Naples, Past and Present

by Arthur H. Norway

Perseus took in the situation at a glance, and being unluckily unprovided with a Gorgon's head with which to turn the monster into stone, he saw no other way of saving the rhetorical Andromeda discanting eloquently on the roof than by translating some of his promises into actions. Taking his stand, therefore, on the steps of the church, he sent up word through the grid that the Viceroy must instantly make out an order for the abolition of the gabelle and send it down to him. The Viceroy sent it without delay, and the Cardinal, who appears to have been one of the very few men of mark in Naples possessing any credit with the mob, produced an instant sensation by waving the paper in the air. With a singular good judgment he allowed no one to see it on that spot, but getting into his coach, still waving the document high above his head, he drew off the people from the church, and so opened a way for the escape of the Viceroy.

It was perhaps hoped that the remission of the duty on fruit would quiet the city; but greater purposes were already taking shape in the minds of those who led the people. The Spanish tyranny had bitten deep into their hearts, and the very promptitude of their success made them hope the moment had arrived to end many things. The Convent of San Lorenzo in the Strada Tribunali was an armoury well stored with pikes and harquebusses. The crowd, led by a Sicilian who had played a foremost part in a revolt upon his native island, attacked the convent, and fierce fighting took place between the citizens and the small body of defenders who had thrown themselves into the convent. The Sicilian was shot in the forehead, but the attacks continued, and a day or two later the arsenal became untenable, and was surrendered with the cannon and munitions which it contained.

IN THE STRADA DI TRIBUNALI, NAPLES.

The night of Sunday was full of terror. Throughout the hours of darkness mobs raged through the city; and the excellent Don Gabriele, after vainly endeavouring to sleep, tells us that he got up and looked out to see what they were doing. They were going by in gangs, brandishing torches which flared and dripped with pitch. For standards they bore a loaf stuck on the point of a pike in derision of its tiny size, the result of the gabelle on flour. Of opposition from the guardians of order there was none at all, and had the mob elected to burn the city to the ground it is not clear what force could have restrained them. The strange thing was that the ragamuffins made so little use of their opportunities. It was as if already, in these first moments of the insurrection, the rule of the leaders was respected. Mas'aniello was busy throughout the night in the Mercato and the piazza of the Carmine, organising, directing, and restraining. He must have had some rare quality of command, some spark of that divine faculty for swaying men which is recognised and honoured instinctively in moments of sharp crisis. Otherwise it could not have happened that the mob, unbridled and passionate, would have gone through the streets by night chanting "Viva, viva il re di Spagna," and abstaining from gross outrages as they did. Even Don Gabriele, whose mouth is full of fulsome praises of the powers that were, asserts that among the rabble, needy and starving as many of them were, none plundered for himself without being repressed by his companions, while one who did so was instantly tossed into the flames of a burning house, in punishment for an offence which could but bring disgrace on the whole movement.

So Don Gabriele watched the crowds go by, and consoled himself amid his natural fears of what might happen next by the sage reflection that the whole disturbance had been foretold as long ago as in the days when the Book of Ecclesiastes was written. It may probably puzzle even well-read men to discover any reference to Mas'aniello in that sacred book; but Don Gabriele was convinced of the fact, and anyone who desires to verify his references will find the passages on which he relied in the tenth chapter.

When morning came all Naples was in arms, and the authority of Mas'aniello was supreme. In the Piazza di Mercato, opposite the house in which he lived, some rope dancers had erected a platform for their exhibition, and on this throne sat the fisherman's boy, in trousers and shirt, both torn and dirty, girded with a rusty sword, and delivering his orders like a conqueror, calm and confident in the knowledge of his strength. The business which chiefly occupied his mind was the discovery of fresh arms and munitions. Early in the day, by the secret help of a woman, the rioters had discovered five cannon hidden in the city. Powder they also found, flooded by the Spaniards, but not beyond the possibility of being dried. Meantime most of the prisons were flung open. Hour by hour the forces mustering in the Carmine increased, and already bands were told off to destroy the houses and property of those nobles who were hated by the people.

As for the Viceroy, he saw no resource but in sending messages of peace. For this purpose he released from prison the Duke of Maddaloni, head of the Carafa family, who had incurred the displeasure of the Crown, and despatched him to the Mercato, with instructions to use his influence in any way which seemed to him most likely to disperse the people to their homes. But, as Don Gabriele remarks quaintly, the people obstinately refused to taste the perfect liquor out of this caraffe, esteeming it indeed rank poison. Nor was their refusal merely passive. On the contrary, they hunted the Duke through the piazza till he fled for his life to the shelter of the Carmine, convinced that he was sent to play them false and delude them with worthless promises, in place of the restoration of the privileges bestowed on Naples by the great Emperor Charles the Fifth, which charter they were resolved to obtain and re-establish.

It is quite clear that the nobles of Naples had no real sympathy with the mob in the most reasonable of their grievances. Had any one among them come forward to support and to restrain them, the issue of the revolt might have been very different. Indeed, the part played by the nobles rankled in the minds of the citizens for many a year; and when, in the next century, the nobles themselves sought to organise a rising, an old man who had been out with Mas'aniello cast it in their teeth and called upon the people to go to their homes, which they did.