Memoirs of Emma, lady Hamilton, the friend of Lord Nelson and the court of Naples; (30 page)

Meanwhile Championnet had waved his flag of truce in response to the three-coloured ensign, and while the Lazzaroni hung back tricked and abashed, he entered the city. He at once made " an affectionate discourse." Everybody was promised everything: he had come for all their goods. The " patriots " loved the people, and to himself both they and the Lazzaroni were brothers more in hearts than in arms. He was there to emancipate them all; a golden age was at hand. His army was not French but Neapolitan.

Memoirs—Vol. 14—9

The Lazzaroni, gullible and volatile, believed him and cheered; mob fury was allayed. " God save San Gennaro!" burst from every lip. "God save San Gennaro!" reiterated Championnet and Macdonald. Before a day had passed they should see a sign from their saint. And then followed the solemn juggle of our second act. Relics were very helpful to the Directory, and for a moment those who had panted to exterminate the French welcomed them as brothers under the celestial portent. The " Parthenopean Republic " was proclaimed. The poets burst into song, the pamphleteers into doctrine, the journalists into execration of monarchy and eulogies of Reason and the Millennium. The printing-presses could hardly cope with the demand, and their muse—the tenth muse " Ephemera " —was the fair Eleonora Fonseca di Pimentel, who had been allowed to republicanise unmolested, and was now editress of the new and ebullient Monitore. Its amenities did . not compliment the self-exiled court at Palermo. Of Nelson and the Hamiltons as yet there was no abuse. But Ferdinand was called a " debased despot," a " caitiff fugitive," a " dense imbecile," and a " stupid tyrant," while, so far, Carolina fared better as "that Amazon, his wife." It was not long before the middle-class phase of the movement retaliated on the notables even more violently than on the sovereign. "Duke" was derived from coachman ("a ducendo "), " Count " from lackey ("a comitando ") ; epithets were actually changing the nature of things.

But Championnet's deeds were to refute his words. A few days of paper systems were the parenthesis between a spurious peace and a civil war.

A bad harvest served Championnet as excuse for dispersing the Lazzaroni to their homesteads; a bare treasury soon caused him to levy toll. A general in-

surrection ensued in the provinces, repressed by a fresh " National Guard" wearing the cockade and commanded by the once loyalist Count Ruvo. The cloven hoof of French " emancipation " soon discovered itself. The Directory acquainted Championnet that, since " right of conquest" had prevailed, the vanquished must pay for the luxury of defeat. Commissary-General Faypoult was already on his road from Paris as collector of taxes by special appointment. His orders were to expropriate even the palaces and museums, to loot the very treasures of Pompeii. The General himself kicked at such exactions. He protested—and was recalled to Paris. General Macdonald, who, as creature of the Directory, had perhaps anticipated his own advantage, promptly stepped into his shoes. The Directory forwarded more " commissaries," with orders from the " patriotic associations " to pillage the provinces and to " dictate Republican laws." The French troops dared not linger too long at Naples, and eventually their whole garrison only amounted to two thousand five hundred. But their brief sojourn was long enough to denude the city. They were billeted in Sir William's houses, among the rest, and did infinite damage to his treasures. Emma—his " Grecian," as her husband delighted to call her—rued the vandalism which now terrorised the town.

The lack of the Parthenopean Republic was an organised army with a capable leader. Calabria and Apulia were at this very moment overrun by Corsican adventurers, one of whom assumed the title of Prince Francis, and pretended that he was the lawful heir to the throne.

It was at this juncture that the King designated Cardinal Ruffo his Vicar-General in place of Pigna-telli, the absconder, and invested him with supreme military command, although, at the same time, he em-

phatically bound him not to do more than suppress the rising, without previous consultation with his master; nor was he on any account at any time to treat with the rebels.

It should be noted at this his first introduction on to our scene, that so early as June 17, Hamilton and Nelson seem to have lost all confidence in him; and his behaviour a week later was to justify their discernment.

This singular priest-militant, whose rugged hardihood concealed astute subtlety, and who was at once Legate and Lazzarone, landed on the Calabrian coast to proclaim " a holy cause." He was the royal Robin Hood, while his Friar Tuck was the Sicilian brigand, Fra Diavolo. His cardinalate alienated from the " patriot " cause many of the priests, who by this time had joined hands with the insurgents; for they could never forget how the Queen had once withstood the Pope. The raising of his standard, and the co-operation of the Russian and Turkish frigates from Corfu, soon forced the French into an active provincial campaign. The Bourbonites had secured the fastness of Andia. The French stormed and took it. Their maltreatment of young girls had rendered them abominable even in the eyes of their better " patriot " allies, one of whom on this occasion, Prince Carafa, heading the " Neapolitan legion," chivalrously rescued a girl victim from their brutality. A long sequel of sickening butcheries on both sides followed. The French and the " patriots " shot down even old women. Ruffo and his savage bandits gave no quarter; yet they were welcomed as deliverers from rapine and murder. One by one the hill-strongholds, that France had taken, were seized by Ruffo for the King. By June the Republic had become limited afresh to Naples, and " patriot " Naples itself smarted under the greedy despotism of

" commissary " Abrial, who now reigned in Macdon-ald's shoes, and chastised them with scorpions where the others had chastised them with whips.

The Royalist counter-stroke of April, with Ruffo for instrument, and subsequently a new " extraordinary " tribunal as executive, was long kept a secret, but it was divulged to the Jacobins through a remarkable woman —Luisa Molines Sanfelice. She and her cousin-husband had long before been banished for extravagance, but they had both been able to return in safety when the Revolution began. Her passion for a loyalist member of an Italianised Swiss family, Baccher, involved the wife in sedition. To her Baccher confided the King's commission, and the secret thus became disclosed to Vincenzo Coco, the Jacobin historian and renegade, who afterwards attached himself to the Bourbons. " Cherchez la fcmmc," indeed, is an adage exemplified throughout a rebellion abounding in " the rage of the vulture, the love of the turtle "—

' ; Oh wild as the accents of lovers' farewell, Are the hearts which they bear, and the tales which they tell."

In September, 1800, this Luisa, well surnamed " the hapless," was to be respited by the Queen's compassion on the eve of her death-sentence. The King, however, in defiance both of his wife and of the amnesty which he had then solemnly proclaimed, refused to commute the sentence.

Except for Ruffo's commission, we have been too long absent from Palermo.

Nelson's thoughts were for the hard-beset Malta, the Neapolitan succours for which continued most unsatisfactory. Now, as a few months later, his endeavour was " so to divide " his " forces, that all " might " have security." To Ball, with characteristic generosity, he entrusted the Maltese opportunities of distinction. He

was still uneasy and unwell; and he was deeply dispirited, after his recent strain, at the home-slight offered him by the appointment of Sidney Smith to a superior command, with Lord Grenville's orders for his obedience, though on this point Lord Spencer soon reassured him. His stepson's ill-behaviour, though he excused it to his wife, proved a fresh source of annoyance. His Fanny, too, began to wonder at his neglect of home affairs. " If I have the happiness," he answered, " of seeing their Sicilian Majesties safe on the throne again, it is probable I shall still be home in the summer. Good Sir William, Lady Hamilton and myself are the mainsprings of the machine which manages what is going on in this country. We are all bound to England, when we can quit our posts with propriety." The " we " and the " all " must have set her wondering the more.

The freedom of Palermo, among other honours, was conferred on him in March, but the unfolding tragedy of Naples added to his general discouragement. He was preoccupied in many directions. The establishment of (in his own phrase) " the Vesuvian Republic," Pignatelli's armistice with the French, " in which the name of the King was not mentioned," the surrender of Leghorn to the French, boding a Tuscan revolution, incensed him as much as it did the royal family. Sicily, he thought, would soon be endangered. The French successes at Capua, their installation at Naples, so affected him, that he inclined to vindicate the royal honour himself. " I am ready," he wrote in mid-March, " to assist in the enterprise. I only wish to die in the cause." Jacobinism, he repeated, was terrorism. The agreeable surprise of General Sir Charles Stuart's arrival in Sicily with a thousand troops, that secured Messina against invasion, relieved and elated both him and the court. He even believed—for his

wishes ever fathered his thoughts—that these might expel the French from Naples.

France, indeed, was on his nerves and brain. So soon as he learned that the hero of Acre had given passports freeing the remnant of the French fleet off Syria and Egypt, he was beside himself: at any moment a new squadron might effect a junction with the Spanish frigates and bear down on the two Sicilies. By the close of March he had already despatched the truculent and sometimes ferocious Troubridge to Pro-cida for the blockade of Naples. Much was hoped, too, from the co-operation of the Russian and Turkish fleets. It was quite possible, even now, that Britain might restore the Neapolitan monarch to his people. And in the meantime, with eyes alert to ensure preparedness in every direction, he mediated with the Bey of Tunis and freed Mohammedan slaves.

Nor below this tide of varying emotions is an undercurrent lacking of inward conflict. In his own heart a miniature revolution was also in process. The spell of Lady Hamilton was over him, and he struggled against the devious promptings of his heart. To protect Naples and Sicily against France had been the declared policy of his Government; to exterminate French predominance was his own chief ambition; he chafed against the survival of a single ship. " I know," he was soon to write, " it is His Majesty's pleasure that I should pay such attention to the safety of His Sicilian Majesty and his kingdom that nothing shall induce me to risk those objects of my special care." Every public motive riveted him to the spot where fascination lured and tempted. It is a mistake to imagine that Emma held him from duty; all his duties were performed, and to her last moment she protested to those most in his confidence, and best able to refute her if she erred, that her influence never tried to detain him. It

was duty that actuated him— a duty, it is true, that jumped with inclination, and fatally fastened him to her side. Such was his health, that he had desired to quit the Mediterranean altogether. Away from the Mediterranean coasts, he could have steeled himself at any rate to absence, if not to forget fulness. In the very centre of the seaboard that embodied the true interests of his country, and to which his instructions tied him, he was in hourly neighbourhood of his idol. She interpreted, translated, cheered, and companioned him. She contrasted with the soullessness of his wife. She was often his as well as her husband's amanuensis. She drank in every word of patriotic fervour, and redoubled it. Her courage spoke to his; so did her compassion and energy. Together they received the Maltese deputies. Together they listened, in disguise, to the talk of Sicilian taverns. Together they also went on errands of mercy. From the Queen she carried him perpetual information and praise. Through her and her husband he was able to work on Acton. Every British officer that landed with advices or despatches, every friendly though foreign crew, was welcomed at the table over which Emma presided. No veriest trifle that could assist them ever escaped her. Indeed, her lavish hospitality and the noisy heartiness of the coming and going guests oppressed the Ambassador, who sighed on the eve of superannuation for home and quiet, for the excitements of Christie's, and the fisherman's tranquil diplomacy. It was not the toils of the huntress that ensnared Nelson. It was Britain that demanded his vigilance and enchained him here ; while for him, more and more, Britain's " guardian angel " was becoming Emma.

Imploring Sir Alexander Ball in February to return from Malta, she had avowed a foreboding that " Fate " might " carry " her " down."

A great shock had been followed by a great fear. The main body of the French army had gone, but the Neapolitan rebellion, if the French fleet managed to reach and rally it, might still engulf them all. Gallo was again playing the King off against the Queen. Who knew what might happen in this conspiracy of gods and men ? And when she presaged some fatality, may she not also have pondered whither she herself was now drifting? The doom of Paolo and Francesca may well have been within the range of her Italian reading. To the complexity of her feelings I shall revert when I come to the events of a month afterwards. Only two years later she and Nelson were thus to poeticise the affection that was now ripening:—

LORD NELSON TO His GUARDIAN ANGEL.

"From my best cable tho" I'm forced to part, I leave my anchor in my Angel's heart. Love, like a pilot, shall the pledge defend, And for a prong his happiest quiver lend."

ANSWER OF LORD NELSON'S GUARDIAN ANGEL.

" Go where you list, each thought of Emma's soul Shall follow you from Indus to the Pole: East, West, North, South, our minds shall never part; Your Angel's loadstone shall be Nelson's heart.

Farewell! and o'er the wide, wide sea

Bright glory's course pursue, And adverse winds to love and me

Prove fair to fame and you. And when the dreaded hour of battle's nigh, Your Angel's heart, which trembles at a sigh, By your superior danger bolder grown, Shall dauntless place itself before your own. Happy, thrice happy, should her fond heart prove— A shield to Valour, Constancy, and Love."