This decision tended undoubtedly to bring great confusion into Lombardy. It weakened the sympathies of those Germans, Austrians, and Hungarians who had been well disposed towards the Italian struggle for independence; while it gave an excuse for the opposition of that larger body of politicians, who had hesitated between Liberal principles and national prejudice, and who were now eager to declare that the war had ceased to be a struggle for Italian liberty, and was merely designed for the aggrandisement of Charles Albert. But, however much Charles Albert's interests might suffer from his changeable policy, he always was helped out of his difficulties by the contrast between his questionable acts, and the unquestionable badness of some other prince. As the Papal Encyclical had come at the right moment to redeem the credit which he had lost by his slackness after the Battle of Goito, so the treachery of the King of Naples served, at this crisis, to throw, by force of contrast, a more favourable light on the ambitious proposals for the fusion of Lombardy with Piedmont. Ferdinand of Naples had reluctantly consented to join in the Italian war. The hearty dislike of Liberty, which he shared with the majority of the Bourbon family, combined with his special jealousy of Charles Albert to increase his desire to abandon this expedition. He feared that a Kingdom of North Italy would be the natural result of the war, even if the popular enthusiasm did not carry Charles Albert into schemes of greater aggrandizement; and he had a not unreasonable grievance against the King of Sardinia in the recent choice by the Sicilians of the Duke of Genoa as their King. The priests in Naples, unlike those in Lombardy and Venetia, were intriguing on behalf of Austria, and had circulated the rumour that St. Januarius was a friend to the Austrian Emperor. In spite of these intrigues, a Liberal majority had been returned to the Neapolitan Parliament; and the King, therefore, resolved to put still further limits on the power of that Parliament, by demanding of the members an oath which would have admitted Ferdinand's right to suppress the Sicilian movement, would have enforced the complete acceptance of the Roman Catholic faith, and would have prohibited any attempt to enlarge or reform the Constitution.