popular demand was now that Naples should assist the Lombards
in their revolt against Austria, for a feeling of Italian solidarity
was growing up. The ministry of Carlo Troya succeeded
The constitution of 1848.
to that of Serracapriola, and after the parliamentary
elections, in which many extreme Radicals
were elected, Ferdinand declared war against Austria.
(April 7th, 1848). After considerable delay a Neapolitan army
under General Pepe marched towards Lombardy in May, while
the fleet sailed for Venice. But a dispute between the king and
the parliament concerning the form of the royal oath having
arisen, a group of demagogues with criminal folly provoked
disturbances and erected barricades (May 14th). The king
refused to open parliament unless the barricades were removed,
and while the moderate elements attempted to bring about
conciliation, the ministry acted with great weakness. A few
shots were fired—it is not known who fired first—on
the 15th, the Swiss regiments stormed the barricades
and street fighting lasted all day. By the evening the
Swiss and the royalists were masters of the situation. A new
ministry under Prince Cariati was appointed. Parliament was
dissolved, the National Guard disbanded and the army recalled
from the Po. Fresh elections were held and the new parliament
met on the 15th of July, but it had the king, the army and the
mob against it, and anti-constitutionalist demonstrations became
frequent. After a brief session it was prorogued to the 1st of
February 1849, and when it met on that date a deadlock between
king and parliament occurred. The Austrian victories in Lombardy
had strengthened the court party, or Camarilla as it was
called, and on the 13th of March the assembly was again dissolved,
and never summoned again. The king was at Gaeta, whither
the grand-duke of Tuscany and Pius IX. had also repaired to
escape from their rebellious subjects, and the city became the
headquarters of Italian reaction.
In Sicily the revolutionists were purely insular in their aspirations and bitterly hostile to the Neapolitans, and the attempts at conciliation, although favoured by Lord Minto, failed, for Naples wanted one constitution and one parliament, whereas Sicily wanted two, with only the king in common. The Sicilian assembly met in March 1848, and SettimoSicily. in his inaugural speech declared that the Bourbon dynasty had ceased to reign, that the throne was vacant and that Sicily united her destinies to those of Italy. Settimo was elected president of the government, but the administration was lacking in statesmanship, the treasury was empty, and nothing was done to raise an army. After the Austrian victories King Ferdinand sent a Neapolitan army of 20,000 men under Filangieri to subjugate the island. The troops landed at Messina, of which the citadel had been held by the royalists throughout, and after three days desperate fighting the city itself was captured and sacked. The British and French admirals imposed a truce with a view to conciliation, and the king offered the Sicilians the Neapolitan constitution and a separate parliament, which they refused. Sicilian troops were now levied throughout the island and the chief command given to the Pole Mieroslawski, but it was too late. Filangieri marched forward taking town after town, and committing many atrocities. In April he reached Palermo while the fleet appeared in the bay; tumults having broken out within the city, the government surrendered on terms which granted amnesty for all except Settimo and forty-two others.
For a few months after the dissolution of the Neapolitan parliament the government abstained from persecution, but with the crushing of the Sicilian revolution its hands were free; and when the commission on the affair of the 15th of May had completed its labours the state trials and arrests began. The arrest of S. FaucitanoThe Neapolitan prisons. for a demonstration at Gaeta led to the discovery of the Unità Italiana society, whose object was to free Italy from domestic tyranny and foreign domination. Thousands of respectable citizens were thrown into prison, such as L. Settembrini, Carlo Poerio and Silvio Spaventa. The trials were conducted with the most scandalous contempt of justice, and moral and physical torture was applied to extort confessions. The abominable conditions of the prisons in which the best men of the kingdom were immured, linked to the vilest common criminals, was made known to 'the world by the famous letters of W. E. Gladstone, which branded the Bourbon regime as “the negation of God erected into a system of government.” The merest suspicion of unorthodox opinions, the possession of foreign newspapers, the wearing of a beard or an anonymous denunciation, sufficed for the arrest and condemnation of a man to years of imprisonment, while the attendibili, or persons under police surveillance liable to imprisonment without trial at any moment, numbered 50,000. The remonstrances of Great Britain and France met with no success. Ferdinand strongly resented foreign interference, and even rejected the Austrian proposal for a league of the Italian despots for mutual defence against external attacks and internal disorder. In 1856 his life was unsuccessfully attempted by a soldier, and the same year Baron Bentivegna organized a revolt near Palermo, which was quickly suppressed. In 1857 Carlo Pisacane, an ex-Neapolitan officer who had taken part in the defence of Rome, fitted out an expedition, withPisacane’s attempt. Mazzini’s approval, from Genoa, and landed at Sapri in Calabria, where he hoped to raise the flag of revolution; but the local police assisted by the peasantry attacked the band, killing many, including Pisacane himself, and capturing most of the rest. The following year, at the instance of Great Britain and France, Ferdinand commuted the sentences of some of the political prisoners to exile. (See Ferdinand II., king of the Two Sicilies).
In May 1859 Ferdinand died, and was succeeded by his son, Francis II., who came to the throne just as the Franco-Sardinian victories in Lombardy were sounding the death-knell of Austrian, predominance and domestic despotism in Italy (see Italy: History). But although there was much activity and plotting among the Liberals, there was as yet noFrancis II. revolution; Victor Emmanuel, king of Sardinia, wrote to the new king proposing an alliance for the division of Italy, but Francis refused. In June part of the Swiss Guard mutinied because the Bernese government not having renewed the convention with Naples the troops were deprived of their cantonal flag. The mutinous regiments, however, were surrounded by loyal troops and shot down; and this affair resulted in the disbanding of the whole force—the last support of the autocracy. Political amnesties were now decreed, and in September 1859 Filangieri was made prime minister. The latter favoured the Sardinian alliance and the granting of the constitution, and so did the king’s uncle, Leopold, count of Syracuse. But Francis rejected both proposals and Filangieri resigned and was succeeded by A. Statella. In April 1860 Victor Emmanuel again proposed an alliance whereby Naples, in return for help in expelling the Austrians from Venetia, was to receive the Marche, while Sardinia would annex all the rest of Italy except Rome. But Francis again refused, and in fact was negotiating with Austria and the pope for a simultaneous invasion of Modena, Lombardy and Romagna.
In the meantime, however, events in Sicily were reaching a
crisis destined to subvert the Bourbon dynasty. The Sicilians,
unlike the Neapolitans, were thoroughly alienated from
the Bourbons, whom they detested, and after the
peace of Villafranca (July 1859) Mazzini’s emissaries,
F. Crispi and R. Pilo, had been trying to organize aGaribaldi
and the Thousand.
rising in favour of Italian unity; and although they merely
succeeded in raising a few squadre, or armed bands, in the
mountainous districts, they persuaded Garibaldi (q.v.), without
the magic of whose personal prestige they knew nothing important
could be achieved, that the revolution which he knew
to be imminent had broken out. The authorities at Palermo,
learning of a projected rising, attacked the convent of La Gangia,
the headquarters of the rebels, and killed most of the inmates;
but in the meanwhile Garibaldi, whose hesitation had been
overcome, embarked on the 5th of May 1860, at Quarto, near
Genoa, with 1000 picked followers on board two steamers, and
sailed for Sicily. On the 11th the expedition reached Marsala
and landed without opposition. Garibaldi was somewhat coldly
received by the astonished population: but he set forth at once for
