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| Eleonora De Fonseca Pimentel led to the gallows by Giuseppe Boschetto (1866) |
While doing research for an upcoming piece on Cardinal Fabrizio Ruffo and the Sanfedisti, I stumbled across Sketches of Popular Tumults: Illustrative of the Evils of Social Ignorance (1847) by George Lillie Craik. Replete with interesting anecdotes, I decided to share a few choice passages on the Parthenopean Republic for your careful consideration.
The provisional government issued pompous proclamations full of that turgid phraseology which had been brought into fashion in France, and which the Neapolitans, naturally inclined to bombast, were not slow in adopting. The king and queen were compared to Claudius and Messalina, and they, as well as the aristocrats, were denounced as enemies to the people. "Those who had served the tyrant,” it was stated, "had nothing to expect from the republic." Thus the officers of the king's army were left destitute, the soldiers disbanded; and when afterwards the government, perceiving its error, wished to collect together the remnants of the old army, it was too late; the greater part had gone to seek their subsistence among the ranks of the insurgents in the provinces. The provincial courts and their employés, the armigeri, or baronial police of the feudal districts, were summarily dismissed, and of course increased the number of the malcontents. A number of convents were also suddenly suppressed. In many cases, however, it must be observed, the violent measures taken against the clergy, especially in the provinces, did not emanate directly from the central government, but from the caprice of subordinate agents, whose mischievous interference the government did not or could not restrain. In the first ebullition a number of patriots, chiefly young men, were sent into the provinces with a certificate from the central or home department, of being democratizers, a new-fangled word, and their business, without any specific instruction or authority, was to preach democracy and organize the republic. In most places they found themselves at variance with the local authorities, while they also disgusted the people; some of them were ill-treated; others, especially in Calabria, were not allowed to reach their destination. At last they were recalled: but not till they had done irreparable mischief. [Reprinted from Sketches of Popular Tumults; Illustrative of the Evils of Social Ignorance, George Lillie Craik, London: C. Cox, 1847, pp. 126-127]
The patriotic Gazette or Monitore of Naples, was edited by a lady, Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel. Amiable and accomplished, an artist, a poetess, and an improvvisatrice; she was enthusiastic in the cause of the republic. Her eloquence was often highly figurative, her philosophy and her politics were moulded by classical recollections, and this was mostly the case among the educated classes at Naples. A sort of better epicurism, partaking of the languor and effeminacy of that school, an exalted admiration of physical beauty, a high opinion of the superiority of their country, and at the same time a supercilious contempt for the millions of their uneducated countrymen, all this reduced the patriots to a coterie, between whom and the people there could be but little sympathy. [Reprinted from Sketches of Popular Tumults; Illustrative of the Evils of Social Ignorance, George Lillie Craik, London: C. Cox, 1847, p. 128]
I have a better recollection of the impression produced by the news that came from the provinces, even through the distorting channel of the newspapers. The state of the unfortunate country was obviously dreadful. We heard and read of towns taken by storm and burned, of no quarter given to the insurgents, and all the horrid phraseology of a civil war, whose dreadful import began to break upon my mind as a disturbed vision of the infernal regions and of incarnate fiends. I remember particularly reading one day of the town of Carbonara, in Puglia, being carried by the French moveable column, under a General Broussier, when the whole population was put to the sword; and this feat, which was reported as a triumph by the republicans, left a dark confused image in my mind of horrors which I could not thoroughly understand, and the two names of the town and of the general I remembered for many years after in painful association. [Reprinted from Sketches of Popular Tumults; Illustrative of the Evils of Social Ignorance, George Lillie Craik, London: C. Cox, 1847, p. 129]
