Chapter V

The Neapolitan Royal Family

King Ferdinand the Second, the reigning Prince of Naples at this time, came of bad stock. The reign of his grandfather, Ferdinand the First of Naples and Fourth of the Two Sicilies, of whom King Frederick of Prussia once aptly remarked that he was more fit for a prison cell than a throne, had been one long scandal, and his son, Francis the First, followed faithfully in his father’s footsteps during his short reign (1825-1830). Ferdinand the Second had naturally a good mind, and at the time of his accession to the throne had roused great hopes by the military and financial reforms he introduced and by his wise plans for developing the resources of his impoverished kingdom. This did not last long, however, for he soon began to display the same despotic tendencies that had made his father and grandfather so abhorred by the people, and the older he grew the more marked these became.

The general movement toward liberty that shook Europe in the nineteenth century had not been without its effect, both in Naples and Sicily, as may easily be supposed, considering the harsh rule which the fiery southerners had been forced to endure so long. Ferdinand had succeeded in crushing one violent outbreak in 1848; but beneath the ashes the fire still smouldered, and the inward ferment was constantly increased by the extreme measures to which “Bomba,”[1] as the King was popularly called, resorted, to maintain and strengthen his position. He ruled with a despotism and intolerance that suggested the worst days of the Inquisition. The prisons were full of political “criminals,” whose only crime was the holding of liberal views, or the suspicion of doing so, and these victims were treated with such revolting cruelty as to rouse the horror of the civilized world. In spite of these things, however, Bomba was not without some good qualities. In private life he was both just and temperate, simple in his habits, a good husband and father. He was twice married. His first wife, to whom he was united two years after his accession to the throne, was the Princess Maria Christina of Sardinia—Italy’s “Queen Dagmar”—an angel of goodness and piety. The people called her Saint Christina even during her lifetime, and she was afterward canonized by the Church of Rome. Such a woman could not but exert a beneficial influence over her royal husband; but it was unfortunately of short duration, for she died in 1836, four years after her marriage, leaving a son two weeks old, the Crown Prince Francis Maria Leopold.

Ferdinand had no intention of remaining long a widower. He first wished to marry a daughter of King Louis Philippe of France, but Austria persuaded England to join in defeating this plan, which would have resulted in too powerful a union of the reigning Bourbon families. He then applied for the hand of an Austrian princess, and in 1837 was married to Maria Theresa, daughter of the Archduke Karl, who presented him with five sons and four daughters. In spite of her proud name and lofty lineage, the new Queen was a very ordinary person, though not without some homely virtues. Her horizon was bounded by her family and her household, in the duties of which she took an active part, even mending her children’s clothes with her own hands, it is said; and she seems to have been utterly lacking in the realization that a queen should have other and wider duties than those of a housekeeper. In simplicity of tastes she much resembled her husband, who was most frugal in his mode of living; but she sometimes went so far that even he was annoyed, and one day at dinner he remonstrated with her, saying: “Come, come, Ther! [a nickname he had for her] you will soon be making us wait on ourselves at table!”

The simplest fare was served in the royal household. Macaroni was one of the principal articles of diet, and a favorite dish of the King’s was raw onions, which he peeled with his fingers, declaring that contact with a knife gave them an unpleasant flavor. The Queen, however, never liked Neapolitan cooking and always had some substantial German dishes prepared for herself. She could not speak Italian correctly, but learned only the Neapolitan dialect, which she pronounced in a most dreadful way, with her broad German accent. In short, Ferdinand’s second wife was as unpopular as his first had been popular. She made no effort to win the love of the people and her homely, plebeian ways were little to the taste of the gay Neapolitans, who adored glitter and display of any sort. The King’s favorite recreation was driving. He went out every afternoon, taking some of his family and usually holding the reins himself. The royal equipage was always accompanied by a mounted escort, while horsemen were stationed along the route the King was to take, to detain all chance travellers until he had passed by, not as a mark of respect, but as a measure of precaution.

Exemplary as this royal pair may have been from the standpoint of a private citizen, as far as the education of their children was concerned they were certainly not successful. The teachers they chose were almost exclusively bigoted Jesuits. Ferdinand wished his sons to be taught Latin, French, civil and administrative law, but they received no military training of any kind. Even sports and physical exercises were excluded from their plan of education, nor were they permitted to travel or acquire any knowledge of foreign lands or peoples. Ferdinand’s own education had been most imperfect. He read little or nothing himself and wrote his orders, even those pertaining to important affairs of state, on any scrap of paper that came to hand, sometimes even in the Neapolitan dialect. He regarded all writers and literary men with contempt as an inferior and objectionable race of beings—a curious mixture of pride and prejudice which he also displayed toward people of other nations. He called the English, fishmongers, the French, barbers, the Russians, tallow-eaters, etc. Austrians were the only foreigners of whom he ever spoke with any respect, and that was on his wife’s account. In his younger days he had possessed a fair share of the Neapolitan humor, but it soon degenerated into bitterness and sarcasm.

The following anecdote of him is characteristic. Some public festival was being held in the square in front of the palace and the King was standing on a balcony with the Crown Prince, then still a child. Gazing down on the crowds below and thinking perhaps of the high position to which he would one day be called, the boy turned suddenly to his father with the question:

“What could a King do with all these people?”

“He could kill them all!” replied Ferdinand, then added solemnly, bowing low and crossing himself, “He could, my son, but he would not, out of respect for the holy religion.”

* * * * * * * *

Ferdinand the Second’s system of police and priestly rule did not fail to bear fruit in the shape of numerous uprisings and attempted assassinations that terrorized the last years of his reign. He knew himself to be an object of universal hatred and that hundreds were plotting against his life, and grew more nervous and uneasy every day. Added to these mental anxieties he had acute physical sufferings. The unfortunate prince could find no rest, day or night. At the age of forty-five his hair had turned completely white and he looked like an old man.

His natural tendency toward bigotry increased with illness and worry and he became as superstitious as the most orthodox prince of the Middle Ages. Before mounting a horse he always crossed himself, and he never met a priest or monk on one of his drives without stopping the carriage while he alighted and knelt upon the ground until the holy man had passed. He went frequently to confession and had daily masses read for himself in all the churches. Every night he prayed, rosary in hand, with his wife and children, and before retiring would kiss each of the holy images with which the walls of his bedchamber were adorned. But even these pious observances failed to bring relief. Conscience tortured him, and he sought sleep in vain.

The betrothal of his eldest son and heir to the Bavarian Princess brought a gleam of light into the darkness. The house of Wittelsbach, besides its high rank and antiquity, was strongly orthodox in its Catholicism, a most important item in Ferdinand’s eyes; and the alliance was a strong one politically, for by it his son would become the brother-in-law of the Emperor of Austria, and closely connected also with several others of the reigning houses of Europe. In spite of his state of health, the King had determined to be present at the second and real wedding of Francis and Maria, and succeeded, indeed, in reaching Bari, where the ceremony was to take place; but the fatigue and hardships of a Winter journey over the Apennines were too much for his strength, and he arrived at Bari so ill and exhausted that there was no possibility of his being able to assist in the festivities.

The King ill unto death, the country on the verge of revolution, the royal house and kingdom threatened by enemies at home and abroad—a sorry state of affairs to greet the fair young Bavarian Princess, entering for the first time the land of which she was soon to become the sovereign!