Murat, as has been seen, made a habit of mistaking craft for statesmanship, and his Council, by now, were beginning to be aware of it. Frenchmen and Neapolitans, they saw that would be extremely dangerous for both countries—particularly Naples—and they resolved to wait to declare themselves until word came from London and Vienna. Murat, however, paid no heed to their resolution or their opinion, and broke up the Council, secretly determined to make the effort.
Some of the troops with which he proposed to undertake the conquest of Italy were more fit for sneak-thieving than actual fighting against drilled men. The artillery, sappers, and cavalry were even worse than the infantry, and when we are told that the regiments of the latter were taken from the prisons and from the galleys, and that half of the generals and colonels were French, and the dissensions between the natives and the foreigners are remembered, one cannot but think that Joachim must have been a little off his head with the strain he had been enduring for the past year, if he hoped to annex Italy with such a force as that.
In reply to Murat’s request for permission to pass through the Papal States, the Holy Father appointed a regency and betook himself to Genoa, accompanied by many of the Cardinals. As this occurred in the middle of Holy Week, the sacred offices were interrupted, many of the priests leaving the city to follow the Pope, and the indignation of the Romans knew no bounds. Murat wisely refrained from approaching the city and proceeded to Ancona, from whence he instructed the ambassadors at the Congress to renew his protestations of fidelity to his treaties.
This quite unnecessary insult roused Francis of Austria effectually and he despatched Frimont, Bianchi, Mohr, Neipperg, and Wied, with forty-eight thousand infantry, seven thousand cavalry, and sixty-four guns, to repay Joachim for it. Besides these, Nugent had a brigade in Tuscany, the Po was fortified at Piacenza, Borgoforte, Occhiobello, and Lagoscuro by the Germans, who occupied every possible crossing and had at their backs the fortresses of Pizzighettone, Mantua, and Legnano, with detachments in Commachio and at the bridge of Goro. It was a solid affair against which Joachim was ramming his head.
He, as soon as war had been declared on the 30th of March, annexed—on paper—the districts of Cerebino, Pesaro, and Gubbio, and issued edicts vilifying in the usual manner his opponents, whom he accused of every fault of which he himself had been guilty. Also, he addressed the inattentive and careless Italians, reminding them of such grievances as he could remember and, when the stock of those ran short, inventing several entirely new ones.
He had a few partial successes at first before Frimont arrived upon the scene. Carrascosa managed to drive some Austrians—it is all but impossible to arrive at the real figures and facts of these contests, but I should be inclined to say about fifteen hundred—from Cesena. Later they came upon some more at Anzola, and these retired before them probably, or I should say certainly, under orders. At Spilimberto he had a personal brush with them, which resulted in a haphazard sort of success which he seems to have made no attempt whatever to push. A few days later, after investing Ferrara—the operation could not have been a very serious one, for it was only conducted for two and a half days—he attempted to storm the bridge-head at Occhiobello, but, finding it to be out of the question, left the array encamped on the spot and returned to Bologna, where he learned what had become of two legions of his Guard which he had sent to Tuscany—for no military reason that I have been able to discover, save the very problematical one of “rousing” the Tuscans.
They were commanded by Generals Pignatelli, Strongoli, and Livron, who, being of equal rank, were to act in concert, but not to attempt to take precedence of each other—which, as one historian very truly says, was a “strange and unusual idea in the composition of the army.”
These contrived to get as far as Pistoia, where, hearing that the garrison had designs upon them, they retired in something of a hurry to Florence.
It was there that Joachim received a communication from Lord William Bentinck to the effect that, since he had broken his treaty with Francis, he could consider the treaty with England broken as well. He might well have expected this piece of information one would think, but it seems to have depressed him greatly.
The King’s edicts, too, had fallen flat. They had produced, we are told, “promises, applause, poetic effusions, and popular orations, but neither arms nor action; thus furnishing much future work for the police, and nothing for war.”