Nor was Napoleon free from his thorn in the flesh. In a bulletin published by him after the retreat from Moscow was a passage which implied some censure of Murat for his lack of stability. This both the King of Naples and his spouse bitterly resented, the latter roundly abusing her brother in their correspondence. This was an excellent pretext for desertion when the general crash appeared imminent, and at Erfurt the dashing and gallant, but weak and testy, monarch decamped. Hastening south, he entered at once into alliance with Austria, and then, putting himself at the head of eighty thousand Neapolitans, set out for Rome, waging a terrific warfare of proclamations. Eugene, too,--and this was an elemental disaster,--was virtually checkmated by the defection of his father-in-law, the King of Bavaria, which opened the Tyrol to the allies. All Italy was consequently lost. Augereau, whose feeble loyalty to Napoleon was already at the vanishing-point, had been appointed to take forty thousand conscripts, collect any straggling soldiers he could find in southeastern France, and keep open the door out of Italy for some or all of Eugene's veterans, with whose assistance it was hoped the marshal could form an army for the defense of the Vosges Mountains. But Eugene, having fought the indecisive battle of Roverbello, and finding himself in a sorry plight from both the military and political points of view, could send no reinforcements until April, when finally he concluded an armistice releasing his army. Augereau therefore found himself opposite Bubna at Geneva with an ineffective force, and with very little heart to wield what he had. This ended Napoleon's grand scheme for uniting the forces of Italy, Naples, Switzerland, and France.