Campo Formio, Treaty of

Campo Formio, Treaty of (käm`pō fôr`myō), Oct., 1797, peace treaty between France and Austria, signed near Campo Formio, a village near Udine, NE Italy, then in Venetia. It marked the end of the early phases of the French Revolutionary Wars. The treaty generally ratified the preliminary Peace of Leoben, signed at the conclusion of Napoleon Bonaparte's Italian campaign (see Napoleon I). Bonaparte signed for France, Count Cobenzl for Austria. Austria ceded its possessions in the Low Countries (the present-day Belgium) to France and secretly promised France the left bank of the Rhine, pending later ratification by the estates of the Holy Roman Empire. The republic of Venice, invaded despite its attempts to maintain neutrality, was dissolved and partitioned; all Venetia E of the Adige, as well as Istria and Dalmatia, passed to Austria; the present provinces of Bergamo and Brescia went to the newly founded Cisalpine Republic; the Ionian Islands went to France.