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.