At the time when I bore the King company at that review it was not his Swiss regiments alone who were the object of the agitators' fury, but his government and his own person as well. A sort of general conspiracy against them was brewing, fomented for the most part by foreign agents, some of them actually diplomats, who thus openly abused the immunity their functions gave them; and it was propagated by means of the secret societies which are an endemic plague in Italian countries. King and Government alike fought as best they could against the current of revolution, and they did so rightly, in the general interest, for revolution brings nothing but ruin in its train.
But beside the adventurers who shrank from no crime, and who preached assassination and plunder, there stood many honourable and enlightened Neapolitans, who desired the reform of abuses (and God knows there were plenty of them!) and the progressive amelioration of the moral and material conditions of existence. Unhappily it was on these men, whose sole offence lay in their opinions, that the brutality, and I might add the horrors, of the repressive measures adopted seemed by preference to fall. The prisons of those days, in which they were confined, were perfect dens, and I greatly fear they are much the same all over Italy even now. I doubt, for instance, that the convict prison at Pescara would yield in the matter of abominations to the convict prison at Nisida, some forty years ago.
When peoples who have long lived in a state of backwardness, have a sudden fit of cleanliness, in imitation of more advanced nations, they are apt to clean the outside walls only, and to leave all their accustomed filth hidden behind them. I mention these terrible prisons because, during the visit of the squadron to Naples, I was guilty of snatching two distinguished men, both much sought after by the police on account of the offensive opinions I have already spoken of, from their clutches. M. Lutteroth, the secretary to our embassy, went and fetched them at night from their hiding-place, and I put them on board one of my ships, which was sailing at once for Tunis. I have no recollection of their names. And indeed that was not the only instance in which we saved people compromised in Italian politics, out of sheer humanity. Long after the incident of which I speak, a Piedmontese officer, who performed brilliant services in our African army, side by side with my brothers, begged Aumale to put him into communication with our mother. He then conjured her, as a woman and a Neapolitan, to save a prisoner, who was seriously compromised (whether his relative or his friend I no longer recollect), from the gallows, and my mother wrote a most pressing letter to King Ferdinand at his request. The King, who had always preserved the tenderest and most respectful affection for his aunt, and glad also, I make no doubt (for he was a kind man), to have an opportunity of setting mercy above arguments of state, granted my mother the pardon she craved. The name of the man thus spared was Nicotera.
This taken for granted, as they say in mathematics, I hie me back to my squadron at Spezzia, a splendid bay, which at that time we were the only people to use as an anchorage, but in which the Italians have now established a great naval arsenal. The bay is very safe and convenient for drill and practice. But I have one fault to find with it. I never took my ships there without an epidemic of influenza colds breaking out, and affecting three or four hundred men in each crew. These outbreaks are due, in my opinion, to the high wooded mountains which shadow the bay on the western side, and to its sudden transitions from the most scorching sunshine to very cool shade. Our ships attracted several tourists, and one morning I saw a party appear on board, consisting, amongst other people, of the Marquis de Boissy, a witty and restless French peer, married to the Comtesse Giuccioli, of Byronian memory, and of the Marquis Oldoini, accompanied by an exquisite young lady, his daughter, who afterwards became that superb beauty, the Comtesse de Castiglione.
M. de Boissy tried to talk politics to me and to reiterate the famous phrase "Be strong." But whenever anybody began to talk to me about questions of home politics, with which I had nothing to do, my partial deafness always became complete.
More cruising and manoeuvring carried the squadron over to Algiers, which it reached in June, 1847, just when Marshal Bugeaud was giving up his position as governor-general of the colony. We rendered him viceregal honours at his departure, and I can still see his grand white head, as he stood uncovered on the bridge of the ship which bore him away, and passed slowly between the lines of warships, with their cannon thundering, drums rolling, bands playing the Marseillaise, and crews cheering wildly. He left that Algerian territory, which he had so largely contributed to acquire to France, with a sad heart, and for ever. But the European horizon was darkening, serious events were evidently pending, and if war was to result fiom them, France would have had, in the person of the soldier we were thus saluting, a general whom all, without exception, would have served with equal devotion and absolute confidence. To us Frenchmen, this confidence in our leader, which emboldens every one, and suppresses all doubt and hesitation, is half the battle. It was possessed, and completely, not by Bugeaud himself alone—all his lieutenants had acquired it. During fifteen years of fighting and of detached expeditions, in which they had all, turn about, held independent commands, both officers and soldiers had been able to gauge their valour, their intelligence, and that capacity for bearing the weight of undivided responsibility, which is the great test of a commander-in-chief. The advantage thus gained was immense. But are we sure the country got the benefit of all the services which this band of soldiers, consecrated already by the opinion of their military compeers, might have rendered her? Was it not rather scattered to the winds by the ruinous action of political forces?
I took advantage of the squadron's visit to Algiers to make an excursion to Boghar, on the desert frontier. This expedition was both interesting and amusing. My first day's stage took me to Blidah, into which place I made the quaintest entry, surrounded by all the authorities, who had come out as far as the monument to Sergeant Blandan to meet me I had not travelled a hundred paces among these gentlemen before the frankest cordiality began to exist between me and them. Colonel Claparede, on my right, with whom this meeting was my first, was asking me if I had ever been fool enough to fall in love; Colonel Baville, of the Chasseurs d'Afrique, on my left, whose face was also a new one to me, was inquiring whether I did not agree with him that children were born with extraordinary rapidity in the African climate, while Bourbaki, the secretary of the Arab office, was performing the wildest fantasia in front of us at the head of the Hadjout Goum.
At Medeah, whither I went by the Mouzai'a Pass, so as to see the scene of the fights in which my brothers had played such a noble part, I had another reception, and another fantasia was performed (but this time it was on foot), by the Coulouglis and the Beni Mzab, wearing great hats with ostrich feathers in them. Then came a grotesque imitation of the fantasia, performed by the colonial militia, all drunk, who fired their pistols off under my nose and blackened my face with powder. General Marey, commanding at Medeah, owned the Romance vintage in Burgundy, and gave us some to drink at dinner, which did not diminish the general cordiality. Ah, well! a glass of good French wine, drunk far from home and the dissensions of the mother country, among comrades ready to give their lives for her at any moment, is a thing worth remembering!
Boghar, hideous and scorchingly hot as it is, would be downright uninhabitable if it were not washed by the waters of the Cheliff. The necessities arising from our conquest of the country had made it a revictualling post for our columns, and a trial had just been made there of a new sort of provision, described as rations maigres. These consisted of biscuit and dried cod, and not having been issued within the period reckoned for, they were beginning to go bad. To avoid financial loss, a pretty numerous garrison had been at once despatched to Boghar to perform the far from pleasant duty of consuming them. Thanks to the exertions of the officer in command, M. de Monet, who afterwards attained the rank of general, and lost both his arms in the Crimea, the spirit of his men was admirable, but their sanitary condition was quite deplorable. And when I received the officers, one of them, a captain of Engineers, with the tacit assent of his chief, acted as the mouthpiece of the rest in begging me to raise my voice to put an end to their cruel sufferings. He represented to me that the unhealthiness of the place was aggravated by a process of poisoning. The troops had been sent up simply to eat damaged biscuit and stinking cod. There was no other food issued for the men, and as the neighbourhood produced nothing whatever, it was impossible to vary it in any way. Everybody was more or less ill in consequence, and if this state of things went on they must all die. A distinguished officer, M. de Cissey, who had been detailed as my aide-de-camp during my trip, took the poor fellows' case in hand, and undertook to lay their complaint before the general.
I saw something else at Boghar which was not so depressing—another fantasia, a huge one, performed by thousands of Arabs, who had hastened in from all quarters. At the very height of the show, another tribe, the most picturesque of them all, the Ouled-Nails, arrived on the scene, having travelled thirty leagues to do homage to me as the "son of the Sultan." There were 1,500 horsemen and their wives, who were carried by something like a hundred camels in a kind of palanquin, covered with gaudy stuffs, which they call "atatich." When they arrived, the excitement of the fantasia rose to madness. The horsemen from the south, in their splendid dresses, showed off all their skill, and whenever one of them performed any specially brilliant feat, the deafening "you-you" of the women rose from the circle of palanquins as from the benches of a circus.