If it was to halt the remorseless rise in the number of desertions, then there is little sign it had any demonstrable effect.
Financially the colony was successful, but as there were some desertions and no new recruits after Father Oswald's death, there were few members by 1909.
Invited by Pope Formosus to deliver him from the power of Guido III., duke of Spoleto, who had been crowned emperor, Arnulf went to Italy in 894, but after storming Bergamo and receiving the homage of some of the nobles at Pavia, he was compelled by desertions from his army to return.
Once indeed, in 409, they are said to have crossed the Danube and invaded Bulgaria under perhaps the same chief (Uldin), but extensive desertions soon compelled a retreat.
Abandoned first by England and then by Holland, the emperor, notwithstanding these desertions, still wished to maintain the war in Germany; but Eugene was unable to relieve either Landau or Freiburg, which were successively obliged to capitulate; and seeing the Empire thus laid open to the armies of France, and even the Austrian hereditary states themselves exposed to invasion, the prince counselled his master to make peace.
