The new State received a provisional form of government after Marengo, a small council being appointed to supervise civil affairs at the capital, Milan.

With it and with Marescalchi, the Cisalpine envoy at Paris, Bonaparte had concerted a constitution, or rather he had used these men as a convenient screen to hide its purely personal origin.

Having, for form's sake, consulted the men whom he had himself appointed, he now suggested that the chief citizens of that republic should confer with him respecting their new institutions.

His Minister at Milan thereupon proposed that they should cross the Alps for that purpose, assembling, not at Paris, where their dependence on the First Consul's will might provoke too much comment, but at Lyons.

To that city, accordingly, there repaired some 450 of the chief men of Northern Italy, who braved the snows of a most rigorous December, in the hope of consolidating the liberties of their long-distracted country.