Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Maceroni, Francis
MACERONI, FRANCIS (1788–1846), aide-de-camp to Murat and mechanical inventor, was born in Manchester in 1788. His father, Peter Augustus Maceroni, with two brothers, had served in a French regiment in America during the war of independence, and after a roving life settled down at Manchester as an Italian agent for British goods. He married an English woman, a Roman catholic, the daughter of Benjamin Wildsmith of Sheffield, and afterwards removed to London. Maceroni states that when the French first overran Italy his father had 30,000l. worth of English goods in that country on his books. He was sent by his mother to a Roman catholic school in Hampshire, a sort of ‘Dotheboys Hall,’ whence he was removed to an academy at Carshalton, Surrey, kept by some Dominican fathers from Douay. Afterwards he was at the college at Old Hall Green, near Puckeridge, Hertfordshire (of which the Rev. Dr. Poynter, subsequently Roman catholic bishop, was president of London), and there he acquired a smattering of the sciences. In 1803 he was sent by his father to Rome, where one of his uncles was the papal postmaster-general. He was then fifteen. He appears to have idled away the next ten years at Naples and Rome, in company with other young Englishmen. Mixing in the best society, he claimed to have introduced archery and cricket into Italy, and started a swimming-bath for ladies, where he acted as instructor. He dabbled a little in scientific experiments, and in 1813 applied himself to the study of anatomy and medicine.
Maceroni's pleasing address and English birth recommended him to Murat, king of Naples, who on 1 Jan. 1814 made him one of his aides-de-camp, with the rank of colonel of cavalry, and in July of the same year sent him to England with an autograph letter to the prince regent. Murat, who was negotiating with the English government, sent him again on a mission to England in February 1815. He was in London when the news arrived of Napoleon's escape from Elba; on 26 Feb. Murat's forces were defeated by the Austrians at Tolentino on 2–3 May 1815, and on 16 May Murat fled from Italy to Corsica. Meanwhile ‘Count’ Maceroni, as he styled himself, had proceeded to Paris to further his master's interests. He claimed to have been made at this time a chevalier of the Legion of Honour in the name of the emperor. When the allied armies were advancing on Paris after Waterloo, he was employed as an agent of the ‘commission of government’ to endeavour to obtain an armistice, so as to delay the re-entry of the Bourbons; in this he was unsuccessful. In his memoirs he gives minute details of his interviews with the Duke of Wellington, whose published papers contain no mention of the subject. Maceroni was afterwards sent as the representative of the allied powers to offer Murat an asylum in the Austrian dominions. His letter to Murat conveying the offer is headed Genoa, but dated 28 Sept. 1815, when he appears to have been at Ajaccio, and Murat's answer from the latter place under the same date accepted the proffered terms, ‘after he should have regained his family.’ The letters are given in the ‘Castlereagh Correspondence,’ xi. 49, 50. Murat was then on the eve of setting out on his last fatal expedition, in which he refused to allow Maceroni to accompany him. Maceroni states that a number of Corsican patriots at this time asked him to place himself at their head, shake off the French yoke, and offer the island to Great Britain. He returned to France, and was subsequently thrown into a French prison for alleged illegal interference on Murat's behalf. He was released, without compensation, and in January 1816 returned to England, which was his home for the rest of his life.
In 1817 he published his ‘Interesting Facts relating to the Fall and Death of Joachim Murat, King of Naples,’ London, 8vo, which went through several editions. He also wrote a pamphlet in French and English containing Santini's representations of Napoleon's ill-usage at St. Helena. He was associated with Sir Gregor MacGregor [q. v.], afterwards cacique of Poyais, in his attack and capture of Porto Bello in 1819, but soon fell out with MacGregor, whom he described as a coward and a mountebank. Maceroni afterwards received the rank of brigadier-general in the service of the new republic of Colombia, and appears to have incurred many risks and liabilities in procuring supplies of men and arms in London and Paris. In 1821 he married. He then went to Spain with General Pepè, and meddled in Spanish and Neapolitan politics, always on the popular, and, as events turned out, the losing side. On his return to England he was in communication with the Spanish ambassador in respect of a project of ship communication between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. He promoted a company, styled ‘The Atlantic and Pacific Junction and South American Mining and Trading Company,’ with a capital of a million sterling in 100l. shares. The names of Henry Kater [q. v.] and Sir William Congreve [q. v.] appeared among the directors. The company collapsed in the commercial panic of 1825. About this time Maceroni brought out ‘the best paddle-wheel in the world,’ some improved rockets, a design for an armoured ship, and other military and naval inventions which were never patented. He also wrote ‘Hints to Paviours,’ London, 1827, 8vo, in which he advocated asphalte paving. In 1829 he went to Constantinople on receipt of 1,000l. to assist the Turks against the Russians, and returned two years later ‘poorer than he went.’ At the time of the first Reform Bill he published an ill-advised physical force pamphlet, entitled ‘Defensive Instructions for the People, containing new and improved Combination of Arms, called Foot Lancers,’ London, 1832, 8vo. The combination was a fowling-piece and a ten-foot lance for street fighting. Maceroni says that he had great difficulty in finding a printer for the pamphlet, which he published without any return when he and his children were in the sorest poverty.
Maceroni next turned his attention to an improved model of ‘steam-coach’ for common roads, the most important of his inventions. An engineering treatise of the day (Gordon, Elementary Locomotion) speaks of it as 'a fine specimen of indomitable perseverance.' In this undertaking Maceroni was associated with a Mr. Squire, the owner of a factory on Paddington Green, by whom the invention was patented and worked out. Accounts of the successful performances of the steam-coach in the neighbourhood of London and Brussels appeared in the ' Morning Chronicle,' 7 and 16 Oct. 1833, 'Scotsman,' 9 March 1834, 'Times,' 10 Oct. 1834, 'Globe,' October 1834, 'True Sun,' December 1834, and elsewhere. But the railways ruined the project, the partners fell out, an execution was put in the works, and Maceroni was for some time a prisoner for debt. At the time of writing his memoirs in 1838 he and his children were in most distressed circumstances. He died in London on 25 July 1846. With much personal vanity, which his memoirs constantly betray, Maceroni appears to have been an amiable and accomplished man, of fertile inventive genius. His scientific views were practical as well as original. One of Maceroni's uncles, resident in England, changed the spelling of the family name to 'Macirone,' but Maceroni resumed the original orthography.
[Memoirs and Adventures of Colonel Maceroni, London, 1838, 2 vols. 8vo, and 'synoptical index' at the end of that work; Notes and Queries, 1st ser. xi. 35, 2nd ser. iv. 74.]
Dictionary of National Biography, Errata (1904), p.189
N.B.— f.e. stands for from end and l.l. for last line
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