LORD  BYRON  and  his  TIMES
Byron
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Reminiscences of a Literary Life
CHAP. XXI
INTRODUCTION & INDEXES
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INTRODUCTION
PREFACE
CONTENTS
CHAP. I
SHELLEY
CHAP. II
JOHN KEATS
THOMAS CAMPBELL
CHAP. III
GEORGE DOUGLAS
CHAP. IV
WILLIAM STEWART ROSE
CHAP. V
SAMUEL ROGERS
SAMUEL COLERIDGE
CHAP. VI
HARTLEY COLERIDGE
CHAP. VII
THOMAS MOORE
WILLIAM LISLE BOWLES
CHAP. VIII
THOMAS DE QUINCEY
JAMES MATHIAS
CHAP. IX
MISS MARTINEAU
WILLIAM GODWIN
CHAP. X
LEIGH HUNT
THOMAS HOOD
HORACE SMITH
CHAP. XI
SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH
MRS. JAMESON
JANE AND ANNA PORTER
CHAP. XII
TOM GENT
CHAP. XIII
VISCOUNT DILLON
SIR LUMLEY SKEFFINGTON
JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE
CHAP. XIV
LORD DUDLEY
LORD DOVER
CHAP. XV
SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE
WILLIAM BROCKEDON
CHAP. XVI
SIR ROBERT PEEL
SPENCER PERCEVAL
CHAP. XVII
MOUNTSTUART ELPHINSTONE
MR. DAVIS
CHAP. XVIII
ELIJAH BARWELL IMPEY
CHAP. XIX
ALEXANDER I.
GEORGE CANNING
NAPOLEON
QUEEN HORTENSE
ROSSINI
CHAP. XX
COUNT PECCHIO
MAZZINI
COUNT NIEMCEWITZ
‣ CHAP. XXI
CARDINAL RUFFO
CHAP. XXII
PRINCESS CAROLINE
BARONNE DE FEUCHÈRES
CHAP. XXIII
SIR SIDNEY SMITH
CHAP. XXIV
SIR GEORGE MURRAY
CHAP. XXV
VISCOUNT HARDINGE
CHAP. XXVI
REV. C. TOWNSEND
CHAP. XXVII
BEAU BRUMMELL
CHAP. XXVIII
AN ENGLISH MERCHANT
THE BRUNELS
APPENDIX
INDEX
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206 CARDINAL RUFFO [CHAP. XXI
CHAPTER XXI
CARDINAL RUFFO

I knew, in his old age, this chief and leader of one of the most sanguinary counter-revolutions recorded in modern history, that of Naples in 1799; and I have seldom known a milder or more amiable old gentleman. I first met him at the house of his niece, my very kind and hospitable friend, the Duchessa di Campomele, daughter of Don G. Ruffo, Prince of Scilla. I forget the date, but it must have been between 1819 and 1821. The Cardinal was very animated, affable, and communicative; but he did not like to talk about the “Novanta Nove”—still words of terror in Neapolitan ears—and he would seldom listen to any reference to that disastrous period, or to his own exploits. He was very attentive and even gallant to the ladies, and he appeared to be fond of children and young people.

At this time I was but a youth myself, and no doubt on this account he was the more easy and amiable with me. Once, and only once, I succeeded in drawing him out, to speak of his march through the Calabrias, his rapid advance on Naples, and the combats and horrors that followed. It will be remembered how the French Republicans had invaded the kingdom; how, being joined by many Neapolitans of the capital, and of some of the larger provincial towns, they had set up a Republic under the ridiculous name of “Repubblica Partenopea,” and how old King Ferdinand and his Court had fled to Sicily in
CHAP. XXI]HIS CAMPAIGN IN CALABRIA207
Lord Nelson’s ships. The reverses the French were sustaining at the hands of Suwarroff and his Russians in the north of Italy, obliged their General, MacDonald, to quit the Neapolitan territories with the far greater part of his Army.

General Championnet was left behind with only a few thousand French troops, but the Republicans of Naples had raised an army, and they and Championnet held between them all the castles and other fortresses. It was the Queen—Caroline of Austria, sister of the unfortunate Marie Antoinette, Queen of France—the Cardinal, and a Calabrian gamekeeper, an enthusiastic Royalist and a most devoted, daring fellow, who first conceived the notion of recovering possession of the Continental dominions, by collecting an irregular volunteer army in the Calabrias.

The Cardinal, notwithstanding his priestly office, his high rank in the Church, his total inexperience of military affairs, undertook to head and conduct this wild levée en masse. With very little money, with a few red cockades, and two or three white flags, impressed with the royal arms of the Neapolitan Bourbons, he crossed the Straits of Messina, and landed near to Scilla.

Here was his ancestral castle, and here his mere name carried immense weight. His brother, the Prince, a quiet, indolent old gentleman, very submissive to events and circumstances, was, as usual, living in the city of Naples with his family; but he, like many of his forefathers, had been a kind and indulgent master, and was much beloved by his tenants and vassals.

Though much broken in upon, a quarter of a century before this period, by the reforming Minister, the Marchese Tannucci, the feudal system was not yet abrogated, and the country people still prided themselves on the greatness or antiquity of their several lords and still called themselves, as they
208CARDINAL RUFFO [CHAP. XXI
were called by others, their vassals, a usage not altogether obsolete in some parts of the country even now. In his youth the
Cardinal had lived a good deal at the old castle, and among these primitive, wild, fierce, but warm-hearted people. Now, so soon as he proclaimed the object of his coming, his brother’s vassals rushed to him, almost to a man, and most of these mountaineers and sportsmen had their guns, their couteaux de chasse, or other weapons. From Scilla, the summons to arms flew across the neighbouring mountains and glens like the old war-signal of the Highlanders; and in the space of eight-and-forty hours, the Cardinal found himself surrounded by a numerically imposing force. The red cockades, the symbols of ardent loyalty to the Bourbon, were distributed, the white banners were unfurled amidst the most enthusiastic demonstrations, and when the Cardinal had bestowed on his volunteers the imposing name of the “Army of the Holy Faith” (“Armata della Santa Fede”), and raised the rallying cry, “Viva il Re Nostro! Viva la Santa Fede!” the wild Calabrians were transported out of their senses, and demanded to be led at once against the detestable French and the Neapolitan traitors to their King and country.

The Prince of the Church did not keep them waiting. As he advanced rapidly towards the doomed capital, he was joined by more and more enthusiastic partisans. Every town, every village or hamlet, every hillside and every valley, contributed something to his forces. Among these fellows were a good many brigands and cut-throats. It was not a time to be particular, nor could the Cardinal have succeeded in purging or purifying his Army of the Faith, if he had tried ever so long or ever so hard to do it. The torrent rolled rapidly onward, nor did it cease to swell when the Calabrias and the Province of Salerno were left in the rear, and when the Molise was entered.

CHAP. XXI] HIS CAREER IN CALABRIA 209

* Men poured, rushed down from their mountainous regions, like their own fiumazzi or torrents in wintertime; and all shouting “Death to the Republicans! Death to all Jacobins! Long live Ferdinand our King! Long live the Holy Faith!” Attired in pontificalibus, with a cross of gold upon his breast, a huge crucifix before him, and a numerous staff around him, composed chiefly of priests, monks, and brigand chiefs, the Cardinal rode at the head of this wild, disorderly, multitudinous array. Wherever they halted, they planted, not trees of Liberty, like the Republicans, but crosses and crucifixes; masses, matins, and vespers were regularly performed, and the multitude attended to them with every possible show of devotion and contrition. Yet Ruffo soon found that he could not control these masses, that he could not prevent their plundering and massacring, that he had made and armed a monster that was too much for him!

He could not recede, he could not retrace his steps, he could not unmake the monster, he could not steal away and leave it; his heart and soul were in the cause—truly the cause of Altar and Throne—and, with every prospect of success, he went on with his masses, attempting, when and where possible, to check their furor cieco, to moderate their excesses. It is not to be overlooked that the armed Neapolitan Republicans, and some of the French soldiers as well, had been, for many months previously, committing similar atrocities upon the Royalists. Ettore Carafa, a Neapolitan nobleman of very ancient lineage, who had gone crazed and turned democrat, who had adopted some of the bloodiest maxims of Murat, Robespierre, and St. Just, led into Capitanata and Apulia a republican corps d’armée that wasted those regions with fire and sword, and to the shibboleth of “Libertà, Ugualità, e Fraternità,” left not unperpetrated a

* From this sentence to the end, in C. M.’s handwriting.

210CARDINAL RUFFO [CHAP. XXI
single crime in the long, black catalogue of human wickedness and depravity. So long after the events as 1816, when I first travelled through these interesting provinces, I found, in villages and towns and fair old cities, in ruins, in desecrated, unroofed churches, and smoke-blackened walls and skeletons of houses, many a mournful, ghastly proof of this republican rabbia, and saw people shudder and turn pale at mention of the name of Ettore Carafa. At a subsequent period, I knew rather intimately some of these Carafas, or Carafe: they dated their nobility from the first Crusades; they had been Signori (Lords or Princes) of Maddaloni, of Andria, of Ruvo, and of many other extensive fiefs and castles; they were now, one and all, in poverty and humiliation, little short of being pezzenti, or penniless, like all the rest of the true, ancient aristocracy of the Kingdom.

The Cavalier, Don N. Carafa, the musical genius, the composer of “Gabriella di Vergi” and of other operas and of very many separate pieces, who has been so long settled, and so widely known, at Paris, was of this stock. Conspicuous in the personnel of Ruffo’s staff were those famous robbers Mammone, Sciarpa, and Decesari, and that still more famous brigand, Fra Diavolo, or Friar Devil, and each of these chiefs was attended by his band. This may account for a good deal of the evil committed. These were fellows who would not stick at trifles, nor hesitate at gigantic sins; but that the Cardinal himself ever ordered pillage, sack, and plunder, is what I cannot credit, in spite of the contrary assertions of Carlo Botta, General Colletta, W. Pepe, and fourscore other writers of the Liberal school. I have, in my early days, spoken and associated with hundreds of both sexes and of both parties, who were eye or ear witnesses of what was done in the dreadful “Novanta Nove,” or this counter-revolution, and all admitted that Ruffo did all that mortal man could do to stop the effusion of blood. “I never thought
CHAP. XXI]A TERRIBLE VENDETTA211
much of the niche I am to occupy in history,” said he to me, “but I would observe that I was, and, as I hope, still am, a gentleman and sincere Christian (galantuomo e sincero cristiano); as such, I could not do what has been imputed to me; and as such I declare that I did it not. You have travelled through the Calabrias and all over the Kingdom; you have lived long among our people, and know their hot blood (sangue caldo) and how prone they are to revenge (la vendetta). Well, the affair of Ninety-Nine was a vendetta; and, in good part, nothing more.

“It was a vendetta not confined to the ulcerated heart of Queen Caroline, and the hearts of her friends and courtiers! Far from that! It was a vendetta existing and raging throughout the popular, rural body, and in the heart of well-nigh every Neapolitan that was not a Jacobin and Revolutionist. Hundreds of those who joined me had had their relatives or friends massacred, their wives or daughters dishonoured by the horde of Ettore Carafa. Cruelty begets cruelty; let blood-letting once begin, and people will get an appetite for blood! I know this, young man, and many a time then, and many more times since, have I mourned over it! May God in His mercy keep us from such civil wars, from such revolutions and counter-revolutions and revolutions again! You, in England, have happily escaped, but see what these things have done in this Kingdom, in the whole of Italy, in nearly the whole of Europe! And, everywhere, have they not left vendette behind them?”

I am not writing the history of Cardinal Ruffo’s campaign. I wish I had sufficient materials at hand, for it has never been well or fairly or dispassionately written. In the accepted accounts of Botta, Colletta, Vincenzo Cuoco, etc., there are innumerable errors and intentional misstatements of facts. The Cardinal overcame every obstacle, beating his enemies wherever
212CARDINAL RUFFO [CHAP. XXI
he met them, and fearlessly and frankly exposing himself under the hottest fire. When not far from the city of Naples, he diverged to the right, crossed the Apennines, and fell, à plomb, on the vast plains of Apulia, where
Carafa and his bands had done such mischief. Here, with admirable rapidity, he drove the Republicans from one town after the other, and pulled down the tricolour and re-erected the drapeau blanc in every fortress and position of importance.

He then turned sharp round upon the capital, tumbled over the Republicans in one of its suburbs, at the Bridge of the Maddalena, and entered the city, where all the lazzaroni, and every man belonging to what was strictly il basso popolo joined him, and actively and savagely co-operated with his Calabrians. And now it was that vendetta had an orgy and a glut, that unspeakable horrors were committed on the Jacobins, and that the spontaneous massacres performed by the Calabrians, lazzaroni, and other canaglia, were followed up by too many—far too many—judicial executions on the scaffold.

Naples had a remarkable crop of learning, talent, ingenuity, and even genius, in the course of the eighteenth century. About the last of it perished here, on the block, and the soil has never since sent forth such shoots and borne such a harvest; though, most assuredly, natural quickness, aptitude, and natural talent are not, and have not been, since the “Ninety-Nine,” at all wanting.

In less than seven years, King Ferdinand was again in flight for Sicily, and Cardinal Ruffo with him. Marshal Masséna, with an overwhelming French army, took possession of Naples, and—the Republican democratic “dodge” being over—Europe was told that the reign of the Bourbons of Naples was no more, and that Joseph Bonaparte, brother to the Emperor of the French, was seated on their throne!

There was strenuous opposition in several of the
CHAP. XXI]ENGLISH FLEET AND ARMY213
provinces, and most of all, and longest of all, in the Calabrias. Sicily was safe from the French grip through our fleets and the presence of a good English army of 10,000 and more men. The Queen and many others would have tempted the
Cardinal to try again, or to do in 1806-7 what he had done in 1799. “No!” said he. “Queste sono corbellerie che non si fanno due volte nella vita d’un uomo” (“These are pranks not to be played twice in a man’s lifetime!”). He had had enough of it. He might have said, with the French, “On ne parvient pas à se récommencer.” Not long after, he rejoined the impoverished, persecuted papal court, and made his peace with Napoleon. He went even to Paris. This was, I think, at the marriage with the Austrian Maria Louisa, but I am not sure.

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