In comparison with the fate preparing for Venice, the sister-republic of Genoa met with generous treatment. A revolutionary movement, long prepared by the French envoy, overthrew the ancient oligarchical Government; but democratic opinion and French sympathies did not extend below the middle classes of the population; and, after the Government had abandoned its own cause, the charcoal-burners and dock-labourers rose in its defence, and attacked the French party with the cry of "Viva Maria," and with figures of the Virgin fastened to their hats, in the place where their opponents wore the French tricolour. Religious fanaticism won the day; the old Government was restored, and a number of Frenchmen who had taken part in the conflict were thrown into prison. The imprisonment of the Frenchmen gave Bonaparte a pretext for intervention. He disclaimed all desire to alter the Government, and demanded only the liberation of his countrymen and the arrest of the enemies of France. But the overthrow of the oligarchy had been long arranged with Faypoult, the French envoy; and Genoa received a democratic constitution which place the friends of France in power (June 5). [France in 1797.] While Bonaparte, holding Court in the Villa of Montebello, continued to negotiate with Austria upon the basis of the Preliminaries of Leoben, events took place in France which offered him an opportunity of interfering directly in the government of the Republic. The elections which were to replace one-third of the members of the Legislature took place in the spring of 1797. The feeling of the country was now much the same as it had been in 1795, when a large Royalist element was returned for those seats in the Councils which the Convention had not reserved for its own members. France desired a more equitable and a more tolerant rule. The Directory had indeed allowed the sanguinary laws against non-juring priests and returning emigrants to remain unenforced; but the spirit and traditions of official Jacobinism were still active in the Government. The Directors themselves were all regicides; the execution of the King was still celebrated by a national _fête_; offices, great and small, were held by men who had risen in the Revolution; the whole of the old gentry of France was excluded from participation in public life. It was against this revolutionary class-rule, against a system which placed the country as much at the mercy of a few directors and generals as it had been at the mercy of the Conventional Committee, that the elections of 1797 were a protest. Along with certain Bourbonist conspirators, a large majority of men were returned who, though described as Royalists, were in fact moderate Constitutionalists, and desired only to undo that part of the Revolution which excluded whole classes of the nation from public life. [60] [Opposition to the Directory.]