Vittorio Barzoni
Vittorio Barzoni (17 December 1767 - 22 April 1843) was an Italian author, mainly of anti-Napoleonic tracts during the French occupation of Northern Italy. Biography. He was born in Lonato, province of Brescia, then in the Republic of Venice. His father was a mushroom merchant, and afforded Vittorio early education in his town, and later in a college of Verona, but finally at the University of Padua. Inspired by the new political ideas promulgated by the French Revolution, he moved to Venice and published his first work in 1794: "Il solitario delle Alpi". Upon the fall of the  Republic, he founded in 16 May 1797 a gazette titled "L'Equatore". His writings were often sequestered or suppressed by the occupying French authorities. He soon published a tract: "Rapporto sullo stato attuale degli stati liberi d'Italia e sulla necessità che siano fusi in una sola Repubblica", in which he challenged the pretensions of Napoleon to be a liberator of Venice or Italy. By 27 September 1797, he was forced to flee the borders of Venice. With the Treaty of Campoformio ceding the Veneto to Austria, he returned to Venice, and soon published "I Romani nella Grecia", which was a thinly  veiled criticism of the French occupation as equivalent to the past Ancient Roman occupation and suppression of Greek freedoms. This book became available to both English and German readers. By 1801, he was forced to abandon Venice for Vienna, but soon also expelled from there by French pressure, and moved to Malta in 1804 where he published various anti-French journals ("L'Argo" and "Il Cartaginese"). He soon moved to liberated regions of Spain to continue his diatribes against the French occupation of that country. While initially inspired by the French Revolution, he was not entirely democratic, and aspired for the  rule of monarchs and an aristocracy. In 1814, he returned to Milan. He published in 1825, a dramatic tragedy "Narina", but it soon faced censorship. He died in Naples.