French rule in the Ionian Islands days of close blockade and bombardment, the French surrendered on 17 November. Ushakov allowed 20 French officers to depart for France immediately, but the rest were sent to captivity in Constantinople. With the fall of Lefkada, Corfu remained as the last bastion of French control in the Ionian Islands. There too, the anti-French and pro-Russian sentiment had been gaining ground, and the exhortations of commissioner-general Dubois largely failed to have an impact. French forces on the island, augmented by the garrisons of Ithaca and Parga, amounted to 1,500 infantry and some 300 artillerymen, as well as 8 naval vessels. To
Venetian rule in the Ionian Islands language they want and especially the Italian as it's the language with the greatest preference on the Ionian Islands". These cultural remnants of the Venetian period were the pretext of Mussolini's desire to incorporate the Ionian Islands into the Kingdom of Italy. Even before the outbreak of World War II and the Greek-Italian War, Mussolini had expressed his wish to annex the Ionian Islands as part of his wider plans for an Italian Empire centered around the Mediterranean Sea. On 15 October, in a meeting in the Palazzo Venezia, he made the final decision to invade Greece. His initial goal