I would have to go back to my original notes and find all the sources to compose an article for the Series and I am behind hand on my current research but it is a neglected subject. The much-maligned political commissioners in Italy seem to have been a fairly decent bunch, prepared to tell their government that demands were too high. Trouve's letters to La Revelliere show him to be well-meaning and rather naive and absolutely no match for the machinations of Brune, Dufresse and Suchet. None of them questioned the right to loot the art treasures for Paris though.
The contribution originally demanded by Championnet was still being collected by the time the French left, how much of it they actually got is unclear, getting the Neapolitans to pay up proved tricky, particularly given the cash shortage.
When Custine went into Frankfurt in the early days of the revolution he was cheered as a liberator but a couple of months later they were stoned as they retreated. One of the town officials said something to the effect that it would have been better if they had said from the beginning that they had come to take everything. That was just the beginning.

Susan