When Napoleon was in Egypt, no one in the Directory had considered bringing him back, perhaps because he had acted on his own authority.
In any case, by April 1799, the Austrians had torn up the Treaty of Campo Formio and formed a joint army with the Russians in Lombardy. They fought a fierce battle against the army commanded by Moreau at Cassano d'Adda, twenty-eight kilometers from Milan, and the French were defeated. Cicognara had happened to return to Milan from the Netherlands at the time. Before he could do anything at all, he fled with the refugees to Genoa, which was theoretically still a neutral state.
Genoa had a port, so in theory they could leave by ship. But during the War of the Second Anti-French Coalition, Britain had joined the naval blockade. Forty thousand refugees were trapped between the two warring sides, unable to leave even if they wanted to. Cicognara was in the refugee camp at the time as well.
Summer was already hot, but food, water, medicine, and such were no longer the crucial issues. Moreau forcibly demanded that the refugees leave, but where were they supposed to go? How were they supposed to get there? He said nothing about it, perhaps because he was busy with the Battle of Trebbia.
They could neither leave nor stay. At that point, Cicognara heard that Napoleon had returned from Egypt. Taking an all-or-nothing gamble, he left besieged Genoa and asked Napoleon to take in these Italian expatriates. Then he went to Lausanne, where he met Madame de Staël.
Afterward, he returned to Ferrara. In 1801, he and eight others voted against Napoleon's election as president.
Among those eight was a man named Smanchini, who had also been trapped in Genoa like Cicognara. But unlike Cicognara, he did not