historians. The most extensive in scale and imposing in subject are histories by Carlo Botta (1766–1837) of the American War of Independence and of Italy from 1789 to 1814. The former is the best history of the subject out of the United States; the latter, though taxed with partiality, is a great and invaluable work. His continuation of Guicciardini is of less account. Botta's style is severe and dignified; too archaic in diction, and occasionally deficient in flexibility, but he always writes with the consciousness of his mission which becomes the historian. He was a determined enemy of the romantic school. A Piedmontese by birth, he had been concerned in the disturbances of the early revolutionary period, and had made several campaigns in the capacity of an army surgeon. Become temporarily a Frenchman by the annexation of Piedmont to France, he had held office under Napoleon, whom he displeased by his frankness. After Napoleon's fall he lived chiefly in France. Though always a patriot as regarded the independence of Italy, the melancholy deceptions of revolutionary times led him at last to deem his countrymen only fit for an enlightened despotism.
A stancher liberal was Pietro Colletta (1770–1831) and an even more eminent historian. A Neapolitan officer of engineers, he served under Murat, but was, nevertheless, maintained in his rank by the restored Bourbons. He was Minister of War under the Constitutional Government of 1820, and after its overthrow was for some time imprisoned at Brunn in Austria, where his health suffered greatly. Upon his release he settled at Florence, and devoted himself to writing the history of Naples from the accession of the Bourbon dynasty in 1734 up to 1825. He was wholly inexperienced as an
