In May of 1812, prior to setting off on his cataclysmic invasion of Russia, Napoleon arranged for a conference in Dresden, to be attended by most of the crowned heads of Europe then under his dominion. His intention was to put on such a show of power that Tsar Alexander, to whom Napoleon had sent one of his generals carrying a final ultimatum, would be induced to bend to Napoleon’s will, thus averting war.
What followed, between the 16th and 29th of May, was a series of elaborate banquets, balls, military reviews, and a daily lever at which all the attending monarchs paid a “deference to Napoleon” which “went far beyond anything one could imagine,” as one of the Emperor’s aides put it. “Napoleon was indeed God at Dresden,” recounted another witness to the spectacle, “the king amongst kings: it was on him that all eyes were turned; it was to him and around him that all the august people brought together in the King of Saxony’s palace gathered.” (1)
Among the monarchs attending this pageant of servility were the emperor and empress of Austria, the king and crown prince of Prussia, the king and queen of Westphalia, the king of Württemburg, and the Grand Dukes of Würzburg, Hesse-Darmstadt, and Baden.
Conspicuous by his absence was Joachim Murat, the King of Naples.
It was just the sort of gathering he would have delighted in attending–an opportunity to mingle with this elite set into whose company he, the son of an innkeeper, had been elevated. It was also the sort of gathering from which his deliberate exclusion would be certain to wound his delicate pride. But his exclusion was indeed deliberate: Napoleon outright refused him permission to attend. The two men had been increasingly at odds for most of the last three years, but throughout the previous year especially, Napoleon had been enraged by Murat’s openly insubordinate conduct in his ruling of Naples, finally ceasing to respond to King Joachim’s correspondence altogether. He had finally consented to let a pleading Murat join the army for the coming war with Russia, but the errant King of Naples was to proceed straight to Danzig instead of joining his brother and sister monarchs in Dresden.
General Armand de Caulaincourt details Napoleon’s rocky relationship with Murat at this time:
The King of Naples, who had not received permission to repair to Dresden, ostensibly out of regard for the Emperor of Austria, was waiting there [ed. note: Danzig] for the Emperor Napoleon. On the score that his father-in-law always had Italy much at heart, the Emperor pretended that he did not wish to mar the Emperor Francis’s pleasure at seeing his daughter again by the sight of a sovereign who would only recall painful memories. The truth is that that was a very convenient pretext. The Emperor remarked, in confidence, that he did not want Murat to establish relations with the Austrians, with whom too many ties already existed between the Queen and Metternich. “Murat’s head will be turned if the Emperor of Austria treats him well, and he will be certain to talk all sorts of nonsense….”
(…)
That evening and the next morning the Emperor complained to me of the King of Naples, who, he said, was no longer a Frenchman and had forgotten what he owed to his country and his benefactor. On his side, the King complained to Berthier, Duroc and myself that the Emperor had made him merely a viceroy, an instrument for squeezing money out of his subjects, and so on.
The Emperor welcomed the King quite cordially in public; but taking him aside, undoubtedly to forestall his complaints, he began by scolding and being angry with him. He expostulated with him for his ingratitude, and, at the close of the conversation, he showed both vexation and sentiment–“both necessary in dealing with this Neapolitan Pantaloon,” he told me. “He has a good heart, and at bottom he likes me better than his lazarone. When he sees me he is mine; but away from me, he sides, like all spineless men, with anyone who flatters or makes up to him. If he had come to Dresden his vanity and self-interest would have led him into countless follies in trying to manage the Austrians. His wife is ambitious, and has stuffed his head with foolishness. He wants to have the whole of Italy; that is his dream, and that is what prevents him from wanting the crown of Poland.” (2)
Sources:
(1) Adam Zamoyski, Napoleon: A Life, page 528.
(2) General Armand de Caulaincourt, With Napoleon in Russia: The Memoirs of General de Caulaincourt, Duke of Vicenza, pages 39-40.
Project Murat 
The more I read about the era, the more I feel as if all of Napoleon’s subordinates, as soon as they tried to take care of a foreign region entrusted to them, could not help but be at odds with the emperor in Paris. And it’s always about “squeezing money out of their subjects”. I’ve read the same from Joseph, Eugène and Soult.
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I think the biggest problem was just that Napoleon wasn’t nearly as knowledgeable about the state of things in each part of his empire as he liked to pretend to be. From what I’ve seen, he doesn’t seem to have ever visited Naples after deposing Ferdinand and installing first Joseph then Murat on the throne, and he seemed to have a very unrealistic picture of the economy of the country (especially after the Contintental System started to severely disrupt it). I don’t know much about what Soult and Eugène had to deal with, Joseph obviously had a total quagmire in Spain. But Murat was struggling to make ends meet in Naples while simultaneously scrambling to meet Napoleon’s demands for taxes, pay the arrears for the troops AND pay for the French troops stationed in Naples even though they weren’t even his to command. And he somehow has to do this from collecting taxes from a relatively poor population whose trade has been essentially crippled by the Continental System. Early into Murat’s reign, Napoleon writes him a letter where he says something to the effect of how hurt he is that Murat could display such ingratitude towards his predecessor after Joseph had left Naples in such great shape for him, when the reality was that Joseph had pillaged whatever he could on his way out (and then to make matters worse, he goes on to steal the crown jewels of Spain for good measure, and who gets blamed? Murat). Napoleon was happy to turn a blind eye to Joseph’s misdeeds when it suited him, or when he could just blame Murat instead.
Poor Murat tries so hard, with the help of his finance minister/close friend the Count of Mosbourg, to come up with various schemes to improve his kingdom’s finances, and they typically amount to nothing. It’s a bit of a tragicomedy at times. He visits Paris at one point in 1809 and manages to convince Napoleon to give him some licenses for his merchants to use, and he’s so excited about this concession and convinced it will help turn the economy of Naples around, and then goes back to Naples and finds out they were the wrong licenses and his merchants can’t use them, and he writes to Napoleon in despair. He actually spends a great deal of his own fortune on his kingdom.
I also think a part of Napoleon’s obliviousness to the economic problems not only in Naples, but also in Holland, Italy, and his other satellite kingdoms, was willful. If Eugène, Soult, Joseph, and Murat all viewed themselves as instruments for squeezing money out of their subjects, there was a certain amount of truth to it, because the French treasury had been fairly drained by 1810 because of all the wars, then Napoleon’s second wedding was massively expensive to boot. I think he just plain didn’t want to hear that they didn’t have the money to give him, because the well had run dry in France and he simply didn’t know what else to do (not that he would’ve admitted it).
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I agree that he saw these satellite kingdoms as sources of funds. He wanted the funds to be there as if by magic.
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