On the 30th November (and let it be remembered that this was two days only before the overwhelming blow of the battle of Austerlitz) His Neapolitan Majesty reviewed the British forces on a plain between Castel-à-Mare and Naples. Many Russian officers were also on the ground. The King, the Hereditary Prince, and Prince Leopold (then about ten years old) arrived on horseback, the Queen in her carriage, bringing with her old Cardinal Ruffo, who, presently descending, showed us his red stockings. Old Ferdinand appeared in great glee, dressed in a white uniform, with a large cocked hat, and his hair tied in a thick queue. “Avançons, avançons, mon Général,” he said to Sir John Stuart, who was leading him down the line. “Your troops are magnificent! your Army is as fine as your Navy! Body of Bacchus, what an imposing front!” cried the old monarch as he rode up to the Queen.
That elegant ruin, standing up in her carriage and addressing Sir John Stuart, cried, “C’est superbe! magnifique! mon Général. Ce sont des soldats dignes des Anglais, dignes de nos dieux tutélaires.”
She was now old and hazed, but her figure was erect and her mien princely and graceful. Her form had not yet lost all its original brightness, nor appeared less than a queen in ruins.
The line now broke into column, and passed the King and Queen in reviewing order. All on the ground, even the Russian officers, were loud in praise of the appearance of our troops, and certainly 3000 soldiers never formed a more complete and warlike line. I was much amused with the juvenile Prince Leopold, who, dressed like a little field-marshal, and mounted on a superb little charger, richly caparisoned, as often as the officers saluted his Royal parent, lifted the cocked hat from his flaxen head (displaying a queue thicker than his father’s) with a grace the most measured and majestic. Before the Royal party left the ground the wintry sun approached the western wave and blazed upon the brass plates and steely muskets of the soldiers, which Coleridge, who dined with us afterwards, called “a beautiful accident,” and clothed in poetic phrase.
We were a good deal struck with the Royal equipage. It was an old shabby carriage drawn by six miserable horses, tied together with ropes, very ill representing, to our English eyes, the eight proud cream-coloured Hanoverians and the gilded trappings which attach them to the splendid vehicle of our own Sovereign.
December 10.—Early in December the restriction which kept us from visiting the capital was removed. Whether the motive had been to prevent our collision with our Russian confederates quartered in its environs, or whether French employees were still to be temporised with, I neither knew nor inquired. The army began its march to the frontier, and we who had duties still to perform in the neighbourhood of Naples freely satisfied our curiosity by frequent excursions to that interesting place.
Many paternal admonitions did we younger ones receive from the well-versed poet Coleridge to beware of the temptations of Naples, to beware the
Nods and becks and wreathed smiles,
Quips and pranks and wanton wiles,
which would beckon us in every street, and chiefly to beware of the duchesses and princesses, for, said he, “The higher the rank the greater the danger.” But I think a youth who has learned to pass unharmed through the streets of London may be trusted in any town in Europe, for all the world is honest to the honest.