Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 61, No. 376, February, 1847

MODERN ITALIAN HISTORY. 12

Upon the fifth day of February, 1783, the province of Calabria was visited with a terrific earthquake. "The sway of earth shook like a thing unfirm," thousands of houses crumbled to their base, tens of thousands of human beings were buried beneath ruins, or engulfed by the gaping ground. In the small and ancient town of Squillace, the devastation was frightful; amongst others, the spacious mansion of the noble family of Pépé was overthrown and utterly destroyed. At the time of this calamity, Irene Assanti, the wife of Gregorio Pépé, was in daily expectation of being brought to bed. In vain was it attempted to find a fitting refuge for the suffering and feeble woman. The ruin that had overtaken her dwelling extended for leagues around; not a roof-tree stood in the doomed district; misery and desolation reigned throughout the land. A tent was hastily erected; and, under its scanty shelter, in a season of extreme rigour, the lady gave birth to a son, who was baptised by the name of William.

Soothsayers would have augured a stormy existence to the child who thus first saw light when "the frame and huge foundation of the earth shak'd like a coward." Such omens might have attended the birth of an Alexander, a Cæsar, or a Napoleon, marking the advent of one of those human meteors sent at long intervals to astonish and dazzle the world. In this instance, if the man born during Nature's most terrible convulsion, was not destined to exercise a material or lasting influence on the fate of nations, at least his lot was cast in troublous and agitated times; he took share in great events, came in contact with extraordinary men, passed through perils and adventures such as few encounter, and fewer still survive. The last sixty years, comprising the most interesting and important chapter in the history of Europe, perhaps of the world, have been prolific in sudden transformations and startling reverses of fortune. During that period of revolution and restless activity, we have seen peasants become princes, private soldiers occupying the thrones of great and civilized countries, obscure individuals in every walk of life raised by opportunity, genius, and the caprice of fate, to the most exalted positions. Some of these have maintained themselves on the giddy pinnacle on which fortune placed them. They are the few. Reverses, even more sudden and extraordinary than their upward progress, have cast down the majority from their high estate. The transitions have been rapid, from the palace to the prison, from the sway of kingdoms to the sufferings of emigration, from the command of mighty armies to the weariness and obscurity of a forced inactivity. Fortunes built up in a year, have been knocked down in a month; again reconstructed, they have been yet more rapidly destroyed. Such changes have been as numerous, often as strikingly contrasted, as the shifting visions of a magic lantern, or the fitful corruscations of a firework. Within a short half century, how often has the regal purple been bartered for the fugitive's disguise, the dictator's robe for a prison garb, the fortunate soldier's baton of command for the pilgrim's staff and the bitter bread of exile. Notable instances of such disastrous fluctuations are to be found in the memoirs of the Neapolitan general Guglielmo Pépé.

One of the youngest of a family of two-and-twenty children, born of wealthy and highly descended parents, young Pépé was placed, before he was seven years old, in the royal college of Catanzaro. There, his father, anxious that his education should be complete and excellent, intended him to remain until the age of eighteen. The peculiar disposition of the boy proved a grave obstacle to the accomplishment of the paternal wish. Nature had destined him for a military career, and his tendency to a soldier's life was early manifest. To the studies that would have qualified him for a learned profession, he showed an insurmountable aversion; Latin he detested; on the other hand, geography, history, and mathematics, were cultivated by him with a zeal and eagerness that astonished his professors. He had just attained his fourteenth year, when two of his brothers, but a little older than himself, left the military college at Naples, and received commissions in the army. This redoubled the military ardour of their junior, who had already caught the warlike feeling with which the Neapolitan government strove at that time to inspire the nation. He urged his father to purchase him a commission; his father refused, and the wilful boy absconded from college. Brought back again, he a second time escaped, and enlisted in a regiment of riflemen. Again he was captured, and the poor Sergeant who had accepted the juvenile recruit, was thrown into prison for enticing away a pupil of the royal college. But this time Gregorio Pépé thought it advisable to yield to the wishes of his headstrong son, and allowed him to enter the military school. He remained there two years, and left it to join, as drill sergeant, a company of the newly raised national guard. This was in 1799. Towards the close of the previous year, the ill-disciplined and inefficient Neapolitan army, composed for the most part of raw and uninstructed levies, had marched into the Papal States; and, the French having evacuated it, had entered Rome without opposition. The triumph was very brief. Neither the Neapolitan troops, nor their leader, General Mack, were capable of contending successfully against the skilful officers and well-trained soldiers opposed to them. On the first alarm, the pusillanimous Ferdinand of Naples fled from Rome in disguise, and soon afterwards embarked for Sicily with his wife and court, carrying away "the wealth and jewels of the crown, the most valuable antiquities, the most precious works of art, and what remained from the pillage of the banks and churches, which had been lying in the mint either in bullion or specie." The amount of the rich treasure was estimated at twenty millions of ducats. The French still advanced, feebly opposed by the disheartened Neapolitans and their inefficient foreign leaders. Gaeta, the Gibraltar of Italy, was surrendered after a few hours' siege, by an old general so ignorant of his profession that we are told he was accustomed to seek counsel from the bishop of the town. Capua, the bulwark of the capital, was given up by Ferdinand's vicar-general, Prince Pignatelli, in consideration of a two months' truce, which lasted, however, but as many days. A condition of this disgraceful armistice was a payment of two and a half millions of ducats. The money was not forthcoming; and the French commander, General Championnet, marched upon Naples. After three days' obstinate combat, maintained around and in the city by the lazzaroni, victory remained with the assailants. They were aided by the republican or patriot party, who delivered up to them the fort of St. Elmo. By this party, then a very small minority in Naples—much the greater part of whose population, ignorant, fanatical, and worked upon by wily priests, were frantic in their hatred of the French, and of the Jacobins, as they called the liberal section of their own countrymen—the triumph of the invaders was looked upon as a temporary evil, trifling when compared with the advantages that would result from it. Amongst the most enthusiastic liberals was young Pépé, who had already conceived that ardent love of liberty, which, throughout life, has been his mainspring of action. He hailed with delight the publication of the edict by which Naples was erected into the Parthenopean Republic. He was eager to enter the new army, whose organisation had been decreed, but his tender age made his brothers oppose his wish, and he was fain to content himself with a post in the national guard.

The new republic was destined to a very short existence. The provisional government, consisting, in imitation of the French system, of six committees, displayed little activity and still less judgment. It neglected to conciliate and win over the popular party, which remained stanch to the Bourbons and absolutism; it took little pains to convince the bigoted multitude of the advantages and blessings of a free constitution. The treasury was bare, the harvest had been bad, the coast was blockaded, and their difficulties were aggravated by the heavy taxes imposed, and rigorously levied by Championnet for the support of his army. These impositions, and a decree for the disarming of the people, produced discontent even amongst the friends of the new institutions. Nevertheless, Championnet, by showing an interest in the rising Republic, had gained a certain degree of popularity, when he was recalled to Paris to be tried by a court-martial, for his opposition to the exactions of a French civil commissary, "one of those voracious blood-suckers, whom the French government was wont to fasten upon the newly formed republics which it created, and upon which it bestowed the derisive title of independent." General Macdonald succeeded Championnet; the commissary, maintained in his functions, had full scope for extortion, and the Republican government, unable, for want of money, to organise an army that might have given permanence to its existence, became daily more unpopular, and visibly tottered to its downfal. Meanwhile, on the opposite coast of Sicily, Ferdinand, his adherents and allies, were any thing but idle. They issued proclamations, lavished money, spared no means to excite the people to revolt against the French and their favourers. Every support and encouragement was given to the disaffected, and at last Cardinal Ruffo landed in Calabria, and by proclamations issued in his name, and in that of Ferdinand, promised the property and estates of the patriots to those who should take up arms for the holy cause of the king. Apulia was overrun by four Corsican adventurers; the other provinces were infested by bands of ruffians, mostly the outpourings of the prisons and galleys, which had been thrown open by the furious populace when preparing to defend the city against the French. A miller, by name Mammone, was one of the most ferocious and dreaded leaders of these banditti. His cruelties, as related by General Pépé, almost exceed belief. "He butchered in the most dreadful manner all who fell into his power, and with his own hands murdered nearly four hundred of them, chiefly Frenchmen and Neapolitans. Blood-thirsty by nature, he seemed to revel in shedding blood, and carried his cruelty to such a pitch, that when seated at his meals, he delighted in having constantly before him a human head newly divided from the trunk and streaming with blood. This monster, the perpetrator of so many horrors, was, nevertheless, greeted by King Ferdinand and his Queen Caroline, in the most affectionate manner by the title of 'dear general,' and of 'faithful supporter of the throne.'"

After long and unaccountable delay, two columns were formed for the pursuit of the Bourbonites, and a regular civil war began. At first the Republicans, supported by the French, had the best of the fight, and the strong towns of Andria and Trani were taken, after a vigorous defence, with great loss to the royalists, and no inconsiderable one to the assailants. But the Austrians and Russians now prepared to drive the French from northern Italy, and Macdonald, compelled to keep his army together, was unable to follow up these successes. Cardinal Ruffo's forces increased; he besieged and took several towns, and overran entire provinces, his ferocious followers committing, as they proceeded, the most terrible excesses and acts of cruelty. At last, in the month of May, Macdonald evacuated the Neapolitan territory, placing French garrisons in the castle of St. Elmo and in the fortresses of Capua and Gaeta, and leaving the handful of republicans to defend themselves as best they might against the vast majority of the nation that supported the cause of the king. Against such odds, the enthusiasm of the liberals, ill assisted by a feeble and vacillating government, was unable successfully to contend. Nevertheless, they still struggled on; fresh troops were raised, and in a sort of sacred battalion, composed of officers, young Pépé, who had just completed his sixteenth year, was appointed serjeant-major. In this capacity he first saw fire, in a skirmish with a band of armed peasants. But the enemy gained ground, the limits of the Republic grew each day narrower, until at last they were restricted to the capital and its immediate environs. Cardinal Ruffo's army, now amounting to forty thousand men, backed by detachments of foreign troops, and by regiments landed from Sicily, had improved in discipline and organisation, and, flushed with their successes, ventured to attack Naples. They encountered an obstinate resistance. General Schipani, an officer of distinguished bravery but little skill, commanded the body of troops of which Pépé's battalion formed a part, and occupied the most advanced of the Republican positions, between Torre dell' Annunziata and Castella-mare. The Cardinal's troops cut him off from Naples, and whilst gallantly endeavouring to force a passage through them and assist the city, his little band, fifteen hundred in number, was assailed by a body of Russians, and by a thousand Calabrians under the command of Pano di Grano, a returned galley slave, and Ruffo's favourite officer. In a narrow road a desperate contest ensued, and terminated in the defeat of the Republicans. Pépé received a bayonet thrust and a sabre cut, and although he escaped at the time, was soon afterwards captured with some of his comrades, by a party of peasants armed with scythes. This was the commencement of the young soldier's misfortunes. Suffering from hunger, thirst, and wounds, he was imprisoned in a damp and unwholesome warehouse, and subjected to the brutality of his peasant guards, who called in their women to gaze at the ill-fated patriots, as if they had been strange and savage animals caught in a snare, and to be viewed as objects of mingled curiosity and loathing. On the following day, when a detachment of the Cardinal's troops came to take charge of the prisoners and escort them to the capital, they were so exhausted with fatigue, loss of blood, and want of food, that before they could move, it was necessary to supply them with bread and water. This meagre refreshment taken, they were stripped to their shirts, manacled in couples, and marched off to Naples. Although informed of it by their captors, many of them had refused to credit the downfal of the city. "This illusion was soon dispelled by the mournful spectacle which presented itself to our gaze, and which I believe has very rarely been equalled. Men and women of every condition were being barbarously dragged along the road, most of them streaming with blood, many half dead, and stripped of every article of apparel, presenting altogether the most deplorable sight the mind can conceive. The shrieks and howlings of that ferocious mob were such, that it seemed composed, not of human beings, but of a horde of wild beasts. They cast stones and every species of filth at us, threatening to tear us to pieces." The Iazzaroni, instigated by the priests,—at Naples, as every where, the steadfast partisans of absolutism,—were the chief perpetrators of these atrocious misdeeds. Scarcely a party of patriot prisoners passed through the streets without some of its number being torn from the hands of the escort and sacrificed to the blind fury of the benighted populace. And it was a question if death were not preferable to the barbarous treatment reserved for the survivors. Twenty thousand men, half-naked, many of them wounded, were crowded into the halls of the public granary, now converted into a temporary prison. Heat, filth, and vermin, were the least of the evils endured by these unfortunates, amongst whom were noblemen, priests, officers of high rank, many literary men, several Celestin monks, and, to crown all, a number of lunatics. The Hospital of Incurables had been held out by the medical students against the royalists, and when the latter took it, they sent both sane and insane to prison, where some of the madmen were detained on suspicion of feigning lunacy. "One of these poor wretches was the cause of a most disastrous scene, which we witnessed. Having struck one of the royal officers on the face, the latter called out, 'to arms!' and as soon as he was surrounded by his followers, he rushed furiously upon the lunatic, whom he clove in two by a sabre stroke. During this time the sentinels placed in the street to guard the royal granary, fired musket-shots at the windows, and the bullets, rebounding from the ceiling of the building, wounded and killed several amongst us." The horrors of their situation, and the pangs of hunger and thirst were so great, that some of the sane amongst the prisoners nearly went mad. It was not till the third day that a scanty ration of bread and water was distributed. This spare diet and the absence of covering had one good effect, in preserving them from fever, and causing their wounds to heal rapidly. Their republican enthusiasm continued unabated, at least as regarded the younger men. "We had four poets amongst us, who sang by turns extemporary hymns to freedom." After twenty-two days passed in the granary, Pépé and a number of his companions were placed on board a Neapolitan corvette. Here they were, if any thing, worse off than in their previous prison. In a short time they were taken on shore again and lodged in the Vicaria prison, whence, each day, one or other of them was conveyed to the scaffold. Pépé was summoned before the Junta of State, where the bold sharpness of his replies irritated his judge, who consigned him to the Criminali, dark and horrible dungeons, appropriated to the worst of criminals. Three men loaded with fetters, and entirely naked, were his companions in this gloomy cavern. Two of them were notorious malefactors, "the third recalled vividly to my mind Voltaire's Lusignan in the tragedy of Zaire, which I had been perusing a few days before. His body was covered with hair, his head bald, a long and thick black beard contrasted forcibly with his ruddy lips and pearly teeth." His name was Lemaître, Marquis of Guarda Alfieri, and he had been several years imprisoned for participation in a republican conspiracy.

At last, after six months of the most painful captivity, Pépé, and seven hundred others sentenced to exile, were put on board three small vessels, and after a voyage of twenty-two days, during which their numbers were thinned by a destructive epidemic, were landed at Marseilles. There the first thing they learned was the arrival of Buonaparte from Egypt, and his enthusiastic reception in France. During his absence nothing had gone well, and the French nation looked to him to redeem their disasters. Italy was again in the hands of the Austrians. To aid in their expulsion, the formation of an Italian legion was decreed, and this Pépé hastened to join. Upon reaching Dijon, where it was organising, he found that every corps had its full compliment of officers. As a supernumerary he was ordered to a depot, where he would receive lieutenant's half-pay until his services were required. Like many others of the exiles, he preferred serving as a volunteer to remaining idle, and accordingly joined a company of riflemen intended to be mounted, but who, from the scarcity of horses, were for the most part on foot. At the beginning of May, 1800, the legion, consisting of six thousand men, marched into Switzerland, and crossed the St. Bernard. They were detached from Napoleon's army during the battle of Marengo, but distinguished themselves at the fight of the Jesia, and in the Valteline, until, by the truce which followed that memorable campaign, Pépé again found himself without employment, and in depot at Pavia. His restless spirit would not tolerate repose, and he entered the service of the Tuscan republic, where he continued until the truce of Luneville. An amnesty for Neapolitan political refugees being a condition of the treaty between France and Naples, he might now have returned home; but his hatred of the Bourbons indisposed him to such a step, and he resolved to enter the French army serving in Egypt. Murat was then commander-in-chief of the French troops in central Italy, and to him the young officer applied for a commission. He received that of a captain, and was about to start for Alexandria when his purse was emptied at a faro table. This compelled him to visit Naples for fresh supplies, and owing to the delay, before he could embark, the French had received orders to evacuate Egypt.