and of the Albanian chief, Skanderbeg, who chivalrously came to the aid of the prince whose father had aided him, he triumphed over his enemies, and by 1464 had re-established his authority in the kingdom. In 1478 he allied himself with Pope Sixtus IV. against Lorenzo de’ Medici, but the latter journeyed alone to Naples when he succeeded in negotiating an honourable peace with Ferdinand. In 1480 the Turks captured Otranto, and massacred the majority of the inhabitants, but in the following year it was retaken by his son Alphonso, duke of Calabria. His oppressive government led in 1485 to an attempt at revolt on the part of the nobles, led by Francesca Coppola and Antonello Sanseverino and supported by Pope Innocent VIII.; the rising having been crushed, many of the nobles, notwithstanding Ferdinand’s promise of a general amnesty, were afterwards treacherously murdered at his express command. In 1493 Charles VIII. of France was preparing to invade Italy for the conquest of Naples, and Ferdinand realized that this was a greater danger than any he had yet faced. With almost prophetic instinct he warned the Italian princes of the calamities in store for them, but his negotiations with Pope Alexander VI. and Ludovico il Moro, lord of Milan, having failed, he died in January 1494, worn out with anxiety. Ferdinand was gifted with great courage and real political ability, but his method of government was vicious and disastrous. His financial administration was based on oppressive and dishonest monopolies, and he was mercilessly severe and utterly treacherous towards his enemies.
Authorities.—Codice Aragonese, edited by F. Trinchera (Naples, 1866–1874); P. Giannone, Istoria Civile del Regno di Napoli; J. Alvini, De gestis regum Neapol. ab Aragonia (Naples, 1588); S. de Sismondi, Histoire des républiques italiennes, vols. v. and vi. (Brussels, 1838); P. Villari, Machiavelli, pp. 60-64 (Engl. transl., London, 1892); for the revolt of the nobles in 1485 see Camillo Porzio, La Congiura dei Baroni (first published Rome, 1565; many subsequent editions), written in the Royalist interest. (L. V.*)
FERDINAND II. (1469–1496), king of Naples, was the grandson
of the preceding, and son of Alphonso II. Alphonso finding
his tenure of the throne uncertain on account of the approaching
invasion of Charles VIII. of France and the general dissatisfaction
of his subjects, abdicated in his son’s favour in 1495, but
notwithstanding this the treason of a party in Naples rendered
it impossible to defend the city against the approach of
Charles VIII. Ferdinand fled to Ischia; but when the French
king left Naples with most of his army, in consequence of the
formation of an Italian league against him, he returned, defeated
the French garrisons, and the Neapolitans, irritated by the
conduct of their conquerors during the occupation of the city,
received him back with enthusiasm; with the aid of the great
Spanish general Gonzalo de Cordova he was able completely to
rid his state of its invaders shortly before his death, which
occurred on the 7th of September 1496.
For authorities see under Ferdinand I. of Naples; for the exploits of Gonzalo de Cordova see H. P. del Pulgar, Crónica del gran capitano don Gonzalo de Cordoba (new ed., Madrid, 1834).
FERDINAND IV. (1751–1825), king of Naples (III. of Sicily,
and I. of the Two Sicilies), third son of Don Carlos of Bourbon,
king of Naples and Sicily (afterwards Charles III. of Spain),
was born in Naples on the 12th of January 1751. When his
father ascended the Spanish throne in 1759 Ferdinand, in accordance
with the treaties forbidding the union of the two crowns,
succeeded him as king of Naples, under a regency presided over
by the Tuscan Bernardo Tanucci. The latter, an able, ambitious
man, wishing to keep the government as much as possible in his
own hands, purposely neglected the young king’s education,
and encouraged him in his love of pleasure, his idleness and his
excessive devotion to outdoor sports. Ferdinand grew up
athletic, but ignorant, ill-bred, addicted to the lowest amusements;
he delighted in the company of the lazzaroni (the most
degraded class of the Neapolitan people), whose dialect and
habits he affected, and he even sold fish in the market, haggling
over the price.
His minority ended in 1767, and his first act was the expulsion of the Jesuits. The following year he married Maria Carolina, daughter of the empress Maria Theresa. By the marriage contract the queen was to have a voice in the council of state after the birth of her first son, and she was not slow to avail herself of this means of political influence. Beautiful, clever and proud, like her mother, but cruel and treacherous, her ambition was to raise the kingdom of Naples to the position of a great power; she soon came to exercise complete sway over her stupid and idle husband, and was the real ruler of the kingdom. Tanucci, who attempted to thwart her, was dismissed in 1777, and the Englishman Sir John Acton (1736), who in 1779 was appointed director of marine, succeeded in so completely winning the favour of Maria Carolina, by supporting her in her scheme to free Naples from Spanish influence and securing a rapprochement with Austria and England, that he became practically and afterwards actually prime minister. Although not a mere grasping adventurer, he was largely responsible for reducing the internal administration of the country to an abominable system of espionage, corruption and cruelty. On the outbreak of the French Revolution the Neapolitan court was not hostile to the movement, and the queen even sympathized with the revolutionary ideas of the day. But when the French monarchy was abolished and the royal pair beheaded, Ferdinand and Carolina were seized with a feeling of fear and horror and joined the first coalition against France in 1793. Although peace was made with France in 1796, the demands of the French Directory, whose troops occupied Rome, alarmed the king once more, and at his wife’s instigation he took advantage of Napoleon’s absence in Egypt and of Nelson’s victories to go to war. He marched with his army against the French and entered Rome (29th of November), but on the defeat of some of his columns he hurried back to Naples, and on the approach of the French, fled on board Nelson’s ship the “Vanguard” to Sicily, leaving his capital in a state of anarchy. The French entered the city in spite of the fierce resistance of the lazzaroni, who were devoted to the king, and with the aid of the nobles and bourgeois established the Parthenopaean Republic (January 1799). When a few weeks later the French troops were recalled to the north of Italy, Ferdinand sent an expedition composed of Calabrians, brigands and gaol-birds, under Cardinal Ruffo, a man of real ability, great devotion to the king, and by no means so bad as he has been painted, to reconquer the mainland kingdom. Ruffo was completely successful, and reached Naples in May. His army and the lazzaroni committed nameless atrocities, which he honestly tried to prevent, and the Parthenopaean Republic collapsed.
The savage punishment of the Neapolitan Republicans is dealt with in more detail under Naples, Nelson and Caracciolo, but it is necessary to say here that the king, and above all the queen, were particularly anxious that no mercy should be shown to the rebels, and Maria Carolina made use of Lady Hamilton, Nelson’s mistress, to induce him to execute her own spiteful vengeance. Her only excuse is that as a sister of Marie Antoinette the very name of Republican or Jacobin filled her with loathing. The king returned to Naples soon afterwards, and ordered wholesale arrests and executions of supposed Liberals, which continued until the French successes forced him to agree to a treaty in which amnesty for members of the French party was included. When war broke out between France and Austria in 1805, Ferdinand signed a treaty of neutrality with the former, but a few days later he allied himself with Austria and allowed an Anglo-Russian force to land at Naples. The French victory at Austerlitz enabled Napoleon to despatch an army to southern Italy. Ferdinand with his usual precipitation fled to Palermo (23rd of January 1806), followed soon after by his wife and son, and on the 14th of February the French again entered Naples. Napoleon declared that the Bourbon dynasty had forfeited the crown, and proclaimed his brother Joseph king of Naples and Sicily. But Ferdinand continued to reign over the latter kingdom under British protection. Parliamentary institutions of a feudal type had long existed in the island, and Lord William Bentinck (q.v.), the British minister, insisted on a reform of the constitution on English and French lines. The king indeed practically abdicated his power, appointing his son Francis
