Now, the Admiral was strongly of the opinion that with Buonaparte locked up in Egypt the time had come for the resisters of French aggression to act, and therefore he listened to a plot the Queen had for forcing the hand of the Emperor, which was forwarded and frustrated by the indecision of the Emperor and his minister--Thugut. The Admiral's part of the work was to volunteer, as coming from himself, the advice carefully concocted by the Queen, to the effect that her forces must drive out the French forces in the Papal States. Fortified with her advice to herself, she overcame the timidity of her Prime Minister, General Acton; though her War Minister, the Marquis de Gallo, proved either too timid, too full of moral courage, too treacherous, or too honest. Thus further fortified, she wrote to her nephew the Emperor, telling him just so much of her plans as might induce him to move, and asking for a general to command her forces. The Empire had enjoyed a great name as a school for strategy, but the sending her a general was intended to commit him. He sent her the evil star of his reign, General Mack, who brought with him certain highly sensible advice which he had not the courage to deliver, either because he quailed before the eagerness of the Queen, or because he sought the opportunity for distinguishing himself. The advice he brought in reality was that, until the Allies were ready to strike together, the Two Sicilies should only wage war upon the French in Malta and Gozo, of which the King was suzerain, but which had been seized by the French. Here there was clearly no aggression: he was only attempting to repossess his own. It suited Mack better, however, to march on Rome with a flourish of trumpets, and to play at preserving the peace only where it concerned the withholding of facilities from our fleet. Well, to cut a long story short, Mack and the King marched on Rome with thirty thousand of what he flattered Neapolitan susceptibilities by declaring the finest troops in the world, and forty thousand recruits; while we, for our part, transported another five thousand of these "veterans" to Leghorn to cut off the French base. Everything, as the Admiral said, was as bad as possible from the first. Half the troops had to be carried in the Marquis de Niza's Portuguese squadron. The Portuguese ships, which were incapable of fighting, were all commanded by flag-officers who could only accept orders from the Admiral himself. And the legion was commanded by the pretentious General Naselli, who persisted in regarding the Admiral as merely an agent for transporting his troops; and sent his Summons as he pleased, without even consulting the British officers; and neglected to act until Captain Troubridge saw that a catastrophe threatened, and gave him to understand that the mole would be destroyed by a fire, and probably the town--of course by nobody's fault.