This incident filled the English both at Leghorn and Porto Longone with high gratification, but it was the beginning of new sorrows. The Grand Duke at first laughed at the trick, but the outcries of the Dutch forced him to take a more serious view of the outrage. An act of hasty ill-temper on the part of Captain Appleton gave him an excuse for putting the English captain into prison at Pisa. Later on, he handed him over to Badiley at Porto Longone. The English endeavoured to propitiate the Italian prince by the sentence of a court-martial which removed Appleton from his command. His offence had been that he took a runaway prisoner out of the hands of the duke's sentry on the Mole. But although the Grand Duke professed himself satisfied, and even asked that Appleton might be restored to his command, he was plainly annoyed with the English, and probably very tired of the trouble they were causing him. The urgent appeals of Longland and Badiley for reinforcements from England could not be answered at the very height of the great war. The Grand Duke may perhaps have thought that it was better to make friends of the Dutch. He began to press either for the surrender of the =Phenix= by the English, or for their departure from his port. At last, in March 1653, Badiley decided to wait no longer. Indeed the Grand Duke was showing a temper which made decisive action necessary. Badiley therefore sent orders to Appleton to get ready the two men-of-war, and the four merchant ships, lying within the Mole, to meet him. The Dutch had raised the blockade of Porto Longone, and were concentrated outside Leghorn. The plan of the English commander was that he should appear off the port, and that so soon as he was known to be in the neighbourhood, Captain Appleton was to take the opportunity to slip out by night. Badiley, in the course of a controversy which arose between the two, asserted that he gave strict orders to the effect that the ships within the Mole were not to come out by day unless they saw him engaged with the Dutch. He complained that the sloth of Appleton and his captains spoiled this plan. They did not make the necessary exertions to come out of cover by night. Then their rashness completed what their idleness had begun. They came out in broad daylight, when it was impossible to slip past the Dutch unseen. These two errors were, according to Badiley, the cause of the disaster which ensued. As the English ships came out with a leading wind, they had the Dutch between them and the English ships which had come over from Porto Longone. It was the manifest interest of the enemy to attack the English in detail. Badiley being at the greater distance and to leeward, they naturally attacked Appleton. If they had followed the reverse course, they would have presented the English with an opportunity of concentrating upon them, since Appleton would have had nothing to do but to run down from windward to the assistance of his colleague. The two men-of-war and four armed merchant ships which had come out from Leghorn were easily overpowered by the Dutch. Badiley says he was unable to render Appleton any effectual assistance, and the Council of State seems to have thought that he was telling the truth. The =Leopard= made a stout fight, but the other ships did not offer a prolonged resistance.