Nelson's Lady Hamilton by Meynell, Esther (cheapest way to read ebooks .txt) 📗

and woman, which he had followed all his life. Within a few months of seeing Emma constantly it is evident that she had made a tremendous impression upon him, that she had begun to cause him a certain uneasiness and unrest of conscience. But for a considerable period he took her enthusiastic friendship, which was as welcome to his parched spirit as water in the desert, as one of the gifts the gods provide. In the sunny atmosphere of Sicily, amid an easy and kindly people, stern questionings as

THE FLIGHT FROM NAPLES199

to the future seemed needless, and Nemesis far away.

So for a time neither Nelson nor Emma asked whither their growing admiration of each other, their growing desire for each other's presence, might be leading. Nelson might call her the "one rose" in a thorny and difficult situation, but for several months his thoughts and his time were far more taken up with the Neapolitan Jacobins, who were the thorns, than with the rose.

CHAPTER XI THE JACOBIN RISING

MEANWHILE much had happened in Naples. When the Court fled on the 23rd of December, 1798, the King had left Prince Francesco Pignatelli as regent in his absence. This was a post that in the threatening aspect of the time needed a very strong man; but Prince Pignatelli was weak, drifting from one side to the other, a tool in the hands of the self-elected, self-styled " Patriots"—even as a tool not a sound one, but apt to break in the hands of those who used him. He made treacherous advances to France—he who had been left to guard Naples— and then, in fear at the consequences, deserted both the French and the Neapolitans, and fled to Sicily.

The Lazzaroni were loyal, and had no dealings with traitors ; but with the Neapolitan government in the hands of the so-called " Patriots," and with the French in possession of the principal provincial fortresses, it was little they could do to oppose treachery within Naples and disciplined armies without. There were riots, seizure of

" patriot" arms, looting of the palaces of Jacobin nobles, but the end was inevitable. It must be remembered that throughout this Jacobin rising in Naples it was the upper classes, the educated and well-born, who were the Jacobins and " Patriots/' who cultivated French sympathies, and combined fine sentiments with traitorous deeds and oppressions. Some of them were really under the glamour of the early stages of the French Revolution, for as Carlyle says, " How beautiful is noble-sentiment: like gossamer gauze, beautiful and cheap; which will stand no tear and wear! Beautiful cheap gossamer gauze, thou film-shadow of a raw material of Virtue, which art not woven, nor likely to be, into Duty; thou art better than nothing, and also worse ! "

The Lazzaroni were not touched by " noble-sentiment ;" they were loyal, conservative, fierce when roused, good-humoured when let alone, contented with their easy, coarse-grained monarch; superstitious, under the thumb of the Catholic Church, regarding "Jacobin" as a word synonymous with "atheist," and showing all the intolerant violence of an uneducated and priest-ridden people. But the faithfulness of the Lazzaroni to their Church and sovereign—a faithfulness not of words merely—stands out in admirable solidity amid the shifting sands of passion, greed, self-interest, and treachery, which marked the rest of the Neapolitans at the beginning of 1799.

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But Lazzaroni loyalty did not hold the reins of government. In January Naples was surrendered to the French General Championnet; and after the fashion of the Directory, with the planting of trees of liberty, and much talking of " noble-sentiment," the Parthenopean Republic was proclaimed—so for a time the Bourbon rule in Naples came to an abrupt conclusion.

These events naturally caused much distress to the self-exiled King and Queen at Palermo. England and the British fleet seemed the only help and the only hope. "Our country," said Nelson to St. Vincent, "is looked to as a resource for all the difficulties of this." And Acton wrote to Nelson in his own curious English that " remedyes to oppose so many evils depend and will principally raise and be employed by the forces under your command on whose assistance his Majesty places all his hopes and comforts."

In view of the expected and promised aids from Austria and Russia, the measures taken for the recovery of Naples and the expulsion of the French were two—one by land, and one by sea. When the loyalty of the lower classes and the insecure foundations of the Parthenopean Republic were realized at Palermo, the King appointed Cardinal Fabrizio Ruffo to raise an army among the peasants, and all who would fight on the royalist side. The choice was a good one, for Ruffo was a man of considerable force and ability,

LADY HAMILTON AS A "SIBYL

GEORGE KOMNEY

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owning great estates in Calabria, and great influence with the peasants of those estates, who, in themselves, as Mr. Gutteridge says in his invaluable " Nelson and the Neapolitan Jacobins," were "almost equal to an army." His influence, 'oo, as a Cardinal of the Roman Church, was a >*ry important consideration in raising the so-called " Christian Army "—an army which quickly attained formidable proportions, and in spite of its professed "Christian" character, was in many respects a ruffianly horde. But the Cardinal and his army were welcomed as deliverers by the people who flocked to his standard, and in spite >f raggedness and lack of discipline, the " Christian Army" drove the French from the outlying provinces till the Parthenopean Republic was shrunk to the city of Naples itself. King Ferdinand had invested Ruffo with almost unlimited powers, telling him in his commission, "You may adopt to any extent all means which loyalty to religion, desire to save property, life, and family honour, or the policy