Memoirs of Emma, lady Hamilton, the friend of Lord Nelson and the court of Naples; (29 page)

By January 24 the " Parthenopean Republic " had been proclaimed in a town betrayed, against the will of its populace, to a French General. The Tree of Liberty had been planted; the wooden image of the giant, crowned with the red cap of Revolution, had

been set up in full sight of the palace. Every loiterer on the Chiaja wore the tricolor; the Toledo itself rang with the Marseillaise. For a time the enemies of Naples played the part of its deliverers. For the Royalists Naples seemed lost to the Neapolitans; for the Jacobins she appeared the trophy of freedom.

The successive episodes both before and after this terrible transformation scene are a " witches' Sabbath." All of worst and wildest in every class of the population was set loose.

And the royal flight had been a Pandora's box which had let forth the whole brood of winged mischiefs. If the Queen scathed the rebels as parricide poltroons, they, in their turn, branded her as villain, and the King as coward and selfish deserter, at the very moment when the,French had crossed the boundary. But with that invading host most of them were already in collusion; it was the Lazzaroni alone who had the real right of denouncement. No sooner had Pignatelli published the absconded King's proclamation, and placarded the edict appointing him as temporary viceroy, than " chaos was come again." Their rough-and-tumble macaroni-monarch had vanished; their loathed French Revolution was in the air. The French troops were on their insolent march cityward. If the Neapolitan Bourbons were indeed Baal, as the Jacobins averred, there were now few but Lazzaroni to bow the knee; if, the Tree of Liberty, as the loyalists declared it, its votaries might be counted by thousands. But on both sides there was no Elijah — no seer to call down fire from heaven. The flames, so soon to enwrap the stricken city, were those of Mephistopheles.

CHAPTER IX

TRIUMPH ONCE MORE

To August, 1799

"/CONSPIRACIES are for aristocrats, not for § nations," is a pregnant apophthegm of Dis-V^/ raeli. Viewed at its full length and from its inner side, the great Jacobin outburst at Naples was more a conspiracy than a revolution, or even an insurrection.

To appreciate Nelson's part, and Emma's help, in the much-criticised suppression of the Neapolitan Jacobins during June, it behoves us to track, however briefly, the course of that most interesting and singular movement. This is not the occasion for a minute inquiry; but four preliminary considerations must be kept in mind. In the first place, this revolt differs from all others in that it was one of the noblesse and bourgeoisie against the whole mass of the people. In the second, its chief leaders, both men and women (and it is doubly engrossing from the fact that women played a great part in it), confessedly took their lives into their hands. They were quite ready to annihilate the objects of their loathing, and, therefore, they had small right to complain when opportunity transferred to themselves the doom that they had planned for others. They proved fully as much tyrants and tormentors as their sovereign; and the whole conflict was really one between two absolutisms, democratic and bureaucratic—a struggle between extreme systems

exhibiting equal symptoms of the same evil. The " Civic Guard," to be erected by the " Deputies," persecuted just as Maria Carolina's secret police had persecuted before. Acton's exactions were to be outdone by the French Commissary Faypoult's pillage, and the French General Championnet's " indemnities." As for brutality, it was tripled by the new reign of terror, and when Championnet compassed the conciliation of the brave populace, he contrived even to " brutalise miracles." Again, the Neapolitan Jacobins were not only oppressors of all authority, but traitors to the people as well as to the King; while at last they openly confederated with the invaders of their fatherland and of Europe. It was thus that the force and guile of Napoleon trafficked in the reveries of Rousseau.

It is true, nevertheless, that many of them were inspired by noble motives and proved conscientious victims. Such children of light as these redeem the movement as a real step in the progress of law to liberty. Some were lofty idealists, while others, however, dreamed of realising theories impossible even in Cloud-Cuckoo-land. Savants and ignoramuses, philanthropists and cosmopolitans abounded. But the majority were actuated by very personal motives, and inspired by overweening ambitions. None of them, not the noblest, were orginative. All were under the spell of France; the worst, under that of French gold; the best, under that of French sentiment. And, before the close, there were very few even among the least practical who did not rue the day when they invited self-interest masquerading as friendship, and opened their gates and their hearts to the busybodying emissaries of the Directory. The very name of Fay-poult soon became more odious than the fact of Ferdinand.

Once more, just as the contemporary Jacobins confounded license with freedom, and ascribed to paper constitutions the virtues of native patriotism, so the more modern Italians have always, and naturally, viewed in the blood of these martyrs the seed of United Italy. It is a legend ineradicable from history; and, after the same manner, William Tell is made by Schiller the prophet of United Germany. Yet, in the main, a legend it remains. The " Parthenopean Republic " was a venture purely local, unillumined by any vision of broadened or strengthened nationality. What was not French in its fantasies, was derived from the models of ancient Rome. Nothing was farther from the aspirations of the Neapolitan Jacobins from December, 1798, up to June, 1799, than the ideal of one confederated commonwealth. Like the Ligurian Republic, the Neapolitan was the creature of France. Through France it rose; through France it fell. And it is not a little curious that, some sixty years later, it was to the third Napoleon once more that many in Italy looked up for regeneration.

" II merto oppresso,—il nazional mendico, Carco d'onor e gloria ogni straniero "

had been Eleonora de Fonseca Pimentel's lament to the King in 1792. By the revival alone of national institutions, expressing national character, could a natural elasticity be restored. A theoretic and anti-national uprising actually deprived Naples of those enlightened schemes by which in her prime Maria Carolina had sought to renovate her people. She had cut the claws of the enraged nobles by abolishing their feudal prerogatives. She had sought to improve the superstitious Lazzaroni by projects of industry and education. She had exalted the applauding students into an aristocracy of talent. But it was as puppets

dancing on her own wires that she had benefited them all. And the result showed that their real resentment was against any dependence whatever and any pauperisation. Whether by democracy or by bureaucracy, they refused to be transformed. From the feudal baron to the pagan beggar, each class wished to keep its distinctive flavour, and to live by its instincts. The " intellectuals "—a small remnant—were the sole cosmopolitans. They tried to transfigure Naples into Utopia, and for that purpose invited a foe that forsook them. Denationalism (or a-nationalism) failed; Naples remained Naples still. But the miserable alternative proved the grinding sway of an avenging tyrant, bereft by rebellion of his old jollity, and un-tempered by the earlier intellectualism of his now fanatical wife.

The Revolution presents the spectacle of characteristic class-instincts in orgy. It was a protest far more against Acton's bureaucratic routine than against monarchy. Its eruptions were those of its physical surroundings. It was a Vesuvius, with all its attendants of whirlwind, earthquake, and waterspout. The light of heaven was blotted out from the firmament, molten lava seared the whole social landscape, and the deeps of unbridled instinct shook in the tornado.

Prince Pignatelli proved himself little but driftwood on the deluge. After conceding the Jacobin demands, he proceeded to gratify the Lazzaroni's. He ended by pleasing none; the " Eletti" nullified his office, of which the King said they deprived him. He opened with the usual paper-constitution. A " civic guard " was formed, the military and civil functions were divided, a chamber of " deputies " was constituted. Nominally, the elective system had been restored. But the first act of the new body was to abolish their

viceroy's own provisions. They decreed that henceforward royal power should devolve on two authorities alone—a chamber of nobles, and themselves, the " Patriots "; the really popular element was thus excluded, and the real power became vested in a " Venetian Oligarchy." Pignatelli was rendered a cipher, and the Lazzaroni, who, strange to relate, proved themselves the sole realities in a limbo of phantoms, were furious at their own incapacitation. Pignatelli at once burned one hundred and twenty bombardier boats—a work of needless destruction completed by Commodore Campbell, to Nelson's disgust, some few months later; Count Thurn—our watchman of a fortnight ago—blew up two vessels and three frigates. Amid this flare and detonation were born the calamity and carnage that succeeded. Alarm was the prelude to violence, and violence to panic. Ere long, the powerless Pignatelli offered the French a truce in his alarm, and fled to Sicily, where he was imprisoned, but soon released. Save for the Lazzaroni, Naples was without authority or governance, and lay exposed a helpless prey to the common enemy.

Two striking scenes happened within three weeks, and in that short but crowded period formed the denouements of two separate acts in the drama. Both of them passed under the patronage of St. Januarius, whose sanction, as declared by the Archbishop Zurlo, was always law to the Lazzaroni. They may serve as landmarks before a miniature of what led to them is attempted. The recital (though there are many Italian authorities for the whole history) is most vividly given by a contemporary who cannot be accused of partiality to the Lazzaroni. The future General Pepe was then a stripling of revolutionary enthusiasm, and one of the first recruits in the new and transitory " civic guard."

On the night of January 15 a strange sight might

have been viewed in the cathedral. The proud and brave Prince Moliterno, among the few distinguished in the late humiliating campaign, and just chosen by the Lazzaroni as their chief, wended his way, barefooted, with bowed head and in penitential tatters, towards the glimmering altar, and on his knees besought leave of the venerable archbishop to harangue the people. In that procession of St. Januarius this grandee was the humblest and perhaps the saddest. The French general was already encamped before Capua. Moliterno rallied the Lazzaroni and assured them that he would lead them victorious against the foe. Four days afterwards they were betrayed to the patriots.

Only a week later, and yet another and even stranger tableau happened in the same spot, for St. Januarius haunts the Neapolitan Revolution. A second solemn procession was formed, but by this time Championnet and his French troops had advanced to Naples. During the morning he had addressed the assembled people in the stately hall of San Lorenzo. His speech had been a string of fair-weather promises, not one of which was kept. In the evening he steps cathedralward on one side of the archbishop, the clever general Mac-donald and the mocking French commissary Abrial, on the other. The prelate holds aloft the sacred relics and the miraculous ewer. Priests, nobles, " patriots," and a vast throng of Lazzaroni march in his wake. Suddenly a halt is called. The fate of Naples trembles in the balance. All depends on whether the blood of the saint shall announce by its liquefaction to his believers that Heaven favours the French Republic. Archbishop Zurlo raises the crystal basin. The saint's blood is obdurate, and still monarchical. Macdonald holds a concealed but significant pistol. Championnet whispers, your miracle or your life! The terrorised ecclesiastic announces the prodigy to the crowd. St.

Januarius, then, is a democrat. The Lazzaroni shout in their thousands, " Long live St. Januarius! long live his republic! " The trick is palmed off successfully on the credulous populace, and Championnet with Mac-donald returns chuckling to St. Elmo. But miracle or no miracle, the end of this coarse jugglery was civil war.

The two intervals must now be briefly supplied.

On January 12 Pignatelli, from the first hampered by the Deputies, negotiated secretly and in panic with the enemy, by this time possessed of the chief provincial fortresses, as the " patriots " were of the Neapolitan. The Lazzaroni, however, were staunch, so that the French commissaries despatched next day by Championnet to receive their first payment were forced to return. The whole first episode is the triumph of the Lazzaroni. Reinforcements, under General Naselli, reached them from Palermo, and they attacked the quailing " civic guard," composed mainly of " intellectuals " and professionals. They seized the " patriots' " arms, the troops and the castles surrendered to them; they opened the prisons and the galleys. They dismayed the " patriots," while the town shuddered under the license of their patrols. On the whole, however, their moderation at first was extraordinary. Pepe, himself their captive, bears it especial witness in recounting how they disdained the money offered by his relations and released him unharmed. The Lazzaroni adored Prince Moliterno and his colleague in leadership, the Duke of Roccaromana. They would gladly have died for these, as for the Duke della Torre and Clemente Filomarino, their associate. But when they discovered that the leading magnates were already treating with the national foe and combining to yield General Championnet and his French troops admittance, their wrath knew no bounds. It was fanned by

the priests, who vociferated against the Neapolitan foes of Naples from their pulpits. Even Moliterno and Roccaromana were now suspected by their mob-followers of Jacobinism. In an access of mad resentment the Lazzaroni fired the Duke della Torre's palace, piled and burned its treasures, and dragged forth both him and the luckless Clemente Filomarino, to be roasted alive on the pyre. These atrocities culminated in the first scene that has just been described.

The Lazzaroni's suspicions were well founded. On January 19, their hitherto trusted Roccaromana himself betrayed them. By complot with the " patriots " he entered the fort of St. Elmo, and won over its commandant to his stratagem. The Lazzaroni garrison were sent out of their quarters, ostensibly to buy provisions for the approaching siege. On their return they were suddenly disarmed. The tricolor standard was hoisted as a signal to Championnet, encamped with his legions in the " Largo della Pigna." By Pepe's own confession, the Lazzaroni, deserted and defrauded, evinced a " marvellous intrepidity." Against desperate odds they stood their ground. Only a fortnight before, they had seen of what poor stuff the " civic guard " had been made. But sturdier " patriots " than weak-kneed students now garrisoned St. Elmo. Overwhelming numbers soon closed the conflict.