The Anglo-Sicilian forces, commanded by Lieutenant General William Bentinck, laid siege to the Ligurian capital, while the Austrians invaded Lombardy in the Italian campaign of 1813–1814.

There he reluctantly signed an armistice with Joachim Murat , whom he personally detested as a man whose "whole life had been a crime", yet whom Britain found it expedient to detach from his brother-in-law, Napoleon, by guaranteeing his Kingdom of Naples in return for an alliance.

[1][2] Having instructed the forces under his command in Sicily to make a landing at Livorno, Bentinck then travelled north, with a day's stop in Rome, to join them.

With 2,000 British troops dispatched towards the city to carry out this threat, the heavily pregnant Elisa had no choice but to abandon the last of her territories and flee north, where she eventually fell into allied hands at Bologna.

Great Britain has landed her troops on your shores; she holds out her hand to you to free you from the iron yoke of Buonaparte...hesitate no longer...assert your rights and your liberty.

It was necessary, he argued, that Tuscany be under British jurisdiction, as otherwise he would have no logistical base from which to conduct future operations - to which Murat replied that it was the same argument on his side which dictated his own necessary possession of it.

On the evening of the 9th, General Pégot, having learned that an Austrian detachment of the corps of Laval Nugent von Westmeath had joined the insurgents at Val Fontanabuona, and seeing that the British continued to fire on Recco and Sori, Liguria, decided to leave his position, overnight.

They fought all day, but the general, finding it impossible to resist, withdrew during the night; he went to occupy the position of Sturla, on the heights of Albaro, with the right to the sea, covered by a battery of 4 artillery pieces, and the left to Fort Richelieu.

This information sparked some demonstrations in the city, and General Fresia considered it his duty to invite the municipality to deploy the Garde Nationale, although there was already some disorder in this body.

When the city surrendered to him on 18 April 1814, he instead proclaimed - contrary to the intentions of the Coalition - the restoration of the Republic of Genoa[19] and the repeal of all laws passed since 1797 , much to the enthusiasm of the Genoese population.

[20] In Genoa meanwhile, on the 24th, he received representations from the provisional government in Milan beseeching Britain's support for the maintenance of an independent Kingdom of Italy rather than the restoration of Austria's rule over Lombardy.

With Napoleon's abdication of both the French and Italian thrones on 11 April, the government in Milan was in search of a new sovereign who would better bolster their chances of survival and, in seeking to bind Britain to their cause, the suggestion was put to Bentinck that Prince Adolphus, Duke of Cambridge, the seventh son of George III, would be a welcome candidate.

In this regard, the Piedmontese general Vittorio Amedeo Sallier della Torre, commander of the Italian Levy of the British army, created a draft of the Constitution in which, looking forward to the union of Piedmont, Liguria and Lombardy, he hoped for a charter that would guarantee a liberal government, although he was a staunch reactionary.

With Napoleon's double abdication on the 11 April however - though the news took time to cross the Alps - Bentinck's capacity to influence events on the ground while, with the war against the Emperor still raging, all was still to a great extent up in the air, largely came to an end.

His erratic behaviour over the recent months had led the Prime Minister Lord Liverpool to brand him simply "mad", and his scope of authority was sharply reduced; though he was not finally dismissed from his grand post as Commander-in-Chief in the Mediterranean until April the following year.