prostrate with grief at the death of her little son, re-
fused to go on shore. The King entered his barge
and was received with loyal acclamations. The Van-
guard did not anchor till two o'clock of the following
morning. To spare the feelings of the bereaved
Queen, Nelson accompanied her and the Princesses
privately to the land. Even then she was surrounded
by half-enemies. Caracciolo had not yet evinced his
Jacobin sympathies and was already sailing under du-
bious colours. The Neapolitan Captain Bausan, whose
skill contributed to the safety of the ships, and who
was again to pilot the King next year into port, be-
came, in that very year, himself a suspect and an
exile.
Among the furniture abandoned at the English Em-
bassy may have been a beautiful table and cabinet
which the grateful Nelson had ordered from England
as mementos for Emma, and whose classical designs
of muses and hovering cupids are said to have been
painted by Angelica Kauffmann. These still exist, and
are in the present possession of Mr. Sanderson, the
eminent Edinburgh collector, to whose kindness the
writer is indebted for a photograph. Was it to these,
perhaps, that Nelson alluded when he mentioned the
" Amorins " to Emma in 1804?
The Queen secluded herself in the old palace of
Colli. It seemed ages, she soon wrote, since she had
seen one to whom she repeated her eternal gratitude
and perpetual concern. Her throat, head, and chest
were affected; the physicians were summoned, but her
malady lay beyond their cure. Not only had she been
sorely bereaved, disgraced by defeats, and stung by
treacheries, but her husband now began to make her a
scapegoat. This, forsooth, was the fruit of her Anglo-
250 EMMA, LADY HAMILTON
mania a revolted kingdom, a maddened though ador-
ing populace, an advancing and arrogant enemy.
Every day the Queen frequented the churches for
prayer and the convents for meditation. Each even-
ing she poured out her heart to the helpful friend of
her choice, whose sympathy lightened a load else in-
supportable.
With some difficulty the Hamiltons, whose perma-
nent guest Nelson now first became, found a suitable
abode not too distant from the palace, and, as they
hoped, healthier in situation than most of a then
malarious city. But they all suffered from the bad
air, the more so in the reaction of the change from their Neapolitan home. On Emma now devolved half the
duties of the transferred Embassy. Sir William
waxed peevish and querulous. He bemoaned the
wreck of the Colossus, which had carried his art treas-
ures home. Homeward he himself yearned to retire,
leaving the Consul Lock as his charge d'affaires. " I have been driven," he told Greville, " from my comfortable house at Naples to a house here without chim-
neys, and calculated only for summer. ... As I wax
old, it has been hard upon me, having had both bilious
and rheumatic complaints. I am still most desirous of
returning home by the first ship that Lord Nelson
sends down to Gibraltar, as I am worn out and want
repose." But he shared his wife's enthusiasm for
Nelson, which acted like a tonic on his nerves. " I love Lord Nelson more and more," he adds ; " his activity is wonderful, and he loves us sincerely." He consoled
himself with the thought that he had done his duty.
By January 24 the " Parthenopean Republic " had been proclaimed in a town betrayed, against the will
of its populace, to a French General. The Tree of
Liberty had been planted; the wooden image of the
giant, crowned with the red cap of Revolution, had
EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 251
been set up in full sight of the palace. Every loiterer
on the Chiaja wore the tricolor; the Toledo itself rang
with the Marseillaise. For a time the enemies of
Naples played the part of its deliverers. For the Roy-
alists Naples seemed lost to the Neapolitans; for the
Jacobins she appeared the trophy of freedom.
The successive episodes both before and after this
terrible transformation scene are a " witches' Sabbath."
All of worst and wildest in every class of the popula-
tion was set loose.
And the royal flight had been a Pandora's box which
had let forth the whole brood of winged mischiefs. If
the Queen scathed the rebels as parricide poltroons,
they, in their turn, branded her as villain, and the King as coward and selfish deserter, at the very moment
when the, French had crossed the boundary. But with
that invading host most of them were already in col-
lusion; it was the Lazzaroni alone who had the real
right of denouncement. No sooner had Pignatelli
published the absconded King's proclamation, and
placarded the edict appointing him as temporary
viceroy, than " chaos was come again." Their rough-and-tumble macaroni-monarch had vanished; their
loathed French Revolution was in the air. The French
troops were on their insolent march cityward. If the
Neapolitan Bourbons were indeed Baal, as the Jacobins
averred, there were now few but Lazzaroni to bow
the knee; if, the Tree of Liberty, as the loyalists de-
clared it, its votaries might be counted by thousands.
But on both sides there was no Elijah no seer to call
down fire from heaven. The flames, so soon to en-
wrap the stricken city, were those of Mephistopheles.
CHAPTER IX
TRIUMPH ONCE MORE
To August, 1799
"/CONSPIRACIES are for aristocrats, not for
nations," is a pregnant apophthegm of Dis-
V^/ raeli. Viewed at its full length and from its
inner side, the great Jacobin outburst at Naples was
more a conspiracy than a revolution, or even an insur-
rection.
To appreciate Nelson's part, and Emma's help, in
the much-criticised suppression of the Neapolitan
Jacobins during June, it behoves us to track, however
briefly, the course of that most interesting and singular movement. This is not the occasion for a minute inquiry; but four preliminary considerations must be
kept in mind. In the first place, this revolt differs from all others in that it was one of the noblesse and
bourgeoisie against the whole mass of the people. In
the second, its chief leaders, both men and women (and
it is doubly engrossing from the fact that women
played a great part in it), confessedly took their lives into their hands. They were quite ready to annihilate
the objects of their loathing, and, therefore, they had
small right to complain when opportunity transferred
to themselves the doom that they had planned for
others. They proved fully as much tyrants and tor-
mentors as their sovereign; and the whole conflict was
really one between two absolutisms, democratic and
bureaucratic a struggle between extreme systems
252
EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 253
exhibiting equal symptoms of the same evil. The
"
Civic Guard," to be erected by the " Deputies," persecuted just as Maria Carolina's secret police had per-
secuted before. Acton's exactions were to be out-
done by the French Commissary Faypoult's pillage,
and the French General Championnet's " indemnities."
As for brutality, it was tripled by the new reign of
terror, and when Championnet compassed the concili-
ation of the brave populace, he contrived even to
" brutalise miracles." Again, the Neapolitan Jacobins were not only oppressors of all authority, but traitors
to the people as well as to the King; while at last they openly confederated with the invaders of their father-land and of Europe. It was thus that the force and
guile of Napoleon trafficked in the reveries of
Rousseau.
It is true, nevertheless, that many of them were in-
spired by noble motives and proved conscientious vic-
tims. Such children of light as these redeem the
movement as a real step in the progress of law to lib-
erty. Some were lofty idealists, while others, how-
ever, dreamed of realising theories impossible even in
Cloud-Cuckoo-land. Savants and ignoramuses, phi-
lanthropists and cosmopolitans abounded. But the
majority were actuated by very personal motives, and
inspired by overweening ambitions. None of them,
not the noblest, were orginative. All were under the
spell of France; the worst, under that of French gold;
the best, under that of French sentiment. And, be-
fore the close, there were very few even among the
least practical who did not rue the day when they in-
vited self-interest masquerading as friendship, and
opened their gates and their hearts to the busybodying
emissaries of the Directory. The very name of Fay-
poult soon became more odious than the fact of Fer-
dinand.
254 EMMA, LADY HAMILTON
Once more, just as the contemporary Jacobins con-
founded license with freedom, and ascribed to paper
constitutions the virtues of native patriotism, so the
more modern Italians have always, and naturally,
viewed in the blood of these martyrs the seed of United
Italy. It is a legend ineradicable from history; and,
after the same manner, William Tell is made by Schil-
ler the prophet of United Germany. Yet, in the main,
a legend it remains. The " Parthenopean Republic "
was a venture purely local, unillumined by any vision
of broadened or strengthened nationality. What was
not French in its fantasies, was derived from the mod-
els of ancient Rome. Nothing was farther from the
aspirations of the Neapolitan Jacobins from December,
1798, up to June, 1799, than the ideal of one confed-
erated commonwealth. Like the Ligurian Republic,
the Neapolitan was the creature of France. Through
France it rose; through France it fell. And it is not
a little curious that, some sixty years later, it was to the third Napoleon once more that many in Italy looked
up for regeneration.
" II merto oppresso, il nazional mendico,
Carco d'onor e gloria ogni straniero "
had been Eleonora de Fonseca Pimentel's lament to
the King in 1792. By the revival alone of national
institutions, expressing national character, could a
natural elasticity be restored. A theoretic and anti-
national uprising actually deprived Naples of those en-
lightened schemes by which in her prime Maria Caro-
lina had sought to renovate her people. She had cut
the claws of the enraged nobles by abolishing their
feudal prerogatives. She had sought to improve the
superstitious Lazzaroni by projects of industry and
education. She had exalted the applauding students
into an aristocracy of talent. But it was as puppets
EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 255
dancing on her own wires that she had benefited them
all. And the result showed that their real resentment
was against any dependence whatever and any pauper-
isation. Whether by democracy or by bureaucracy,
they refused to be transformed. From the feudal
baron to the pagan beggar, each class wished to keep
its distinctive flavour, and to live by its instincts. The
" intellectuals " a small remnant were the sole cosmopolitans. They tried to transfigure Naples into
Utopia, and for that purpose invited a foe that for-
sook them. Denationalism (or a-nationalism) failed;
Naples remained Naples still. But the miserable al-
ternative proved the grinding sway of an avenging
tyrant, bereft by rebellion of his old jollity, and un-
tempered by the earlier intellectualism of his now
fanatical wife.
The Revolution presents the spectacle of character-
istic class-instincts in orgy. It was a protest far more against Acton's bureaucratic routine than against monarchy. Its eruptions were those of its physical sur-
roundings. It was a Vesuvius, with all its attendants
of whirlwind, earthquake, and waterspout. The light
of heaven was blotted out from the firmament, molten
lava seared the whole social landscape, and the deeps
of unbridled instinct shook in the tornado.
Prince Pignatelli proved himself little but driftwood
on the deluge. After conceding the Jacobin demands,
he proceeded to gratify the Lazzaroni's. He ended by
pleasing none; the " Eletti " nullified his office, of which the King said they deprived him. He opened
with the usual paper-constitution. A " civic guard "
was formed, the military and civil functions were di-
vided, a chamber of " deputies " was constituted.
Nominally, the elective system had been restored. But
the first act of the new body was to abolish their
256 EMMA, LADY HAMILTON
viceroy's own provisions. They decreed that hence-
forward royal power should devolve on two authorities
alone a chamber of nobles, and themselves, the
" Patriots " ; the really popular element was thus excluded, and the real power became vested in a " Venetian Oligarchy." Pignatelli was rendered a cipher,
and the Lazzaroni, who, strange to relate, proved
themselves the sole realities in a limbo of phantoms,
were furious at their own incapacitation. Pignatelli
at once burned one hundred and twenty bombardier
boats a work of needless destruction completed by
Commodore Campbell, to Nelson's disgust, some few
months later; Count Thurn our watchman of a fort-
night ago blew up two vessels and three frigates.
Amid this flare and detonation were born the calam-
ity and carnage that succeeded. Alarm was the pre-
lude to violence, and violence to panic. Ere long, the
powerless Pignatelli offered the French a truce in his
alarm, and fled to Sicily, where he was imprisoned, but
soon released. Save for the Lazzaroni, Naples was
without authority or governance, and lay exposed a
helpless prey to the common enemy.
Two striking scenes happened within three weeks,
and in that short but crowded period formed the
denouements of two separate acts in the drama. Both
of them passe
d under the patronage of St. Januarius,
whose sanction, as declared by the Archbishop Zurlo,
was always law to the Lazzaroni. They may serve as
landmarks before a miniature of what led to them is
attempted. The recital (though there are many Italian
authorities for the whole history) is most vividly given by a contemporary who cannot be accused of partiality
to the Lazzaroni. The future General Pepe was then a
stripling of revolutionary enthusiasm, and one of the
first recruits in the new and transitory " civic guard."
On the night of January 15 a strange sight might
EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 257
have been viewed in the cathedral. The proud and
brave Prince Moliterno, among the few distinguished
in the late humiliating campaign, and just chosen by the Lazzaroni as their chief, wended his way, barefooted,
with bowed head and in penitential tatters, towards the
glimmering altar, and on his knees besought leave of
the venerable archbishop to harangue the people. In
that procession of St. Januarius this grandee was the
humblest and perhaps the saddest. The French gen-
eral was already encamped before Capua. Moliterno
rallied the Lazzaroni and assured them that he would
lead them victorious against the foe. Four days after-
wards they were betrayed to the patriots.
Only a week later, and yet another and even stranger
tableau happened in the same spot, for St. Januarius
haunts the Neapolitan Revolution. A second solemn
procession was formed, but by this time Championnet
and his French troops had advanced to Naples. Dur-
ing the morning he had addressed the assembled peo-
ple in the stately hall of San Lorenzo. His speech had
been a string of fair-weather promises, not one of
which was kept. In the evening he steps cathedralward
on one side of the archbishop, the clever general Mac-
donald and the mocking French commissary Abrial, on
the other. The prelate holds aloft the sacred relics
and the miraculous ewer. Priests, nobles, " patriots,"
and a vast throng of Lazzaroni march in his wake.
Suddenly a halt is called. The fate of Naples trembles
in the balance. All depends on whether the blood of
the saint shall announce by its liquefaction to his be-
lievers that Heaven favours the French Republic.
Archbishop Zurlo raises the crystal basin. The saint's
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