The court of Ferdinand IV., one of the most worthless and corrupt of the old feudal dynasties, was maintained in Sicily by the army, the navy, and the purse of England. His Sicilian majesty received from the British Government an annual subsidy of four hundred thousand pounds sterling ($2,000,000), to support the dignity of his throne, and to pay for the troops which Sicily furnished England for her interminable warfare against the French Empire. The Duke of Orleans severely condemned the errors and follies continually developed by the reigning dynasty, and yet he found himself utterly powerless to remedy them. The queen was the ruling power at the court, and her prejudiced and impassioned nature was impervious to any appeals of reason. She knew very well that England did not loan her protection and lavish her gold upon the Sicilian Court from any love for that court, but simply from dread and hatred of the republican principles advocated by Napoleon. She, therefore, often treated the English with the utmost disdain. And yet, sustained by twenty thousand British troops upon the island, she trampled upon all popular rights, consigning, by arbitrary arrests, to the dungeon or to exile all who opposed her sway.
Retirement of the duke.
"Against these violations of law, infringements of liberty, and manifestations of absolutism, the Sicilians rose with becoming firmness. The Duke of Orleans had long foreseen the approaching hurricane, the gathering wrath of an injured people; but finding his remonstrances vain, his principles of government almost directly contrary to those of his august mother-in-law, he retired from a court where there was no room for a virtuous counsellor, and, with his wife and her infant prince, lived in retirement a few miles from Palermo."[M]
The Restoration.
The duke was living tranquilly, and perhaps not unhappily, in this retirement, abstaining from all participation in the intrigues of the Sicilian Court, when, on the morning of the 23d of April, 1814, an English frigate, with every banner floating triumphantly in the breeze, entered the harbor of Palermo. It brought the astounding intelligence of the fall of Napoleon and the restoration of the Bourbons. The exciting tidings soon reached the ears of the duke. He hurried to Palermo, and drove directly to the palace of the English ambassador, where he was greeted with the words:
"I congratulate you upon the downfall of Napoleon, and on the restoration of the illustrious race, of which you yourself are a member, to the throne of their fathers."
For a moment the duke was speechless with astonishment, and then declared the story to be quite incredible. He however was soon convinced that it was even so, by reading a copy of the Moniteur, which gave a detailed account of the whole event. All the shipping and all the forts of Palermo were now resounding with the thunders of exultation. The Duke of Orleans had fought under the tri-color flag. Mingled emotions agitated him. He saw that national banner which had waved so proudly over many a field of victory now trampled in the dust beneath the feet of foreign squadrons, and their allied armies exultingly encamped within the parks of his native city. The restoration of the Bourbons had been accomplished at the expense of the humiliation of his country.
The next day, the commander of the ship which had brought the intelligence called at the residence of the Duke of Orleans, and said to him,
The return to Paris.
"I am directed by Admiral Lord William Bentinck, who is now at Genoa, to wait upon your royal highness, and ascertain if you wish to return to France. If so, my vessel and my personal services are at your command. If you prefer to remain at Naples, I hope you may enjoy that lasting happiness to which, by your eventful and virtuous life, you are so eminently entitled."[N]