AN ACCOUNT OF THE REVOLUTION OF NAPLES

DURING THE YEARS 1798, 1799.

[The present state of commotion at Naples invites us to extract from a manuscript historical Work, the following narrative of the vicissitudes of that kingdom during the years 1798 and 1799.]

SINCE the first years of the French Revolution, the French and English interference in the affairs of independent kingdoms gave rise to the calamitous diffidence with which, thenceforth, the Neapolitans, as well as other nations, have regarded their princes, and believed them bound in a conspiracy against the liberty and national independence of their own subjects. Bonaparte having usurped the right of dictatorship over Europe, his conquerors divided it among themselves, in order to rule all the smaller states, and planned the present international law, which is now driving populous countries to insurrections so unforeseen as to excite the apprehension of a renewal of the abuse of force, and the contempt of justice. Those who come after us will, in like manner, be blinded by their own errors, while, in the full confidence of wisdom, they wonder at those of their forefathers. History, while it teaches us to pity or despise mankind, unhappily seems to be incapable of practically warning us in the regulation of our own conduct; for we repent only after experience, and constantly act according to existing passions Nevertheless as those princes are still living, who with their ministers and subjects were overwhelmed in the vortex of past convulsions, and as it seems that, in spite of the expedients resorted to by the European rulers, those convulsions are on the eve of returning, it may not be altogether useless to account for their miseries, and to retrace their folly, although a just sense of its horrors and ridicule should be awakened only in the speculative part of mankind.

The House of Austria had scarcely sent one of its daughters to be the wife of a Bourbon possessor of the throne of Naples, before the young Queen, in contradiction to the law of the family, demanded, and obtained, the privilege of assisting at the Council of State. Ferdinand IV., like most of his race, justified the remark of the ancient poet, who, presaging the calamities of his country, exclaimed, that the posterity of Hugh Capet had neither the strength to do, nor to prohibit, evil.* The Queen feared the King's ancient counsellors, despised her subjects, was hated by them, and encircled herself with foreign favourites from all nations, who regarded the state as their prey. They organized a body of lawyers, to hunt out all the lands which might appertain to the crown by virtue of the affinity between the new Bourbons, and those who had reigned in the thirteenth

century at Naples. The deeds of royal grants had been lost through the lapse of ages, and the public archives had been burnt in times of insurrection and warfare; so that many communities and families were obliged to make restitution of property after a possession of four or five centuries. The court secretly appropriated the stock deposited by private persons in the bank; but the value of paper currency having fallen into depreciation by the stoppage of cash payments, they projected its replacement by the sale of the lands of religious houses recently suppressed. The estates of the Jesuits in Sicily, during the first year of the royal administration, produced one hundred and fifty thousand crowns; in the second, seventy thousand; and in the third, forty thousand and they were sold according to a valuation founded upon the last rental; yet the price of corn was during the same time continually increasing. Even these supplies likewise were squandered by the court; and they still continued the secret fabrication of bank notes which their brokers realized at any price. Another of the governments now existing in Italy, by becoming a principal in the practice of stock-jobbing, is bringing about a general bankruptcy of its subjects. At length (which, if Italy ever obtains a better system of laws, will never be believed unless the documents are preserved,) they made the King sign an edict, by which, while it inculcated "the necessity of a reformation of public morals, and the enforcement of the sumptuary laws of their forefathers," his subjects were desired "to bring their plate into the public treasury," and received bank-notes in exchange.

At the same time, another daughter of Maria Theresa, in consequence of similar acts of dilapidation, (with which she was, however, less justly chargeable) and with the same total absence of all shame in the counsellors of Louis XVI., was exposed to the scandal of a public trial in France, and became the suspected accomplice of a swindler, together with a libertine cardinal, a mountebank such as Cogliostro, and a profligate female favourite. The people judged not by what was the fact, but by what the world said of it; and their opinions, which in a season of tranquillity may be despised, are nevertheless formidable on the eve of commotions, when it is by the multitude that all things are accomplished. The contempt of the royal family perhaps accelerated the Revolution; and as soon as the people came to believe that they might find revenge in carnage for the misfortunes into which the depravation of the great had plunged them, they assisted at the death of their King, sacrificed by Robespierre in violation of a law which Robespierre himself had made; and the Queen was delivered up to the same executioner. Grief and terror excited in the queen of Naples the desire of avenging her sister. In several of her subjects she dreaded so

many rebels. Her chief favourite, an Englishman, named Acton, became prime-minister, and governed her by irritating and flattering all her passions. He terrified her with the exaggeration of plots and conspiracies, which were never legally punished, either because the proofs could not be obtained, or from a design to keep up terror in the princes and in the nation. Many individuals were imprisoned, and some of them condemned, upon the evidence of secret depositions. Courtiers with their bankers, spies, lawyers, false witnesses, and auctioneers, divided the produce of confiscations. The persecution ceased, because the chief of the inquisition, whose name was Vanni, a gloomy fanatic, in an excess of humiliation occasioned by the insults of Acton, was assailed by remorse, and put an end to his life, after having written with his own hand a letter, in which he warned his colleagues of the perfidy of the court, and the dangers of political inquisitors.

The other branch of the Bourbons reigning in Spain, having withdrawn from the coalition, advised his brother to preserve a strict neutrality, and never to listen to the English. The trade of the two Sicilies, although merely a trade with the countries which supplied that kingdom with manufactures, was compensated by the exportation of oil and grain to Provence, a country which, being afterwards unable to obtain those commodities from its neighbours, carried on that branch of commerce with the ships of the Levant. The Queen opened Naples to the speculations of the English. Meanwhile, hatred of the French, on account of their massacres and their irreligion, was all powerful with the people; and the better educated classes feared the ravages of foreign armies. The nation still continued attached to the memory of Charles III., the wisest of its sovereigns; and the veneration for the father excited compassion for the son, whose misfortunes were ascribed to Acton. Upon the news of Nelson's victory at Aboukir, Naples entered boldly into the coalition against France. The Austrian ministry was then unable to guess, and perhaps has not yet well understood, why the army of Naples commenced hostilities five months before the Allies. The Queen persuaded Ferdinand that, in case he occupied the Papal territories without the assistance of the other powers, he should have the right to keep them. Pius VI. was then on the eve of expiring in the prisons of the Directory, and the cardinals were dispersed. Even before the fall of Pius, and the peace of Campo Formio, Acton had solicited for Naples the half of the states of the Church.* Those who were best ac

"Le Roi de Naples m'a même déjà fait faire des propositions. Mais sa Majesté ne voudroit avoir rien moins que la Marche d'Ancône."-Bonaparte's Letter to the Directory from Milan, May 26, 1797. And in a subsequent Letter to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, September 13, 1797.-" Vous trouverez ci-joint la Lettre en réponse

quainted with the court secrets, added, that at the eve of the new war in Italy, the Queen was unwilling to give time to the Russians to dispose of this conquest, wishing to reserve it for the House of Austria, the chiefs of which family still assumed to themselves the title of Cæsar, and King of the Romans. Joseph II. and Leopold II. had lately decided the ancient question, by denying to the Pope the right of temporal power. It is, nevertheless, beyond all doubt, that these premature hostilities were the result of English diplomacy. To amass money was then the chief object of the French rulers, and they actually treated for the sale of their Italian conquests to Austria. The English, on the other hand, dreaded the extinction of the continental war. Admiral Nelson made an attack on the Isle of Gozzo, and professed to conquer Malta in the name of his Sicilian Majesty, who, in the opinion of a celebrated writer," had no better title to it than France."*

It seems to me that, instead of canvassing the rights of possession, it is by far more useful to inquire into the ways by which governments increase their acquisitions. Malta was conquered from the Arabs by the Normands in 1090; and in 1196, came to Frederick Barbarossa; and after him to Frederic II., by inheritance. This emperor resided in Sicily, and having in 1224 subdued a city in Calabria, sent the inhabitants to repeople the Island of Malta, which had been desolated by the civil wars of that age. His son Manfred was excommunicated by the Pope, who gave his estates to Charles, brother of St. Louis of France, and, in 1268, Charles ratified the concession by defeating Prince Conradin and the Duke of Austria (who were the lawful heirs), and causing them to be beheaded, as guilty of high treason against the Church. The French were soon after, in 1280, driven out by the Sicilian Vespers, and by John de Procida, who proclaimed Peter of Arragon, husband of Manfred's daughter, king. Malta, which till that time had been oppressed by the feudatories of the old and new sovereigns of Sicily, paid 30,000 florins, was annexed to the crown, and obtained all the privileges of a Sicilian city. Charles V., having inherited the estates of Arragon, but without troops or money for their defence, ceded the sovereignty of Malta in 1530, to the Knights of St. John, who had just been driven out of Rhodes by the Turks. He imposed on them the conditions of making perpetual war on the Barbary States; of having always a native of Italy for their admiral; of not choosing

aux ouvertures qui ont été faites par M. Acton. La Cour de Naples ne rêve plus qu'accroissement et grandeur: elle voudroit d'une coté Corfou, Zante, Cephalonie, &c.; de l'autre la moitié des Etats du Pape, et specialement Ancône. Ces pretentions sont trop plaisantes: je crois qu'elle veut en échange nous donner l'Ile de l'Elbe."

SOUTHEY's Life of Nelson. An. 1798.

their bishop without the approbation of the King of Sicily; of preserving the liberties of the inhabitants; and of presenting the annual homage of a falcon to the king. The French Directory having delivered up all the shores of the Adriatic to the House of Austria, by the treaty of Campo Formio, endeavoured to seize upon Malta, lest the Emperor, by possessing himself of it, should become a maritime power; and the new Grand Master of the Order being an Austrian subject, Talleyrand, then minister of foreign affairs, urged the expediency of the occupation of the island.* The knights capitulated with Bonaparte in 1798 without fighting, because he had already caused a large part of their property in different countries to be sequestrated. They stipulated with him for some allowance, and required in favour of their subjects the liberties which they had trampled upon till that time. The French went on plundering churches, palaces, and cottages, till the people, encouraged by the proclamations of the English, and by the agents of the Court of Naples, revolted; and being unable to massacre the enemy, pillaged and killed some of their fellow-citizens. Meanwhile, Paul I. (although the Order was obliged by its institutions to hold in abhorrence all heretics and schismatics) declared himself Grand Master, put on the robes of that office, and bestowed his blessing on the knights both new and old, Lady Hamilton being also decorated with knighthood. The English took possession of the island in the name of the Allies, but hoisted their own flag. By the treaty of Amiens, England engaged, in 1802, to restore it to the knights, who were then to concede to the inhabitants certain privileges stipulated in the same treaty, in addition to those anciently acquired. The Maltese, or their leaders, either willingly from their own experience, or under the recommendation of those who held their country in military occupation, preferred reliance on British generosity, and demanded not to be remitted to their ancient masters. Their petition had more weight in London than the treaty which had been signed by all the powers of Europe, especially as Bonaparte renewed the sequestration of the property of the order, which he professed his willingness to protect. England continued to keep Malta, at the desire of the inhabitants, and for the good of Europe, towards which, according to Pitt and Bonaparte, a new war had become indispensably necessary; till at length, at the peace of 1814, Malta was left to belong to its then actual possessor, who still con

"Depuis que l'ordre de Malta s'est donné un Grand Maître Autrichien, M. de Hompesch, le Directoire s'est déjà confirmé dans le soupcon, déja fondé sur d'ancien renseignement que l'Autriche vis à s'emparer de cette île. Elle cherche à se faire puissance maritime dans la Mediterranée."- Talleyrand's Letter to Bonaparte, September 23, 1797.