During the War of the Second Anti-French Coalition, uprisings against the French occupation and revolutionary reforms arose across the Italian states. The article analyzes three important episodes from the history of popular movements in Piedmont and the Maritime Alps in 1799-1801: the Christian Army (Massa cristiana) under the command of Branda Lucioni, the plan to prepare for the Barbets rebellion in southern France under the leadership of the French royalist Amédée Villot, and the “great uprising” of peasants (zoccoli) in the Aosta Valley and Canavese. In historiography, these events are usually viewed as part of the internal social and political history of Piedmont and the neighboring region of Nice (since 1793 the French department of Alpes-Maritimes). This article examines the influence of geopolitical factors on the emergence of popular movements and the transformation of these popular movements themselves into a geopolitical factor at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. The author demonstrates that the popular militia in Piedmont in 1799 was organized by the Austrian command, that the Barbets revolt of 1800 was planned by French royalists with the support of England and the consent of Austria, and that the Zoccoli revolt in Aosta and Canavese in 1800-1801 was an autonomous local peasant movement, but pushed Napoleon to annex Piedmont to his state, thus marking the beginning of a new stage in French foreign policy.
Keywords: popular uprisings, Piedmont, Nice, Aosta Valley, Kingdom of Sardinia, French occupation, Napoleon Bonaparte, Branda Lucioni, Amédée Villot, Barbets, Zoccoli, Second Anti-French Coalition, geopolitics.