the armistice, which he had equally annulled. He
might forbear to attack the rebel castles and even St.
Elmo, with a view to their surrender. In exacting the
unconditional surrender of the rebels, of which he had
already given notice, and which he was again to notify,
he never wavered. But it will be found that for the
sake of the town's quietude, and pending some author-
itative announcement of the King's pleasure (possibly
recalling Ruffo), he did now temporarily desist from
a siege, and so far obliged Ruffo. Mr. Gutteridge has
shown by comparing and contrasting the documents,
that when Nelson suddenly informed the Cardinal on
June 26 that he would respect the armistice, he had no
thought of respecting the capitulation, and that in the
sequel he did not go back on his promise. It seems
likely that the two cases of armistice and capitulation
were so involved together by Micheroux and Ruffo as
to persuade the patriots that they were free to escape
under the terms of their convention, without submit-
ting themselves to the sovereign whom they had defied,
or abjuring the national foe.
From the confusipns of many documents the situa-
tion can be clearly discerned. Mejean's main
thought was for his own garrison. Capua still held
out, and till it fell he disdained to surrender. His
threats to bombard the town embarrassed Nelson alike
and Ruffo; and, indeed, they were more than threats
for an intermittent fire from St. Elmo nightly terrified Naples. Though Mejean had dictated the patriots'
EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 293
capitulation, he had restricted himself to a precarious
armistice. Micheroux praised his nobility and mod-
eration, but he was not above the possibility of a bribe, and he was perhaps indifferent to the fate of the rebels so long as he could stave off his own surrender. They
on their side were willing to sacrifice the lives of the hostages for the security of their compact. One is
driven to suspect that it was through Micheroux and
Ruffo that they came to believe that Nelson had sud-
denly and entirely changed his mind. On June 25,
Ruffo even in offering them the choice of departure
had warned them that Nelson refused to recognise
their compact, and was master of the sea. That the
next day they were misled by somebody into thinking
that the treaty would be respected appears from a let-
ter in July of ex-Commandant Aurora to Nelson,
where he states his belief " in common with the garrison " of being " taken to Toulon." But their misleader was not Nelson. If they could be persuaded
that in yielding they were free to go, the odium of
consequences would be cast on the British Admiral.
Early on June 26 Hamilton informed Ruffo that
Nelson had " resolved to do nothing that might break the armistice " ; and this Nelson confirmed with his own hand.
Awaiting the King's mandate, he now humoured the
Cardinal and forebore to attack the rebels, even while
concerting measures against the French. His letter to
Ruffo of June 26 breathes not a word about the cap-
itulation, and a day earlier, Ruffo had handed Nelson's
ultimatum to the castles. Nelson, it was afterwards
alleged, signified in writing to Micheroux that he would carry out the treaty. But Micheroux owns that these
declarations were unused, averring that his agent took
over Castel Uovo, and the rebels marched out with
honours of war. Troubridge, an eye-witness, is silent
294 EMMA, LADY HAMILTON
on these points, all of which Mr. Gutteridge traverses.
Ruffo's own construction, however, of Nelson's prom-
ise was evidenced by a service of thanksgiving. That
evening, Troubridge and Ball with 500 marines oc-
cupied the castles. Next day they made short work
of the Jacobin insignia. They hewed down the Tree
of Liberty and the red-capped giant. Rejoicing per-
vaded the town. The castle flags were expected on
board the Fondroyant.
Ruffo, safe as he now felt from the King's certain
anger, expressed his gratitude to Emma and her hus-
band. Hamilton answered civilly, and his wife, who
had been slaving at correspondence, must have re-
joiced. Nelson was bound by no conditions whatever.
If, as seems doubtful, he authorised the notice (at-
tributed by Sacchinelli to Troubridge) that he would
not oppose the embarkation, he went no further. A
small quota of polaccas awaited the refugees. For the
present, Nelson pledged his word that he would not
molest them. But he promised no more. The day be-
fore, Acton was informing Hamilton that the King
might very soon come in person, and that the Cardinal
was probably at the end of his tether; while on the
next he wrote rejoicing that the " infamous capitulation " had been rescinded. If Ruffo persisted, he
must be arrested and deposed, and a direct communica-
tion from the King must by this time have reached
Nelson. It reached him on June 28. Nelson at once
ordered the Seahorse off to Palermo for the King's
service, and he now distinctly warned the rebels that
they " must submit to the King's clemency " under
" pain of death."
It was this letter that decided the doom of the mis-
erable patriots who, under these circumstances, had
been caught in a death-trap. Had the King's direc-
tions been deferred Nelson would have stayed his hand.
As it was, the rebels instead of seeing the capitulations executed, were executed themselves. His warnings of
June 25 and 28 had been disregarded by those who
were somehow misled by his action next morning, which
was designed to keep Ruffo quiet. Years afterwards,
Nelson affirmed in a document dictated to Lady Ham-
ilton : " I put aside the dishonourable treaty, and sent the rebels notice of it. Therefore, when the rebels
surrendered, they came out of the castles as they
ought, without any honours of war, and trusting to
the judgment of their sovereign." And the British
Government in October, 1799, fully endorsed Nelson's
policy.
The King's good nature had hitherto been proverb-
ial; it was the Queen and Acton who had hitherto
shared the odium of repression. But Ferdinand was
now at length his own master, and his latent cruelty
emerged the more savage because it had been long in
abeyance, and he had now heavy scores to settle with
fawning courtiers and spurious loyalists. No quarter
was to be given to these false prophets; not a man of
them was to escape. In the ensuing hecatomb' of
slaughter the Queen acted from policy rather than re-
venge, while Emma was so compassionate that she
thought it necessary to reason with her.
In Hamilton's missive to Acton of the following
day June 27 occurred a significant sentence :
" Captain Troubridge is gone to execute the busi-
ness, and the rebels on board of the polaccas cannot
stir without a passport from Lord Nelson."
&nbs
p; The heartrending scenes that shortly ensued may be
inferred from the numerous documents transcribed in
Mr. Gutteridge's masterly volume. The few appeals
to Emma's intercession given in the Morrison papers
and by Pettigrew must stand for many more. It is
not a creditable contrast, that of the misery of Naples
296 EMMA, LADY HAMILTON
with the triumphal salvos and Te Deum at Palermo.
Vce Victorious!
That very night thirteen chained rebels were brought
on board. The next clay, the passengers awaiting de-
liverance in fourteen polaccas found themselves bonds-
men in Nelson's ships. Nelson certainly did not un-
derdo his part of avenging angel the part of what
the Queen styled his " heroic firmness." He was St.
Michael against the seven devils of Jacobinism, and the
whole iron vials 6f retribution were poured forth.
He represented a King who had wronged before in
his turn he had been wronged, and who had hoarded
his injuries.
'While the crowd on the quays vociferated with joy,
it was not long before the dungeons of the fleet re-
echoed to the groans and curses of ensnared and inter-
cepted patriots. Emma must have shuddered as she
kept to her cabin and tried to write to her Queen.
The thirteenth of the thirteen confined in the
Foudroyant on that 2/th of June, was Caracciolo. He
had not been included in any amnesty. On the cession
of the castles he had fled to the mountains, but had
been dragged from his lair by a dastardly spy. Pale,
ashamed, and trembling, unwashen and unkempt, he
stood silent before the stern Nelson and Troubridge.
Who could recognise in this quailing figure the proud
son of a feudal prince, the commodore who had learned
seamanship in England, the trusted adherent who had
gone to Naples such a short time since apparently loyal, only to become Admiral of the rebel navy?
He had fired on his King's colours.
That was the sole thought in the breasts of the
grim sailors who confronted him.
Such a catastrophe inspires horror, but of all the
victims that were soon to glut the scaffold, Caracciolo
had least the excuse of oppression. Many had been
EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 297
forced by the French into tempting posts on the provi-
sional administration. Such, for example, was the
errant but charming Domenico Cirillo, for whom
Emma was to plead so warmly. Others, again, had
been heroic. 'Such was Eleonora de Pimentel.
But Caracciolo, though he set up the plea of duress,
had purposely left Sicily. He was powerful, he was
trusted, and he had proved disloyal. He has figured
as an old man bowed with years and care. He was
still in the prime of life. He has been pictured as a
veteran Casabianca. To Nelson he was a rat who
left what he supposed was a sinking ship. It might be
pleaded as a further extenuation that his estates had
been ravaged, and that his hapless family was large.
But every one's property had been plundered by the
French, and not every one had turned rebel. And yet
despair should always command pity, and the despair
of treachery, perhaps, most of all, for it is the tor-
ment of a lost soul. Had Caracciolo lived under Nero,
he might have died by himself opening a vein, like
Vestinus. But, on the other hand, the great evil of
unconstitutional monarchy lies in its proneness to visit crime with crime; as Tacitus has put it : " Scelera scele-ribus tuenda."
The imagination of cherishing Italy and of free
England has long enshrined him as the type of Lib-
erty sacrificed in cold blood to Despotism, as innocent
and murdered.
In England this idea mainly originated in the gen-
erous eloquence of Charles James Fox, who loved free-
dom, it is true, but loved politics also; that Fox, be it remembered, who, when in power, once politely told
his Catholic supporters, in opposition, to go to the
devil. More than sixty years later, the attitude of a
section towards the case of Governor Eyre and the
negroes presents a close analogy to the attitude of the
298 EMMA, LADY HAMILTON
same section towards the case of Nelson and Carac-
ciolo.
Caracciolo had fired on his King's colours. From the
yard-arm of that frigate he must hang. So thought
his captors; so, perchance, thought Caracciolo as his
ashy lips refused the relief of words. Nelson had
himself requested Ruffo to deliver Caracciolo into his
hands instead of sending him to be tried at Procida.
He was not rhadamanthine, but he was an English Ad-
miral; and the English had killed even Admiral Byng,
whose crime if crime it was was a trifle compared
with Caracciolo's. " To encourage the others," said Voltaire ; " as an example," said Nelson.
The next day Caracciolo was " tried." Emma never beheld him. The process was short and sharp. He
was condemned. Caracciolo was guilty before trial,
but this summary trial was a farce. It would have
been far juster though the issue was undoubted if
Caracciolo had passed the ordeal of impartial judges.
His Neapolitan inquisitors refused him the death of a
gentleman, or even a day's reprieve for his poor soul's
comfort. In vain the Hamiltons supplicated Nelson
for these fitting mercies. Naturally humane, he was
here relentless. He was neither lawyer nor priest.
He had not been his judge. Caracciolo's own peers
had pronounced him guilty of death, and Nelson sen-
tenced him.
Caracciolo had fired at the Minerva, now com-
manded by our old friend Count Thurn, the sentinel
of last December.
On June the 28th, at about five of the afternoon,
the scarecrow of sedition swung, lashed to the
Minerva's gallows. Though imprisonment, as was
first suggested, would have been far humaner and
wiser, Nelson might have echoed Homer's line :
" So perish all who do the like again."
EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 299
The bay was alive with hundreds of boats crowded
with thousands of loyalists. For two full hours he
dangled in sight of a gloating mob, before the rope
was cut, and its grisly burden dropped into the sea.
As the big southern sun dipped suddenly below the
waves which had once witnessed the revel by which
Nero had enticed his own mother to destruction, one
by one the little lights of boats and quays began to
glimmer, the scent of flowers was wafted, the bells of
church towers tolled over the ghostly waters. The
shore was thronged with eager spectators, gesticulat-
ing, applauding, pointing at the mast where Carac-
ciolo had expiated his treason.
Mejean had himself broken the truce by assailing
the city with his fusillade. Nelson now attacked St.
Elmo, while Troubridge, with his troops, invested it
by land. Its fall was timed to greet the King's ar-
rival.
Th
e Seahorse brought him, together with Acton
and Castelcicala, on the night of the 9th to the chan-
nel of Procida, where they awaited Nelson. Next
morning they stepped together on to the deck of the
Foudroyant. As the Admiral and his guests sailed
into the gulf before the last shot had reduced the
stronghold on the hill, the sea bristled with the barques, the two banks of the Chiaja with the dense array of
his welcomers. At ten o'clock he anchored. The
boom of cannon, the noise of batteries, the " shouts of Generals " acclaimed the restoration of the King amid the salutes of victory. The King had at last come to
his own again. But, as Emma wrote, " II est bon[ne]
d'etre chez le roi, mais mieux d'etre chez soi[t]." She had toiled like a Trojan. " Our dear Lady," wrote Nelson a week later to her mother, " La Signora
Madre," " has her time so much taken up with ex-300 EMMA, LADY HAMILTON
cuses from rebels, Jacobins, and fools, that she is every day most heartily tired. ... I hope we shall very
soon return to see you. Till then, recollect that we are restoring happiness to the Kingdom of Naples and
doing good to millions." " The King," wrote Emma gravely, pouring out, two days afterwards, her triumphs to Greville, who must have opened wide his eyes
as he read, " has bought his experience most dearly, but at last he knows his friends from his enemies, and
also knows the defects of his former government, and
is determined to remedy them ; . . . his misfortunes
have made him steady, and [to] look into himself.
The Queen is not yet- come. She sent me as her Dep-
uty ; for I am very popular, speak the Neapolitan lan-
guage, and [am] considered, with Sir William, the
friend of the people. The Queen is waiting at
Palermo, and she has determined, as there has been a
great outcry against her, not to risk coming with the
King; for if he had not succeeded [on] his arrival, and
not been well received, she wou'd not bear the blame
or be in the way." " But " and here we catch the true beat of Emma's heart " But what a glory to
our good King, to our Country, that we our brave
fleet, our great Nelson have had the happiness of re-
storing the King to his throne, to the Neapolitans their much-loved King, and been the instrument of giving
a future good and just government to the Neapol-
itans! . . . The guilty are punished and the faithful
rewarded. I have not been on shore but once. The
King gave us leave to go as far as St. Elmo's, to see
Full text of Memoirs of Emma, lady Hamilton, the friend of Lord Nelson and the court of Naples; Page 34