This essay focuses on the history of the Kingdom of Italy, created by Napoleon in 1805 and disbanded in the aftermath of his fall, with the cession of Lombardy and Veneto to Austria. The collapse of the State destroyed the expectations of the Italian elites, who had hoped for the maintenance of a constitutional and independent kingdom, and at the same time gave rise to a new institutional structure which in later years would have been a testing ground for new administrative arrangements: from this starting point, this essay reconstructs the comparison between the Habsburg ambitions and local conditions, through the analysis of the complex relationships between the center of the Empire and a "turbulent" periphery like that of northern Italy.
Keywords: Government, bureaucracy, Austria, Napoleonic era, Restoration.