In the spring and summer of 1799 the Italian peninsula seemed to become the promised land of the counter-revolution. When the armies of the French Directory were defeated in the Po valley in April, the recently founded Italian Republics were at once thrown into crisis and popular counter-revolutionary risings erupted virtually throughout the length of Italy. In Tuscany, the peasants of Arezzo rallied to the banners of the Blessed Virgin and to chants of Viva Maria! marched to destroy the Jacobins in Florence and Siena. In Lombardy, Viora Branda dreamed that he had been summoned by Christ to punish the infidel invaders; calling themselves the Massa Cristiana he and his peasant followers joined the Austrians to drive the French and the Jacobins out of Piedmont. In many parts of central Italy, in Lazio, in Umbria, and in the Marche, similar popular risings took place.

Yet nowhere was the scale or violence of the counter-revolution greater than in the south. Here the Neapolitan Republic had only been established in January 1799. In the previous autumn the king of Naples, Ferdinand IV, had launched an ill-judged offensive against the French forces occupying Rome. But the offensive was a disaster. The Neapolitan army was routed and in January 1799 Ferdinand and Maria Carolina abandoned their capital and fled on Nelson's warships to Palermo. The French armies swept south and, as they drew closer, tensions and fears of betrayal provoked a violent anti-republican rising in Naples.