It's 1799, and Italy is fractured, politically, socially, and economically. This isn't new - it’s been fractured for over a thousand years at this point. This made it easy for Napoleon to invade in the first place, and now he is going to exploit this to keep Italy under his thumb. In this episode we’re going to see how Napoleon manages to juggle the various forces in Italy - he needs to keep things united enough to be stable, but fractured enough to be pliable.