CHAPTER XV.
"Expect not, O Pope! a second retreat
To find in Gaeta, or a stool for your feet:
A worse fate than even your own may await
The felon to you who once open'd the gate."
G. Rosetti. T. D.
THE CONDITION OF NAPLES SINCE THE REIGN OF TERROR IN APRIL—AGITATION ON GARIBALDI'S APPROACH.
There was a reign of terror in Naples in April, 1860, in consequence of numerous arrests and imprisonments of persons of all classes, many of them on the merest suspicion. The British minister in that city, who had repeatedly distinguished himself by his humane exposure and protest against the cruelties of the old savage, Bomba, now made new representations to his government, that these measures were taken by the Intendants in compliance with a circular from the Minister of Police. On the 1st of March they arrested numbers who were not suspected at all, and among them several dukes, marquises, counts, and princes. Other evidences were given by the government of their great fear of an insurrection.
The following is from the letter addressed to the King of Naples by the Count of Syracuse:
"Civil war, which is already spreading over the provinces of the continent, will carry away the dynasty into that ultimate ruin which the iniquitous arts of perverse advisers have long been preparing for the descendants of Charles III. of Bourbon; the blood of the citizens, uselessly spilt, will again flood the thousand towns of the kingdom, and you, once the hope and love of the people, will be regarded with horror as the sole cause of a fratricidal war.