Napoleon well knew the fickle, unreliable, debased character of the Italian populace. He was sure that Joseph, in the kindness of his heart, was too confiding and unsuspicious. He wrote reiteratedly upon this subject: "Put it in your calculations," said he, "that sooner or later you will have an insurrection. It is an event which always happens in a conquered country. You can never sustain yourself by opinion in such a city as Naples. Be sure that you will have a riot or an insurrection. I earnestly desire to aid you by my experience in such matters. Shoot pitilessly the lazzaroni who plunge the dagger. I am greatly surprised that you do not shoot the spies of the King of Naples. Your administration is too feeble. I can not conceive why you do not execute the laws. Every spy should be shot. Every lazzaroni who plies the dagger should be shot. You attach too much importance to a populace whom two or three battalions and a few pieces of artillery will bring to reason. They will never be submissive until they rise in insurrection, and you make a severe example. The villages which revolt should be surrendered to pillage. It is not only the right of war, but policy requires it. Your government, my brother, is not sufficiently vigorous. You fear too much to indispose people. You are too amiable, and have too much confidence in the Neapolitans. This system of mildness will not avail you. Be sure of that. I truly desire that the mob of Naples should revolt. Until you make an example, you will not be master. With every conquered people a revolt is a necessity. I should regard a revolt in Naples as the father of a family regards the small-pox for his children. Provided it does not weaken the invalid too much, it is a salutary crisis."
Such were the precautions which Napoleon was continually sending to Joseph. His amiable brother did not sufficiently heed them. He fancied that the most ignorant, fanatical, and debased of men could be held in control by kind words and kind deeds alone. But he awoke fearfully to the delusion when a savage insurrection broke out among the peasants and the brigands of the Calabrias, and swept the provinces with flame and blood. Then scenes of woe ensued which can never be described. It became necessary to resort to the severest acts of punishment. Much, if not all of this, might have been saved had the firm government which Napoleon recommended been established at the beginning. It is cruelty, not kindness, to leave the mob to feel that they can inaugurate their reign of terror with impunity.
The following extracts from a letter which Joseph wrote his wife, dated Naples, March 22d, 1806, throw interesting light upon the characters of both the King and the Emperor.
Letter from Joseph to his Wife.
"I repeat it, the Emperor ought not to remain alone in Paris. Providence has made me expressly to serve as his safeguard. Loving repose, and yet able to support activity; despising grandeurs, and yet able to bear their burden with success, whatever may have been the slight differences between him and me, I can truly say that he is the man of all the world whom I love the best. I do not know if a climate and shores very much resembling those which I inhabited with him, have given back to me all my first love for the friend of my childhood; but I can truly say that I often find myself weeping over the affections of twenty years' standing as over those of but a few months.
"If you can not come to me immediately, send Zénaïde[L]. I would give all the empires of the world for one caress of my tall Zénaïde, or for one kiss of my little Lolotte. As for you, you know very well that I love you as their mother, and as I love my wife. If I can unite a dispersed family and live in the bosom of my own, I shall be content; and I will surrender myself to fulfill all the missions which the Emperor may assign to me, provided they can be temporary, and that I may cherish the hope of dying in a country in which I have always wished to live."