The coronation at Milan was startling to cabinets and kings; but the sequel was in their eyes a downright menace. Piombino and Lucca were given to the Bonaparte sisters; Parma and Piacenza were endowed with the new French code, and as the climax of audacity the entire Ligurian Republic was incorporated, with France. Only a short time since, Napoleon had informed the world through an allocution to the legislature that Holland, Switzerland, and three fourths of Germany belonged to France by right of conquest, but that, such was his moderation, the two former lands would be left independent. The partition of Poland and the conquest of India, as he had previously remarked, prejudiced France in the European balance; but again, such was French moderation, Italy was to have remained independent, the two crowns separate, and no new province was to have been annexed to the Empire. But now it was otherwise ordered, and by no fault of his he had been forced to unite the two crowns; this being so, Genoa had become essential to the unity of the Empire. Austria might well ask what the word "Italy" in the royal title was intended to mean. No sooner were the coronation ceremonies ended than half of the sixty thousand troops which had either accompanied Napoleon or had been summoned from near were stationed on the so-called sanitary cordon of Austria, the old Venetian boundaries. Wearing the worm-eaten coat and battered hat which he had worn at Marengo, and on the memorable field which had witnessed his agony of doubt, fear, and joy, the King of Italy rehearsed with the remaining thirty thousand the events of that decisive day. Later, at Castiglione the other contingent gave a similar exhibition. [Sidenote: 1805]