“L’invasione giacobina” di Silvio Vitale was translated with permission from L’Alfiere: Pubblicazione Napoletana Tradizionalista, Numero Uno, Gennaio, 1961, pp. 3-7.
Part 1, Part 2, Part 4
With the Neapolitan landing at Toulon—preceded by the English and joined by Spaniards and Sardinians—there was realized the plan persistently pursued by Admiral Acton, minister to King Ferdinand IV: to ally the Kingdom of Naples with the northern powers and with England, united in rivalry against France. This plan had long been promoted by Queen Carolina as well (18). But the French Revolution and the contagion of disorder it was spreading throughout Europe made such an alliance all the more urgent.
The Neapolitans, “not inferior to other peoples,” remained in Toulon for four months, even while innumerable republican troops pressed around them. “It seemed the siege had never truly begun, although the fighting was constant” (19). Finally, the enemy, embittered by such stubborn resistance, rained down no fewer than eight thousand bombs upon the city. The Neapolitans then abandoned their position, held until the very last, and began their return journey, bringing with them many anti-revolutionary Toulonese.
Neapolitan cavalry regiments fought just as valiantly in Lombardy, and the navy before the Ligurian coast. There, the French “after losing two warships and a brig, returned to the port of Toulon battered and defeated” (20).
While soldiers fought bravely alongside Germans and English in the north, within the Kingdom, the ideas of republican France emboldened those intellectuals whom sympathetic historians like Colletta and Arrighi have called merely “lovers of vague liberty” and “readers of foreign gazettes.” In fact, they were conspiring to seize castles, burn the arsenal and dockyards, massacre the royal family and magistrates, and spread chaos everywhere (21).
This was a frenzied stirring of secret societies—often shocked and frightened by their own boldness, not a popular movement or aspiration. These societies were composed of intellectuals drawn from both the bourgeoisie and the nobility: some of the former driven by a desire for change and ambition for power, the latter embittered by the centralizing policies of the monarchy founded by Charles III. Both were fascinated by Masonic propaganda.
But Naples defied the otherwise valid prophecy of Pietro Verri—that France, having instilled the sentiment of liberty across Europe, would make abused dominion intolerable and that the people, recognizing their own strength, would eventually follow the French example.
The conspirators were isolated. The people, especially the common folk of the South, were hostile to change. And they have remained so since: on the margins of that revolution which Kaunitz would call “long-lasting and perhaps without end,” humbly but stubbornly reactionary—evidence of instinctive coherence and firm character. They preferred loyalty under the sun to betrayal in the shadows of a secret society.
King Ferdinand IV’s war proclamation naturally found a wide echo among the people. It began:
“Those French who murdered their King, who desecrated temples, slaughtered and scattered priests, who destroyed the best and greatest cities, who robbed the Church of its goods, who overturned every law and every form of justice—those French, not yet sated with misdeeds, now abandon their own country in hordes, bringing the same scourges to conquered or credulous nations that receive them as friends. But already, peoples and princes are resolved to destroy them. Imitating the example of the just and the brave, we will place our trust in divine aid and in our own arms.”
Ferdinand also addressed the clergy, concluding:
“Arouse the zeal of the people. Warn them that the revolutionary impetus, however it may claim to challenge all societal orders, targets the first two—Church and Throne—for destruction.”
Colletta, in a rare moment of admiration, admits: “From every direction soldiers came forth with a readiness that seemed more fitting for a republic than for a monarchy” (22).
The reputation earned by Neapolitan arms even led Napoleon to request an armistice from the King of Naples, hoping to reduce entanglements on the peninsula.
In secret clauses, the French pledged—not without financial compensation—not to support revolutionary uprisings in the South.
But the truce was soon broken by the French invasion of the Papal States. The Pope was ordered to recognize the newly declared Roman Republic. When this noble demand was refused, Pius VI was expelled from the Vatican and, after years of exile, died in sorrow.
Of all the forms of resistance to the French Revolution, that of the Church was the most decisive and unequivocal. Balbo even declared that “all the strength, all the fiber of Italy gathered itself in the clerical order,” and that from 1789 onward “the only two Italians who illuminated the world with their great hearts and exemplary deeds were the two Popes, the two Pios” (23).
The tragic fate of the Pontiff, the influx of displaced Roman authorities into Naples, and the openly declared opposition of the clergy to Jacobin tyranny made people in the Kingdom keenly aware that they were fighting above all for a cause that transcended mere politics: the Catholic principle.
The trees of liberty planted by the French along the southern frontier were rightly seen as arrogant and insolent threats to ancestral religion.
Those trees were felled by Neapolitan troops under General Mack, who forced the French to retreat, entered Rome, and there called for the Pope’s return.
However, Neapolitan fortunes were overturned both by Mack’s incompetence and by the superior cunning of French commanders, who recaptured Rome and launched themselves at their opponent, badly led and, without doubt, betrayed. The secret societies had deeply infiltrated the upper ranks. The fortresses of Civitella, Pescara, and Gaeta fell due to treachery. Capua, however, defended itself valiantly, and heavy losses were inflicted on the French at Calazzo.
Meanwhile, the countryside rose in rebellion to support the troops. Continue reading
Footnotes:
(18) Blanch, L.: Scritti storichi, Vol. I, Laterza ed.
(19) Colletta, P.: Storia del Reame di Napoli
(20) Ibid.
(21) Montuori, S.: Fr. Bagno, martire della repubblica napoletana
(22) Colletta, P.: Ibid.
(23) Balbo: Pensieri sulla storia italiana, Le Monnier, 1958