After Marengo: Military Positions and Literary Activity

Foscolo was among the first Cisalpine to arrive in Milan liberated by the French at the end of June 1800; appointed Captain Assistant to the General Staff of General Pino, he undertook a number positions in northern Italy and took part in military initiatives against the anti-French resistance of local populations. Throughout the year he moved between Milan, Bologna, Modena and Tuscany for reasons of service; he met Isabella Roncioni in Florence at the end of 1800.

In the meantime he did not neglect his literary activities: in the second half of 1800 he started to write Commentari della Storia di Napoli; the Proemio al Discorso degli uomini illustri di Plutarco (Proem to Plutarch's Lives of illustrious men) dates back to the start of 1801; the writer resumed work on Le ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortis after rejecting all apocryphal editions of the book with a letter published in Florence's Gazzetta Universale.

As of March 1801 he worked at the War Ministry in Milan at a Commission for the compilation of an Italian Military Code, a project which was subsequently cut by Gioachino Murat in August of the same year; a document entitled Idea generale del lavoro della IV sezione dell’ufficio di compilazione (General idea of the work of the IV section of the compilation office)  was linked to the Commission's work.

The year 1801 was also an important one on the personal front; in the summer Ugo met Antonietta Fagnani Arese, with whom he had an intense relationship; on December 8 his brother Giovanni Dionigi committed suicide.

At the end of the year the Government Commission gave Foscolo the task of writing a speech in honour of the First Consul for the Lyon Congress that was to define the situation of Italy: Orazione a Bonaparte pel Congresso di Lione was completed in January 1802, but it was not published until August, at the author's expense.