This is not the place to write a history of French supremacy in Italy, but several points connected with it must be glanced at, because, without bearing them in mind, it is impossible to understand the events which followed. The viceroyalty of Eugène Beauharnais in North Italy, and the government of Joseph Buonaparte, and afterwards of Joachim Murat, in the South, brought much that was an improvement on what had gone before: there were better laws, a better administration, a quickening of intelligence. 'The French have done much for the regeneration of Italy,' wrote an English observer in 1810; 'they have destroyed the prejudices of the inhabitants of the small states of Upper Italy by uniting them; they have done away with the Pope; they have made them soldiers.' But there was the reverse side of the medal: the absence everywhere of the national spirit which alone could have consolidated the new _régime_ on a firm basis; the danger which the language ran of losing its purity by the introduction of Gallicisms; the shameless robbery of pictures, statues, and national heirlooms of every kind for the replenishment of French museums; the bad impression left in the country districts by the abuses committed by the French soldiery on their first descent, and kept alive by the blood-tax levied in the persons of thousands of Italian conscripts sent to die, nobody knew where or why; the fields untilled, and Rachel weeping for her children: all these elements combined in rendering it difficult for the governments established under French auspices to survive the downfall of the man to whose sword they owed their existence. Their dissolution was precipitated, however, by the discordant action of Murat and Eugène Beauharnais. Had these two pulled together, whatever the issue was it would have differed in much from what actually happened. Murat was jealous of Eugène, and did not love his brother-in-law, who had annoyed and thwarted him through his whole reign; he was uneasy about his Neapolitan throne, and, in all likelihood, was already dreaming of acquiring the crown of an independent Italy. Throwing off his allegiance to Napoleon, he imagined the vain thing that he might gain his object by taking sides with the Austrians. It must be remembered that there was a time when the Allied Powers had distinctly contemplated Italian independence as a dyke to France, and there were people foolish enough to think that Austria, now she felt herself as strong as she had then felt weak, would consent to such a plan. Liberators, self-called, were absolutely swarming in Italy; Lord William Bentinck was promising entire emancipation from Leghorn; the Austrian and English allies in Romagna ransacked the dictionary for expressions in praise of liberty; an English officer was made the mouthpiece for the lying assurance of the Austrian Emperor Francis, that he had no intention of re-asserting any claims to the possession of Lombardy or Venetia.