But of the popolo, a very large number, said to have amounted in the end of the eighteenth century to thirty thousand or more, were known in ordinary language by the name of lazzari or lazzaroni. These were the lowest of the inhabitants, including, of course, many who had no honest means of livelihood, but consisting mainly of those who, though they gained their bread by their labour, did not practise any sort of skilled industry. Their distinctive character, as compared with the populace of other great cities, lay in two points. First, the usual cheapness of fruits and other vegetables enabled them to subsist on the very smallest earnings; while the mildness of the climate made them, during the greater part of the year, nearly independent both of clothing and shelter. Accordingly, many of them were literally homeless, spending the day in the streets as errand-porters, fruit-sellers, day-labourers, or mere idlers, and sleeping by night on the steps of churches or beneath archways; while all of them were for a great part of their time unemployed. These circumstances produced their second peculiarity, that strong spirit of union which had at one time extended to a regular organisation. They were the only class in Italy whom the Spaniards feared; the viceroys named them in their edicts with deference, and received deputations from them to complain of grievances; and in the seventeenth century they were even allowed to meet tumultuously once a year in the piazza del Mercato, and name by acclamation their temporary chief or capo-lazzaro. Since the accession of the Bourbons, it is true, they were less closely banded together, and their custom of electing an annual head seems to have fallen into disuse; but we have already seen, and shall immediately discover still more dreadful proofs, that the ancient temper was not yet extinct.
We cannot fail to be struck with the likeness which this unwieldy and dangerous commonalty bore to the populace of imperial Rome; and the system which was pursued for furnishing the city with provisions was another point of close resemblance. During four hundred years every conceivable plan for preventing scarcity by restrictive laws had been tried without effect. An assize of bread and flour, fixed in 1401, was followed in 1496 by the building of public magazines, in which the eletti kept a large stock of grain; and at the same time there was established a strict monopoly in favour of a prescribed number of flour-merchants and bakers. The municipality lost enormously by this system; for dearths became frequent, and the corporation then, exactly like the Roman senate and emperors, sold their corn at a heavy loss, and lowered the price of the bread. Since 1764 the city had been supplied by eighteen privileged bakers, by the macaroni-makers, and one or two subordinate crafts; these tradesmen paid rent to the government for their shops; and not only were they obliged to buy the greater part of their flour from the public granaries, but had to deposit corn of their own in large quantities, as a security for their engagements, being bound likewise to purchase this grain from the distant provinces. In the year 1782 it was ascertained from official returns that, in the nineteen years preceding, the corporation had lost 2,632,645 ducats, or about £436,000. They had spent this money without earning so much as thanks; for there was a general prejudice against their establishments, and, both at Naples and at Palermo, where there was a similar system, more than two-thirds of the people made their own bread at home, except when the price of grain rose, on which everyone flocked to the public bakehouses.
Such was the scene, and such were the principal actors, in that fearful tragedy of which we are now to be spectators.
Scarcely had the Parthenopean Republic been proclaimed when the ferocious cardinal Ruffo landed at Reggio, bringing with him from Sicily a patent as royal vicar. In Calabria, and the other southern provinces, he soon organised numerous tumultuary hordes, several of whose captains were the most practised robbers, a few bands being commanded by military subalterns, and some by parish priests. Proni, one of the leaders, was a convicted assassin; De’ Cesari was a notorious highwayman, as was Michele Pezzo, better known by the name of Fra Diavolo, or Friar Beelzebub; and Mammone Gaetano, a miller of Sora, was the worst monster of all. The brigands crowded to serve under their favourite captains; many old soldiers enlisted, and the peasants, aroused by their clergymen, joined in thousands, and quickly learned the trade of murder. The French despatched against them General Duhesme, who was accompanied by a young Neapolitan, Ettore Caraffa, count of Ruvo, a man every way worthy to be pitted against the cardinal and his associates. The two parties swept over the kingdom like a plague, from Reggio to the mountains of the ulterior Abruzzo; and the war, if it deserves the name, soon became on both sides a struggle of revenge and extermination. Prisoners were put to the torture; villages and towns were burned, and their inhabitants massacred; Caraffa had the barbarous satisfaction of exterminating his rebellious vassals; and Ruffo’s followers, enamoured of bloodshed and pillage, speedily ceased to ask whether their victims were republicans or royalists.
An Italian Peasant Woman
The cardinal, soon reducing the southern districts, advanced upon Naples; and the French, unable to cope with him, evacuated the city, leaving but weak garrisons in the three castles. The republican government lost authority at once, and the legislative councils were insulted in their halls by bands of armed ruffians. No plan of defence seems to have been matured, although the leading men did all they could to inspirit the people. In the theatres, which continued open, Alfieri’s tragedies were received with shouts, and interrupted by vehement addresses from persons in the crowd; friars preached freedom and resistance in the churches and on the streets; and the superstitious lazzaroni were for a time kept in check, by seeing the saints anew manifest their favour to the revolution.[22] The few native troops which still were under arms were sent out and defeated in the plain; and, when the royalists approached, abject terror alternated with the resolution of despair. Most members of the councils and administration retired into the lower forts, the Castel dell’Ovo and Castelnuovo.
There were in Naples about two thousand Calabrese, men of all ranks, nobles, priests, and peasants, driven from their homes by Ruffo’s hordes. They alone were firm. A part of them took up their post in the city; the rest, unprovided with artillery, marched out and garrisoned the castle of Viviena, beyond the bridge of the Maddalena. The royalists surrounded them, their heavy guns battered down the walls of the fort, and the assailants entered by storm. The republicans fought like hungry tigers, not a man surrendered or fled; and, when all but a handful had fallen, Antonio Toscani, a priest of Cosenza, who commanded this little remnant, threw a match into the powder-magazine beside him, and perished in the common destruction of friends and enemies. The streets were for a time defended by the remaining Calabrese, while Prince Caraccioli, the king’s admiral, who had joined the popular party, kept up a fire on the royalists from a few small vessels in the harbour; but a body of the lazzaroni suddenly attacked the republicans in the rear, their ranks were broken, and the city was lost. Ruffo took possession of it on the 14th of June, 1799.
Dark as are the crimes which stain the history of our race, humanity has seldom been disgraced by scenes so horrible as those which followed. Universal carnage was but one feature of the atrocity; the details are sickening, many of them utterly unfit to be told. Some republicans were strangled with designed protraction of agony; others were burned upon slow fires; the infuriated murderers danced and yelled round the piles on which their victims writhed; and it is even said that men were seen to snatch the flesh from the ashes, and greedily devour it. The lazzaroni, once more loyal subjects, eagerly assisted in hunting down the rebels; during two whole days the massacre was uninterrupted, and death without torture was accepted as mercy.
The two lower castles surrendered on a capitulation with the cardinal which stipulated that the republicans should, at their choice, remain unmolested in Naples or be conveyed to Toulon; and two prelates with two noblemen, who were prisoners in the forts, were consigned to Colonel Méjean, the French commandant of the Castel Sant’ Elmo, as hostages for the performance of the convention. The last incidents of this bloody tale cannot be told without extreme reluctance by any native of the British Empire; for they stain deeply one of the brightest names in the national history. While the persons protected by the treaty were preparing to embark, the English fleet under Nelson arrived, bringing the king, the minister Acton, and the ambassador Sir William Hamilton, with his wife, who was at once the queen’s confidante and the evil genius of the brave admiral. The French commandant, treacherous as well as cowardly, surrendered the castle, and gave up the hostages without making any conditions. The capitulation was declared null, although the cardinal indignantly remonstrated, and retired from the royal service on failing to procure its fulfilment. The republicans were searched for and imprisoned; and arbitrary commissions sat to try them. Under the sentences passed by such courts, in the metropolis and the provinces, four thousand persons died by the hand of the executioner.