Helfert, Joachim Murat, Chapter 1, part 5
The gain Joachim Murat took back to Naples from the equivocal attitude he had adopted during the previous campaign was the righteous wrath of his imperial brother-in-law, who, as sovereign lord of Elba, had become his Italian neighbour, and the deep-rooted distrust of the allies, the mighty conquerors of this part of the world, in which they now played the same role the great Corsican had played for many decades. Russia, which had never been favourable to the Napoleonids on the throne of Naples, which had never ceased to turn its outspoken sympathies to the Sicilian Bourbons, was now less inclined than ever to commit itself to Murat. General Balašev accompanied the king to his capital, and diplomatic relations between the two cabinets seemed to be about to be re-established; but the Russian accession to the Austro-Napolitan treaty of alliance and guarantee was continually delayed; Balašev always had a new pretext ready to postpone the due declaration of his cabinet. There was no mention of an envoy from the King of England; there was not even a certified British consul in Naples. It is true that Joachim enjoyed no little sympathy among the British nation, and the opposition of the London Parliament showed itself inclined to throw its weight behind his recognition and retention on the throne of Naples. The London Cabinet itself, Lords Castlereagh and Liverpool, and the Prince-Regent were nothing less than hostile to him; only they would still know nothing of a formal alliance with his government, while Bentinck and the Duke of Wellington made no secret of their hostility to "General Murat."
In this way, it was and ultimately remained only the Austrian Emperor and his Chancellor of State who proved faithful to the obligations entered into with King Joachim, in spite of the heavy reproaches he had brought upon himself by his irresponsible attitude in the field, and in doing so did not fail to reassure him that they would be able to convince the other powers to adopt the same attitude. A military convention concluded at Bologna on 28 April established a demarcation line between the imperial and royal troops: the latter occupied the upper Italian duchies and the Roman legations south of the Po, while the latter had to withdraw to the area around Macerata, Fermo and Ancona.
This was also the area that had been promised to the king by the Austrians as early as January as an extension of his country, a promise that they admittedly had greater difficulty in fulfilling from one month to the next. Joachim Murat had entered the field full of grandiose dreams of power; he had believed that the sympathies of all Italy were attached to his name, to his war fame; in the regions occupied by his troops, his agencies had dwelt like masters, had collected taxes, had made arrangements, had appointed officials, as if they were to remain there forever. This had now been pushed back bit by bit into ever narrower confines. Lord Bentinck had made a start with the occupation of Tuscany, of which Prince Giuseppe Rospigliosi soon took possession in the name of Grand Duke Ferdinand (1 May). On the other hand, the Pope, returning from French captivity, had appeared at the Austro-Neapolitan outposts and, in repeated meetings with the king and his representatives, had simply demanded the return of all that the revolution had taken from him. Joachim's demands for possession of the Marches could not be reconciled with this claim, and a second stumbling block was that while Pius VII had promised to send him an envoy and to accept one from him, he seemed to have forgotten or to want to forget this promise after he had made his solemn entry into Rome, for Naples did not refrain from reminding him of it.
King Joachim, once back in his own country and now free of the leash his imperial brother-in-law had been trying to keep him on from Paris for years, showed himself more eager than ever to attend to the welfare and wishes of his Neapolitans. But even now he was not entirely free in his decisions and actions: whereas before it was the French capital that he had to listen to, now it was the allied powers he could not afford to tangle with. This brought him into conflict with a faction in his country that was daily gaining more followers among the higher classes and that wished for the introduction of constitutional institutions; they saw their higher aspiration in the territorial and political unification of Italy, which, however, as the more insightful could not conceal, could not be expected at least under the present circumstances. In this call for the granting of a constitution, many of the higher military officers also joined in, and not only were addresses of such content issued from them, but threats were even made to have the "constitution" proclaimed by the army. The same idea was promoted by the Freemasons in their lodges, of which Lord Bentinck had recently proclaimed himself the protector, and by the numerous Carbonari in tails, while the mass of Carbonari in smocks and jackets were concerned only with the shaking off of French rule and the return of the old ruling house. Murat's courts and military commissions therefore raged against the latter, and time and again there were reports of sentences and executions. The king, on the other hand, was not unwilling to grant the wishes of the former, at least he expressed himself in this sense in trusted circles; he would undoubtedly have won great sympathy among the other Italians and perhaps gained the friendship of England. But the other powers, now that revolutionary France had been crushed and conquered, were most decidedly opposed to everything originating there or otherwise having a liberal tinge.
More than anywhere else, such antagonism existed in Austria, and King Joachim had all the more reason to avoid any kind of confrontation with her, and especially with Emperor Francis, and to avoid anything that might be disagreeable to him, all the more so because the European Areopagus was soon to convene in the imperial capital on the Danube, and the continuation of the Kingdom of Naples in its present form and under its present dynasty depended on its pronouncement.
Awaiting the final decision of the Vienna Congress before deciding upon a constitution surely was not a bad idea. In the years following the Congress, plenty of German states managed to give themselves constitutions despite the suspicious glances from both Austria and Prussia. The three old napoleonic allies Baden and Bavaria (both 1818) and Württemberg (in 1819) were among them. Seems it really only was a question of time and patience.
