In Flight in Genoa and France

While the Austro-Russian armies advanced victoriously throughout Italy in 1799 and 1800, Genoa was the last city to remain in the hands of the Republican forces. Italian patriots gathered in the capital of Liguria to escape from the victors' reprisals and put up extreme resistance to the advance of the enemy forces. Foscolo spent the last months of 1799 there in forced inactivity and in difficult living conditions. At the start of October he published Discorso su la Italia (Discourse on Italy), which was preceded by a letter dedicated to the France's Championnet, who was invited to take up the cause of an independent Italian Republic, which was also in the interests of France. Championnet's silence on the question of Italian independence, which was determined by evident reasons of political opportunity, irritated the writer who expressed all of his displeasure a few months later on the occasion of the French general's death in January 1800.

In the meantime, on the 18 Brumaire of the Year VIII (November 9 1799), Bonaparte assumed total power in France with a coup d'état; at the end of the same month Foscolo re-published Ode a Bonaparte (Ode to Bonaparte) with the addition of a Dedication to Bonaparte in which he invited the First Consul to support the cause of Italy's independence.

The period in Genoa was characterized by intense literary activity; Foscolo published the ode A Luigia Pallavicini caduta da cavallo and started to write Sesto tomo dell’Io.

He spent the first few months of 1800 in Nice; he returned to Genoa in March and was enlisted into the army as a correspondence official; he participated in the defence of the city, injured a knee in the Battle of Forte dei Due Fratelli on May 2 and witnessed the capitulation of Genoa on June 4 1800. Just 10 days later, on June 14, Bonaparte's victory at Marengo ended the Austrian interregnum and reopened the road to Milan to the patriots.