Of course Murat mistrusted his allies, and the allies returned the compliment with interest. He had no very high opinion of them as soldiers, either, in which he was justified. Bellegarde carried his suspicion so far as to refuse to build a bridge or two over the Po, lest Murat might use them against him, and Murat became convinced that Bellegarde and Bentinck wanted to make him attack the Viceroy in order to injure his troops and his reputation, for what were thirty thousand Neapolitans in the scale against fifty thousand Frenchmen commanded by good officers and in the hands of such generals as Eugène had on his staff? He discovered, too, that Bentinck, who had landed as his ally, was permitting his Sicilians to distribute pamphlet copies of an edict of Ferdinand’s, reminding the Neapolitans of his rights and exciting them to rise against Joachim. Bentinck was not a very clever man, and here he showed himself to be a fool. He had already given the Duke of Wellington a good deal of trouble by ruining the Duke’s market for specie in Spain, offering a higher price for it than the Duke could afford to give, and by various other ill-judged and ill-timed schemes; now, having Joachim on his side—the one man among them all who could lead an army—he deliberately attempted to ruin his influence in the moment of action, by turning his own men against him, and by siding with Bellegarde in every question of military policy, wherein neither of them were really worthy to be allowed to carry out his, Joachim’s, orders. From the Austrian monarch, Murat might have expected that sort of thing, for Austria had at one time and another during the last twenty years broken her word to about everybody with whom she had had any dealings. Metternich boasted of it openly, and, had Murat been gifted with a little more political foresight, he might have felt even then the hands that were pulling him down. It may be said that he hoped for Napoleon’s triumph in the latter’s Homeric fight, nor could he be blamed where all the circumstances are considered. “In every transaction,” says one of his staff, “whether emanating from the rulers of kingdoms or the commanders of the armies that were sitting about in Italy, some perfidy transpired or lay concealed.” The only people who were really happy at this time were the Neapolitans, who, with the English markets opened, began to prosper after the long, lean years, and held their heads high now that their King and their armies had been, as they thought, distinguishing themselves. Poor Joachim now received a petition from his generals, published with the approval of the whole army, begging him to summon a council of war and hear their “opinions”! It is a wonder that the veteran of a hundred pitched battles did not hang somebody for the impertinence, for from any point of view it is difficult to understand what they expected of him in the way of action. But he let the incident pass.