Terraferma), and the eventual Fall of the Republic of Venice to Napoleon Bonaparte in May 1797. In the Ionian Islands, the news of the French advance into Lombardy in 1796 led Widmann to take extraordinary measures to strengthen the defence of the Islands, even investing his own private fortune for the cause. French agents were already active in the islands, most notably the French consul in Zakynthos, the merchant Constantine Guys, who not only fomented anti-Venetian feeling, but was suspected of orchestrating the arson of his own consulate on 29 October, an event that was used by Napoleon as one of the pretexts for his declaration of war against Venice. Rumours of the self-abolition of the Great Council of Venice on 12 May spread quickly to the islands. While pro-French elements (the ) were instructed by Guys on the meaning of concepts like "liberty" and "equality", many nobles mobilized against them, with proposals were made to kill all French sympathizers. Despite such agitation, order was kept, and the definite news of the political change in the metropolis, with the establishment of a new, republican Provisional Municipality of Venice, in early June, was met with calm and restraint.
Start of the French occupation
The fate of Venice and of its possessions was to be decided between France and Austria. No mention of the Ionian Islands was made in the Preliminaries of Leoben. The two sides had different objectives: the Austrians wanted to keep the French out, and welcomed the possibility that the islands would come under the rump Venetian Republic envisaged at Leoben, as a buffer between French and Austrian territories in the Adriatic; whereas for Napoleon the islands were a critical stepping-stone for his ambitions in the Eastern Mediterranean, which would soon lead to his invasion of Egypt. As the French diplomat Jacques Baeyens notes, the whole "Ionian adventure" was a personal project for Napoleon, who consulted nobody, least of all the ruling French Directory, before sending French troops to occupy the islands. The Islands were to be
Consequently, on 26 May, Napoleon ordered his fellow Corsican, the Antoine Gentili, to begin preparations for a military occupation of the Ionian Islands. A mixed Franco-Venetian fleet with 3,159 men sailed on 13 June from Malamocco. The ships flew the Venetian flag of St. Mark, since Gentili was ostensibly merely the representative of the new, pro-French Provisional Municipality of Venice, and the expedition intended to avoid possible secession of the colony from the metropolis. In reality, Napoleon instructed Gentili to encourage the local inhabitants to pursue independence, by reminding them of the glories of Ancient Greece; the scholar Antoine-Vincent Arnault was sent along as observer for Napoleon and a political advisor and propagandist.
In the meantime, commissioners from the Provisional Municipality of Venice arrived in Corfu, informing Widmann of events and bringing orders to maintain order and begin the democratization of the local administration. Widmann tried to ensure consensus by issuing a notarized declaration of public concord, but only 177 citizens, of whom 71 nobles, signed it. The French fleet arrived on 27 June, and the French troops disembarked on the next day, amidst tumultuous reception by the local populace, led by the Orthodox primate (), Georgios Chalikiopoulos Mantzaros, who gifted Gentili with a copy of Homer's Odyssey; the nobility reacted to Gentili's proclamation, on 29 June, that the French brought liberty to the Islands with reserve and suspicion. Nevertheless, with the support of the populace and the resigned stance of the Venetian authorities, the imposition of French rule was rapidly accomplished not only on Corfu, but on the other islands as well. The only resistance was provided by some elements of the Venetian garrison troops, but these were quickly disarmed and disbanded; only the volunteer companies at the exposed possessions of Butrint, Parga, Lefkada, and Kythira, as well as the troops in Preveza and Vonitsa, were retained in French pay. Although Widmann nominally remained the head of the administration, actual power lay with Gentili. When Venetian commissioners arrived bearing 60,000 ducats for the payment of army and fleet and the loans Widmann had contracted, the money was simply confiscated by the French.
The Austrian court protested the unilateral French occupation, but could do little about it. In the ongoing negotiations, Napoleon for a while pretended that the islands were to be incorporated into the Cisalpine Republic, but in the end, Austria was forced to accept the fait accompli to secure her own control over Dalmatia from the spoils of the Venetian state.
Establishment of a republican regime As in the Venetian metropolis, the French established new administrations in the form of Provisional Municipalities. In Corfu, the body comprised the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Corfu, Francisco Fenzi, the Mantzaros, a Catholic and an Orthodox priest, two Jews, six nobles, ten burghers, two craftsmen and six peasants. Widmann was appointed to chair the body, but he resigned during its first session, and was replaced by the Corfiot noble Spyridon Georgios Theotokis. The nobles tried to mobilize anti-Jewish sentiment against the council, and a riot broke out on its second session on 28 June, but was suppressed.