Accordingly, after much apparent intriguing among the delegates at Lyons, their choice fell unanimously upon Melzi, a Milanese nobleman. The First Consul's agents promptly explained that the safety of the "Italian Republic"--the significant name by which it was henceforth to be called, Alfieri's "Italia virtuosa, magnanima, libera, et una"--depended on its being ruled by him. The Italians at once drew up a formal invitation to that effect, Bonaparte accepted, and the servile newspapers of Paris declared that there was no menace to the peace of France in the act; their First Consul could not have refused such a call without a lack of courtesy, even of prudence. Melzi accepted the vice-presidency, the proconsulate. To make a bridge between his two domains, the Consul-President prepared to incorporate Piedmont, not with his Italian republic, but with France. The Czar who had taken up arms in behalf of the house of Savoy was dead. General Jourdan informed the Piedmontese that their land was a French military division, comprising six prefectures. Bonaparte said that thereby was accomplished a natural reunion of French territory. This idea was a reminiscence of Charles the Great's empire. As soon as the treaty of Amiens was signed a decree of the senate informed the world that Piedmont was a French department. Valais could not well be given to Piedmont, on account of Swiss jealousy. It was equally impossible to restore it to the Helvetian Republic; for through it lay the splendid military road of the Simplon, which France had been building across the Alps. Accordingly the little land was declared an independent commonwealth. As to Genoa, her still existing directorial constitution would now be as impracticable to work as those of Cisalpina and Batavia. Salicetti therefore offered to her government a new one prepared in Paris on the consular model, and it was gratefully adopted. When the young King of Etruria died on May twenty-seventh, 1803, Murat and Clarke were appointed guardians of his widow, who was made regent for her infant son.