More Italian Yesterdays

by Mrs. Hugh Fraser

Joachim instantly decided to take his troops back into the kingdom of Naples, and ordered a general retreat.

Then it was that he became fully aware of the sort of staff he had been leaning upon. Some of the troops seem to have been prepared to behave themselves, had their commanders given them any opportunity of so doing, but the generals had had enough and more than enough, and, to use an Americanism, they “lay down upon him” completely.

When he called a Council the next morning they informed him that the larger part of their men had deserted, and that the rest would not obey orders. When one comes to think about it, there does not seem to be any particular reason why they should have, since no one made the faintest show of imposing any kind of discipline upon them.

The enemy advanced on either side while this discussion was in progress, and one brigade, which had obeyed the order to march and which Joachim opposed to them, rested upon their arms, and proved to be utterly indifferent to the results. On his arrival in the Abruzzi, Joachim was astounded to discover that Montigny—he of the “faithful few”—had abandoned his post at Antrodoco without even waiting for the enemy to appear, and that his unedifying conduct alone was the cause of the magistrates’ defection. Also it was Montigny and no one else who had deliberately abandoned Aquila, although the enemy, by reason of the condition of the roads, could not have brought up the guns necessary to reduce the place.

Joachim, still dazed with this infamy, now received word, through Prince Cariati, whom he had sent to the Congress of Vienna, that the allies were going to exterminate him, that no hope of any sort of reconciliation remained; at the same time a letter from Napoleon censured the recklessness of his campaign and went on to say that it might prove the ruin of his own effort.

In this state of affairs Murat bethought himself of the possibilities of a constitution as a prop to his now tottering throne. It would be funny if it were not so melancholy! A constitution! with the Austrians at his gates, an English fleet in the Bay, the entire kingdom torn to pieces, the Carbonari in every quarter, his army vanished, and his friends in flight!

Commodore Campbell had already threatened, unless the ships and the stores in the arsenal were delivered up to him, to fire a thousand rockets into the city. Poor Caroline collected some of the Ministers and magistrates and asked for their advice, whereupon the Minister for Police informed her that the first assault of an enemy would ignite a conflagration in the city which nothing would be able to suppress. They were reminded too, by a general officer, that there were still ten double ranges of batteries wherewith to defend themselves, and he suggested that Campbell was counting upon the moral effects of his threat among the people.

So Caroline, after the invariable accusations of treaty-breaking with which everybody opened verbal fire on an enemy, and the equally invariable appeal to history, stipulated for her own and her family’s safe return to France in an English vessel. Caroline was a Bonaparte, and she could keep her head even in a crisis of this sort. She had ruled wisely and well in her husband’s absence, backing him up, in spite of her opposition to the war, stoutly. Now she proclaimed the terms of accommodation, and, having provided for a temporary peace, she turned to the immediate needs of the situation, and, having heartened the city militia with her own courage, she pacified and quieted the populace. With her in the palace was her sister Pauline and her uncle, Cardinal Fesch, besides her four young children, whom she decided to send to Gaeta.

Stout old Macdonald, the Minister for War, of whom Napoleon said during the Peninsular Campaign, “I would not dare to let McDonald within sound of the pipes!” was sent to supersede Manhir, and he did presently succeed in driving the Austrians beyond the Melfa; but no further advantage was gained, because the troops with which Murat was hoping to effect a junction were stampeded at Mignano.

Murat’s reign was over. The Bourbons were upon the top of him, and all that he could do, now, was to escape before they closed every road. He believed that the Bourbons wished to capture him and wreak their vengeance upon him for the lean and restricted years.