Part 94

"Joachim Murat, the new King of Naples, announced his accession to the nation [July, 1808]. 'The august Napoleon,' he said, 'had given him the kingdom of the two Sicilies. Gratitude to the donor, and a desire to benefit his subjects, would divide his heart.' … The commencement of Murat's reign was felicitous; the English, however, occupied the island of Capri, which, being placed at the opening of the gulf, is the key of the bay of Naples. Their presence stimulated all who were averse to the new government, intimidated its adherents, and impeded the freedom of navigation, to the manifest injury of commerce; besides, it was considered disgraceful, that one of the Napoleonides should suffer an enemy so near, and that enemy the English, who were at once so hated and so despised. The indolence of Joseph had patiently suffered the disgrace; but Joachim, a spirited soldier, was indignant at it, and he thought it necessary to commence his reign by some important enterprise. He armed therefore against Capri: Sir Hudson Lowe was there in garrison with two regiments collected from all the nations of Europe, and which were called the Royal Corsican and the Royal Maltese. … A body of French and Neapolitans were sent from Naples and Salerno, under the command of General Lamarque, to reduce the island; and they effected a landing, by means of ladders hung to the rocks by iron hooks, and thus possessed themselves of Anacarpi, though not without great difficulty, as the English resolutely defended themselves. … {1854} The siege proceeded but slowly—succours of men and ammunition reached the besieged from Sicily; but fortune favoured the enemy, as an adverse wind drove the English out to sea. The King, who superintended the operations from the shore of Massa, having waited at the point of Campanella, seizing the propitious moment, sent fresh squadrons in aid of Lamarque, and the English, being already broken, and the forts dismantled, now yielded to the conqueror. The Neapolitans were highly gratified by the acquisition of Capri, and from that event augured well of the new government. The kingdom of Naples contained three classes of people—barons, republicans, and populace. The barons willingly joined the party of the new king, because they were pleased by the honours granted to them, and they were not without hopes of recovering their ancient privileges, or at least of acquiring new ones. … The republicans were, on the contrary, inimical to Joachim, not because he was a king, for they easily accommodated themselves to royalty; but because his conduct in Tuscany, where he had driven them forth or bound them in chains like malefactors, had rendered him personally obnoxious to them. They were moreover disgusted by his incredible vanity, which led him to court and caress with the most zealous adulation every bearer of a feudal title. … The populace, who cared no more for Joachim than they had done for Joseph, would easily have contented themselves with the new government, if it had protected them from the oppressions of the barons, and had procured for them quiet and abundance. But Joachim, wholly intent on courting the nobles, neglected the people, who, oppressed by the barons and soldiery, became alienated from him. … The spirit of discontent was further increased by his introduction of the conscription laws of France. … Joachim, a soldier himself, permitted every thing to his soldiery; and an insupportable military license was the result. Hence, also, they became the sole support of his power, and it took no root in the affections of the people. The insolence of the troops continually augmented not only every desire, but every caprice of the head of a regiment, nay, even of the inferior officers, was to be complied with, as if they were the laws of the realm; and whosoever even lamented his subjection to their will was ill-treated and incurred some risk of being declared an enemy to the King. … The discontents produced by the enormities committed by the troops of Murat gave hopes to the court of Palermo that its fortunes might be re-established in the kingdom beyond the Faro. Meanwhile, the civil war raged in Calabria; nor were the Abruzzi tranquil. In these disturbances there were various factions in arms, and various objects were pursued: some of those who fought against Joachim, and had fought against Joseph, were adherents of Ferdinand,—others were the partisans of a republican constitution. … The sect of the Carbonari arose at this period."

_C. Botta, Italy during the Consulate and Empire of Napoleon, chapter 5._

"The most famous, the most widely disseminated, and the most powerful of all the secret societies which sprang up in Italy was that of the Carbonari, or Charcoal-makers. … The Carbonari first began to attract attention in the Kingdom of Naples about the year 1808. A Genoese named Maghella, who burned with hatred of the French, is said to have initiated several Neapolitans into a secret order whose purpose it was to goad their countrymen into rebellion. They quitted Naples, where Murat's vigilant policy kept too strict a watch on conspirators, and retired to the Abruzzi, where in order to disarm suspicion they pretended to be engaged in charcoal-burning. As their numbers increased, agents were sent to establish lodges in the principal towns. The Bourbon king, shut up in Sicily, soon heard of them, and as he had not hesitated at letting loose with English aid galley-prisoners, or at encouraging brigands, to harass Murat, so he eagerly connived with these conspirators in the hope of recovering his throne. Murat, having striven for several years to suppress the Carbonari, at last, when he found his power slipping from him, reversed his policy towards them, and strove to conciliate them. But it was too late: neither he nor they could prevent the restoration of the Bourbons under the protection of Austria. The sectaries who had hitherto foolishly expected that, if the French could be expelled, Ferdinand would grant them a Liberal government, were soon cured of their delusion, and they now plotted against him as sedulously as they had plotted against his predecessor. Their membership increased to myriads; their lodges, starting up in every village in the Kingdom of Naples, had relations with branch-societies in all parts of the Peninsula: to the anxious ears of European despots the name Carbonaro soon meant all that was lawless and terrible; it meant anarchy, chaos, assassination. But when we read the catechism, or confession of faith, of the Carbonari we are surprised by the reasonableness of their aims and tenets. The duties of the individual Carbonaro were, 'to render to the Almighty the worship due to Him; to serve the fatherland with zeal; to reverence religion and laws; to fulfil the obligations of nature and friendship; to be faithful to promises; to observe silence, discretion, and charity; to cause harmony and good morals to prevail; to conquer the passions and submit the will; and to abhor the seven deadly sins.' The scope of the Society was to disseminate instruction; to unite the different classes of society under the bond of love; to impress a national character on the people, and to interest them in the preservation and defense of the fatherland and of religion; to destroy by moral culture the source of crimes due to the general depravity of mankind; to protect the weak and to raise up the unfortunate. … It went still farther and asserted the un-Catholic doctrine of liberty of conscience: 'to every Carbonaro,' so reads one of its articles, 'belongs the natural and unalterable right to worship the Almighty according to his own intuition and understanding.' We must not be misled, however, by these enlightened professions, into a wrong notion of the real purposes of Carbonarism. Politics, in spite of a rule forbidding political discussion, were the main business, and ethics but the incidental concern of the conspirators. They organized their Order under republican forms as if to prefigure the ideal towards which they aspired. The Republic was subdivided into provinces, each of which was controlled by a grand lodge, that of Salerno being the 'parent.' There were also four 'Tribes,' each having a council and holding an annual diet. {1855} Each tribe had a Senate, which advised a House of Representatives, and this framed the laws which a magistracy executed. There were courts of the first instance, of appeal, and of cessation, and no Carbonaro might bring suit in the civil courts against a fellow member, unless he had first failed to get redress in one of these. … The Carbonari borrowed some of their rites from the Freemasons, with whom indeed they were commonly reported to be in such close relations that Freemasons who joined the 'Carbonic Republic' were spared the formality of initiation; other parts of their ceremonial they copied from the New Testament, with such additions as the special objects of the order called for."

_W. R. Thayer, The Dawn of Italian Independence, book 2, chapter 4 (volume 1)._

ALSO IN: _P. Colletta, History of the Kingdom of Naples, book 7 (volume 2)._

_T. Frost, Secret Societies of the European Revolution, volume 1, chapter 5._

_General Sir H. Bunbury, The Great War with France, page 343, and after._

_The Chevalier O'Clery, History of the Italian Revolution chapter 3._

ITALY: A. D. 1809 (APRIL-MAY). Renewed war of Austria with France. Austrian advance and retreat.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1809 (JANUARY-JUNE).

ITALY: A. D. 1809 (MAY-JULY). Annexation of the Papal States to the French Empire. Removal of the Pope to Savona. Rome declared to be a free and imperial city.

See PAPACY: A. D. 1808-1814.

ITALY: A. D. 1812. Removal of the captive Pope to Fontainebleau.

See PAPACY: A. D. 1808-1814.

ITALY: A. D. 1812. Participation in Napoleon's disastrous Russian campaign.

See RUSSIA: A. D. 1812 (JUNE-SEPTEMBER), and after.

ITALY: A. D. 1813. Participation in the war in Germany.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1813 (APRIL-MAY).

ITALY: A. D. 1814. Desertion of Napoleon by Murat. His treaty with the Allies. Expulsion of the French from the Peninsula.

Murat, king of Naples, "foreseeing the downfall of the Emperor, had attempted to procure from Napoleon, as the price of his fidelity, the union under his own sceptre of all Italy south of the Po; but, failing in this, he prepared to abandon the cause of his benefactor. On the 11th January, 1814, he concluded a treaty with the Allies, by which he was guaranteed possession of Naples; and forthwith advancing on Rome with 20,000 men, occupied the second city in his brother-in-law's empire (January 19); having previously published a flaming proclamation, in which the perfidy and violence of the imperial government were denounced in terms which came strangely from a chief of the Revolution. … At the end of December, 1813, Eugene had withdrawn to the Adige with 36,000 men, before Bellegarde and 50,000 Austrians; and he was already taking measures for a further retreat, when the proclamation of Murat, and his hostile advance, rendered such a movement inevitable. He had accordingly fallen back to the Mincio, when, finding himself threatened on the flank by a British expedition from Sicily under Lord William Bentinck, he determined on again advancing against Bellegarde, so as to rid himself of one enemy before he encountered another. The two armies, however, thus mutually acting on the offensive, passed each other, and an irregular action at last ensued on the Mincio (February 8), in which the advantage was rather with the French, who made 1,500 prisoners, and drove Bellegarde shortly after over the Mincio, about 3,000 being killed and wounded on each side. But, in other quarters, affairs were going rapidly to wreck. Verona surrendered to the Austrians on the 14th, and Ancona to Murat on the 16th; and the desertion of the Italians, unequal to the fatigues of a winter campaign, was so great that the Viceroy was compelled to fall back to the Po. Fouché, meanwhile, as governor of Rome, had concluded a convention (February 20) with the Neapolitan generals for the evacuation of Pisa, Leghorn, Florence, and other garrisons of the French empire in Italy. A proclamation, however, by the hereditary prince of Sicily, who had accompanied Bentinck from Sicily, gave Murat such umbrage that he separated his troops from the British, and commenced operations, with little success, against Eugene on the Po, in which the remainder of March passed away. Bentinck, having at length received reinforcements from Catalonia, moved forward with 12,000 men, and occupied Spezia on the 29th of March, and, driving the French (April 8) from their position at Sestri, forced his way through the mountains, and appeared on the 16th in front of Genoa. On the 17th the forts and positions before the city were stormed; and the garrison, seeing preparations made for a bombardment, capitulated on the 18th, on condition of being allowed to march out with the honours of war. Murat had by this time recommenced vigorous operations, and after driving the French (April 13) from the Taro, had forced the passage of the Stura; but the news of Napoleon's fall put an end to hostilities. By a convention with the Austrians, Venice, Palma-Nuova, and the other fortresses still held by the French, were surrendered; the whole of Lombardy was occupied by the Germans; and in the first week of May the French troops finally repassed the Alps."

_Epitome of Alison's History of Europe, sections 775, and 807-808._

ITALY: A. D. 1814-1815. Return of the Despots. Restoration of Austrian tyranny in the North. The Pope in Rome again.

"With little resistance, Northern Italy was taken from the French. Had it been otherwise, had Murat and Beauharnais joined their forces, they might have long held the Austrians in check, perhaps even have made a descent on Vienna; and although this might not have hindered the ultimate overthrow of Napoleon, yet it must have compelled the Allies, at the day of settlement, to respect the wishes of the Italians. But disunited, and deluded into the belief that they were partners in a war of liberation, the Italians woke up to find that they had escaped from the talons of the French eagle, only to be caught in the clutch of the two-headed monstrosity of Austria. They were to be used, in the language of Joseph De Maistre, like coins, wherewith the Allies paid their debts. This was plain enough when the people of the just-destroyed Kingdom of Italy prepared to choose a ruler for themselves: one party favored Beauharnais, another wished an Austrian prince, a third an Italian, but all agreed in demanding independence. Austria quickly informed them that they were her subjects, and that their affairs would be decided at Vienna. Thus, almost without striking a blow, and without a suspicion of the lot awaiting them, the Northern Italians fell back under the domination of Austria. In the spring and early summer of 1814 the exiled princelings returned: Victor Emanuel I. from his savage refuge in Sardinia to Turin; Ferdinand III. from Würzburg to Florence; Pius VII. from his confinement at Fontainebleau and Savona to Rome.

See PAPACY: A. D. 1808-1814;

{1856}

Francis IV. to Modena. Other aspirants anxiously waited for the Congress of Vienna to bestow upon them the remaining provinces. The Congress … dragged on into the spring of the following year. … In Lombardy and Venetia, Metternich soon organized a thoroughly Austrian administration. The government of the two provinces was separate, that of Lombardy being centred at Milan, that of Venetia at Venice; but over all was placed an Austrian archduke as Viceroy. Each district had its civil and military tribunals, but the men who composed these being appointees of the viceroy or his deputies, their subservience could usually be reckoned upon. The trials were secret, a provision which, especially in political cases, made convictions easy. … Feudal privileges, which had been abolished by the French, could be recovered by doing homage to the Emperor and by paying specific taxes. In some respects there was an improvement in the general administration, but in others the deterioration was manifest. … Art, science, and literature were patronized, and they throve as potted plants thrive under the care of a gardener who cuts off every new shoot at a certain height. … We may liken the people of the Austro-Italian provinces to those Florentine revelers who, at the time of the plague, tried to drive away their terror by telling each other the merry stories reported by Boccaccio. The plague which penetrated every corner of Lombardy and Venetia was the Austrian police. Stealthy, but sure, its unseen presence was dreaded in palace and hovel, in church, tribunal, and closet. … Every police-office was crammed with records of the daily habits of each citizen, of his visitors, his relatives, his casual conversations,—even his style of dress and diet were set down. … Such was the Metternichian system of police and espionage that counteracted every mild law and every attempt to lessen the repugnance of the Italians. They were not to be deceived by blandishments: Lombardy was a prison, Venetia was a prison, and they were all captives, although they seemed to move about unshackled to their work or pleasure."

_W. R. Thayer, The Dawn of Italian Independence, book 2, chapter 2 (volume 1)._

See, also, VIENNA, THE CONGRESS OF; AUSTRIA: A. D. 1815-1846; and HOLY ALLIANCE.

ITALY: (Southern): A. D. 1815. Murat's attempt to head a national movement. His failure, downfall and death. Restoration of the Bourbons at Naples.