Memoirs of Emma, lady Hamilton, the friend of Lord Nelson and the court of Naples; (34 page)

From the confusipns of many documents the situation can be clearly discerned. Mejean's main thought was for his own garrison. Capua still held out, and till it fell he disdained to surrender. His threats to bombard the town embarrassed Nelson alike and Ruffo; and, indeed, they were more than threats for an intermittent fire from St. Elmo nightly terrified Naples. Though Mejean had dictated the patriots'

capitulation, he had restricted himself to a precarious armistice. Micheroux praised his nobility and moderation, but he was not above the possibility of a bribe, and he was perhaps indifferent to the fate of the rebels so long as he could stave off his own surrender. They on their side were willing to sacrifice the lives of the hostages for the security of their compact. One is driven to suspect that it was through Micheroux and Ruffo that they came to believe that Nelson had suddenly and entirely changed his mind. On June 25, Ruffo even in offering them the choice of departure had warned them that Nelson refused to recognise their compact, and was master of the sea. That the next day they were misled by somebody into thinking that the treaty would be respected appears from a letter in July of ex-Commandant Aurora to Nelson, where he states his belief " in common with the garrison " of being " taken to Toulon." But their mis-leader was not Nelson. If they could be persuaded that in yielding they were free to go, the odium of consequences would be cast on the British Admiral.

Early on June 26 Hamilton informed Ruffo that Nelson had " resolved to do nothing that might break the armistice "; and this Nelson confirmed with his own hand.

Awaiting the King's mandate, he now humoured the Cardinal and forebore to attack the rebels, even while concerting measures against the French. His letter to Ruffo of June 26 breathes not a word about the capitulation, and a day earlier, Ruffo had handed Nelson's ultimatum to the castles. Nelson, it was afterwards alleged, signified in writing to Micheroux that he would carry out the treaty. But Micheroux owns that these declarations were unused, averring that his agent took over Castel Uovo, and the rebels marched out with honours of war. Troubridge, an eye-witness, is silent

on these points, all of which Mr. Gutteridge traverses. Ruffo's own construction, however, of Nelson's promise was evidenced by a service of thanksgiving. That evening, Troubridge and Ball with 500 marines occupied the castles. Next day they made short work of the Jacobin insignia. They hewed down the Tree of Liberty and the red-capped giant. Rejoicing pervaded the town. The castle flags were expected on board the Fondroyant.

Ruffo, safe as he now felt from the King's certain anger, expressed his gratitude to Emma and her husband. Hamilton answered civilly, and his wife, who had been slaving at correspondence, must have rejoiced. Nelson was bound by no conditions whatever. If, as seems doubtful, he authorised the notice (attributed by Sacchinelli to Troubridge) that he would not oppose the embarkation, he went no further. A small quota of polaccas awaited the refugees. For the present, Nelson pledged his word that he would not molest them. But he promised no more. The day before, Acton was informing Hamilton that the King might very soon come in person, and that the Cardinal was probably at the end of his tether; while on the next he wrote rejoicing that the " infamous capitulation " had been rescinded. If Ruffo persisted, he must be arrested and deposed, and a direct communication from the King must by this time have reached Nelson. It reached him on June 28. Nelson at once ordered the Seahorse off to Palermo for the King's service, and he now distinctly warned the rebels that they " must submit to the King's clemency " under " pain of death."

It was this letter that decided the doom of the miserable patriots who, under these circumstances, had been caught in a death-trap. Had the King's directions been deferred Nelson would have stayed his hand.

As it was, the rebels instead of seeing the capitulations executed, were executed themselves. His warnings of June 25 and 28 had been disregarded by those who were somehow misled by his action next morning, which was designed to keep Ruffo quiet. Years afterwards, Nelson affirmed in a document dictated to Lady Hamilton : " I put aside the dishonourable treaty, and sent the rebels notice of it. Therefore, when the rebels surrendered, they came out of the castles as they ought, without any honours of war, and trusting to the judgment of their sovereign." And the British Government in October, 1799, fully endorsed Nelson's policy.

The King's good nature had hitherto been proverbial; it was the Queen and Acton who had hitherto shared the odium of repression. But Ferdinand was now at length his own master, and his latent cruelty emerged the more savage because it had been long in abeyance, and he had now heavy scores to settle with fawning courtiers and spurious loyalists. No quarter was to be given to these false prophets; not a man of them was to escape. In the ensuing hecatomb' of slaughter the Queen acted from policy rather than revenge, while Emma was so compassionate that she thought it necessary to reason with her.

In Hamilton's missive to Acton of the following day—June 27 —occurred a significant sentence :—

" Captain Troubridge is gone to execute the business, and the rebels on board of the polaccas cannot stir without a passport from Lord Nelson."

The heartrending scenes that shortly ensued may be inferred from the numerous documents transcribed in Mr. Gutteridge's masterly volume. The few appeals to Emma's intercession given in the Morrison papers and by Pettigrew must stand for many more. It is not a creditable contrast, that of the misery of Naples

with the triumphal salvos and Te Deum at Palermo. Vce Victorious!

That very night thirteen chained rebels were brought on board. The next clay, the passengers awaiting deliverance in fourteen polaccas found themselves bondsmen in Nelson's ships. Nelson certainly did not underdo his part of avenging angel—the part of what the Queen styled his " heroic firmness." He was St. Michael against the seven devils of Jacobinism, and the whole iron vials 6f retribution were poured forth. He represented a King who had wronged before in his turn he had been wronged, and who had hoarded his injuries.

'While the crowd on the quays vociferated with joy, it was not long before the dungeons of the fleet reechoed to the groans and curses of ensnared and intercepted patriots. Emma must have shuddered as she kept to her cabin and tried to write to her Queen.

The thirteenth of the thirteen confined in the Foudroyant on that 2/th of June, was Caracciolo. He had not been included in any amnesty. On the cession of the castles he had fled to the mountains, but had been dragged from his lair by a dastardly spy. Pale, ashamed, and trembling, unwashen and unkempt, he stood silent before the stern Nelson and Troubridge. Who could recognise in this quailing figure the proud son of a feudal prince, the commodore who had learned seamanship in England, the trusted adherent who had gone to Naples such a short time since apparently loyal, only to become Admiral of the rebel navy?

He had fired on his King's colours.

That was the sole thought in the breasts of the grim sailors who confronted him.

Such a catastrophe inspires horror, but of all the victims that were soon to glut the scaffold, Caracciolo had least the excuse of oppression. Many had been

forced by the French into tempting posts on the provisional administration. Such, for example, was the errant but charming Domenico Cirillo, for whom Emma was to plead so warmly. Others, again, had been heroic. 'Such was Eleonora de Pimentel.

But Caracciolo, though he set up the plea of duress, had purposely left Sicily. He was powerful, he was trusted, and he had proved disloyal. He has figured as an old man bowed with years and care. He was still in the prime of life. He has been pictured as a veteran Casabianca. To Nelson he was a rat who left what he supposed was a sinking ship. It might be pleaded as a further extenuation that his estates had been ravaged, and that his hapless family was large. But every one's property had been plundered by the French, and not every one had turned rebel. And yet despair should always command pity, and the despair of treachery, perhaps, most of all, for it is the torment of a lost soul. Had Caracciolo lived under Nero, he might have died by himself opening a vein, like Vestinus. But, on the other hand, the great evil of unconstitutional monarchy lies in its proneness to visit crime with crime; as Tacitus has put it: " Scelera scele-ribus tuenda."

The imagination of cherishing Italy and of free England has long enshrined him as the type of Liberty sacrificed in cold blood to Despotism, as innocent and murdered.

In England this idea mainly originated in the generous eloquence of Charles James Fox, who loved freedom, it is true, but loved politics also; that Fox, be it remembered, who, when in power, once politely told his Catholic supporters, in opposition, to go to the devil. More than sixty years later, the attitude of a section towards the case of Governor Eyre and the negroes presents a close analogy to the attitude of the

same section towards the case of Nelson and Carac-ciolo.

Caracciolo had fired on his King's colours. From the yard-arm of that frigate he must hang. So thought his captors; so, perchance, thought Caracciolo as his ashy lips refused the relief of words. Nelson had himself requested Ruffo to deliver Caracciolo into his hands instead of sending him to be tried at Procida. He was not rhadamanthine, but he was an English Admiral; and the English had killed even Admiral Byng, whose crime—if crime it was—was a trifle compared with Caracciolo's. " To encourage the others," said Voltaire; " as an example," said Nelson.

The next day Caracciolo was " tried." Emma never beheld him. The process was short and sharp. He was condemned. Caracciolo was guilty before trial, but this summary trial was a farce. It would have been far juster—though the issue was undoubted— if Caracciolo had passed the ordeal of impartial judges. His Neapolitan inquisitors refused him the death of a gentleman, or even a day's reprieve for his poor soul's comfort. In vain the Hamiltons supplicated Nelson for these fitting mercies. Naturally humane, he was here relentless. He was neither lawyer nor priest. He had not been his judge. Caracciolo's own peers had pronounced him guilty of death, and Nelson sentenced him.

Caracciolo had fired at the Minerva, now commanded by our old friend Count Thurn, the sentinel of last December.

On June the 28th, at about five of the afternoon, the scarecrow of sedition swung, lashed to the Minerva's gallows. Though imprisonment, as was first suggested, would have been far humaner and wiser, Nelson might have echoed Homer's line: " So perish all who do the like again."

The bay was alive with hundreds of boats crowded with thousands of loyalists. For two full hours he dangled in sight of a gloating mob, before the rope was cut, and its grisly burden dropped into the sea. As the big southern sun dipped suddenly below the waves which had once witnessed the revel by which Nero had enticed his own mother to destruction, one by one the little lights of boats and quays began to glimmer, the scent of flowers was wafted, the bells of church towers tolled over the ghostly waters. The shore was thronged with eager spectators, gesticulating, applauding, pointing at the mast where Carac-ciolo had expiated his treason.

Mejean had himself broken the truce by assailing the city with his fusillade. Nelson now attacked St. Elmo, while Troubridge, with his troops, invested it by land. Its fall was timed to greet the King's arrival.

The Seahorse brought him, together with Acton and Castelcicala, on the night of the 9th to the channel of Procida, where they awaited Nelson. Next morning they stepped together on to the deck of the Foudroyant. As the Admiral and his guests sailed into the gulf before the last shot had reduced the stronghold on the hill, the sea bristled with the barques, the two banks of the Chiaja with the dense array of his welcomers. At ten o'clock he anchored. The boom of cannon, the noise of batteries, the " shouts of Generals " acclaimed the restoration of the King amid the salutes of victory. The King had at last come to his own again. But, as Emma wrote, " II est bon[ne] d'etre chez le roi, mais mieux d'etre chez soi[t]." She had toiled like a Trojan. " Our dear Lady," wrote Nelson a week later to her mother, " La Signora Madre," " has her time so much taken up with ex-

cuses from rebels, Jacobins, and fools, that she is every day most heartily tired. ... I hope we shall very soon return to see you. Till then, recollect that we are restoring happiness to the Kingdom of Naples and doing good to millions." " The King," wrote Emma gravely, pouring out, two days afterwards, her triumphs to Greville, who must have opened wide his eyes as he read, " has bought his experience most dearly, but at last he knows his friends from his enemies, and also knows the defects of his former government, and is determined to remedy them; . . . his misfortunes have made him steady, and [to] look into himself. The Queen is not yet- come. She sent me as her Deputy ; for I am very popular, speak the Neapolitan language, and [am] considered, with Sir William, the friend of the people. The Queen is waiting at Palermo, and she has determined, as there has been a great outcry against her, not to risk coming with the King; for if he had not succeeded [on] his arrival, and not been well received, she wou'd not bear the blame or be in the way." " But"—and here we catch the true beat of Emma's heart—" But what a glory to our good King, to our Country, that we —our brave fleet, our great Nelson—have had the happiness of restoring the King to his throne, to the Neapolitans their much-loved King, and been the instrument of giving a future good and just government to the Neapolitans! . . . The guilty are punished and the faithful rewarded. I have not been on shore but once. The King gave us leave to go as far as St. Elmo's, to see the effect of the bombs! I saw at a distance our despoiled house in town, and Villa Emma, that have been plundered. Sir William's new apartment—a bomb burst in it! It made me so low-spirited, I don't desire to go again.

" We shall, as soon as the Government is fixed,