To the translators from the French, from a friend of good Italian

The most important democratic newspaper of the Cisalpine Republic, the Termometro politico della Lombardia, published in March 1798 an anonymous article entitled 'To the translators from French, a friend of the good Italian language'. It was a particularly critical moment in Milan's political life, as the treaty of alliance imposed by the Paris Directory had caused much discontent in democratic circles. The article certainly arises also from this situation; in fact it condemns the will of the French authorities to impose their language in political, cultural and social life and criticizes those who corrupted the purity of the Italian language by using in their translations a language modelled on French both in terms of vocabulary and syntax. The author gives in particular the example of the translation of Diderot's Religieuse published in Milan in 1797 by the Genoese Gaspare Sauli. The patriots, determined to create a unitary republic in the peninsula, despite their democratic background took sides against French politics, which were not favourable to Italian unity. Their political programme was defeated, but they passed on to the age of the Risorgimento the cult of language as the main foundation of national consciousness.