Caroline, however, joined with his Ministers and his Council in opposition to war. Naples and Italy had had enough, and, even in the unlikely event of Murat’s correspondents in the north having been accurate in their figures or right in their appreciation of the popular feeling, it was practically certain that, whether the victor in the coming contest were to be the Emperor or the allies, neither would allow Murat to attack Italy and rule it undisturbed.
He assured his Council that Italy was ready to rise on either side of the Po. He explained his mistrust of the Congress. He agreed that, although it would be unsafe to diminish the army in the present condition of Europe, yet Naples could not support the troops unless fresh taxes were imposed; and that being out of the question the only alternative was to quarter them upon somebody else. He went on to point out that political liberty was at the last gasp in Italy. But even that battle-cry failed to arouse the enthusiasm of his audience. Political liberty as a theory upon which to speculate over a glass or two of wine in the cool of the evening was well enough, but political liberty as a reason for draining the country of blood and money any longer was quite another affair.
The common people cared very little, if anything at all, for it; what they wanted was food and drink, and a chance to save a little money, and marry, and be happy. The taste survives in Naples and Calabria to this day. They like an overlord, they like having somebody over them who will order their ways and provide them with work and see to their well-being, and knock their heads together when they misbehave and pat them upon the back before their fellows when they are good. It is, after all, the ideal form of government. No other approaches in efficiency to a beneficent and intelligent autocracy. The main trouble is that very few autocracies have any intelligence. I am sure I do not know why. Logically a man who has been trained to rulership from the cradle should make a better ruler than the accident of a convention; and on the whole, one may say, he does. A constitutional monarch is generally a far better ruler than either Mr. Roosevelt, Mr. Taft, or Mr. Wilson, or any President of the French Republic that ever lived. So was King Edward VII, so was Queen Victoria. And then, from nowhere in particular and without any training at all, a Lincoln emerges and gets elected—that is the mystery which I have never been able to fathom—by a number of people whose individual opinions upon any subject of real importance are worth less than nothing!
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 war would be extremely dangerous for both countries—particularly for 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 for actual fighting against drilled men. The artillery, sappers, and cavalry were even worse than the infantry, and when we are told that 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 dispatched Frimont, Bianchi, Mohr, Neipperg, and Wied, with 48,000 infantry, 7,000 cavalry, and 64 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 March 30, 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 quite 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 1,500—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 army 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.”