Ponderable Quote on the Neapolitan Uprising of 1798

General Championnet leading French troops against local forces during the capture of Naples, 1799. Engraving by Jean-Urbain Guérin (1760–1836), c. 1836

The following passage comes from the memoirs of Paul Charles François Adrien Henri Dieudonné Thiébault, a French officer who served during the Revolutionary Wars in Italy. Writing years later, he reflected on the fierce resistance encountered in the Kingdom of Naples during the upheavals of 1798–1799, when French forces helped establish the short-lived Parthenopean Republic.

Thiébault’s remarks capture the astonishment many French officers felt when confronted with the popular uprising that followed the collapse of the Neapolitan army. Though he scorned the regular troops as ineffective, he acknowledged the determination and ferocity of the insurgents—peasants, clergy, and irregular fighters who resisted French occupation across the countryside.

Below is the original French text from Thiébault’s memoirs, followed by an English translation.

Peu d'insurrections ont été aussi formidables. C'était une croisade; or, ainsi que je l'ai dit, après nous avoir forcés à les mépriser comme soldats, ces Napolitains nous avaient appris à les redouter comme hommes. Dès qu'ils formaient des pelotons réguliers, ils devenaient nuls; armés en bandits, par troupes de fanatiques, ils étaient terribles, et c'est, pour ainsi dire, lorsqu'il n'y eut plus d'armée napolitaine que la guerre de Naples devint effrayante. Quoique ces Napolitains de 1798, farouches et superstitieux, aient été battus partout, quoique, sans compter les pertes qu'ils firent dans les combats, plus de soixante mille des leurs aient été passés au fil de l'épée sur les décombres de leurs villes ou sur les cendres de leurs chaumières, nous ne les avons laissés vaincus sur aucun point. (Mémoires du Général Baron Thiébault, Paris, 1894, II, p. 324-325)

Few insurrections have ever been so formidable. It was a crusade; for, as I have said, after forcing us to despise them as soldiers, these Neapolitans taught us to fear them as men. Whenever they formed regular platoons, they became worthless; armed like bandits, in bands of fanatics, they were terrible, and it was, so to speak, when there was no longer a Neapolitan army that the war in Naples became truly dreadful.

Although these Neapolitans of 1798—fierce and superstitious—were defeated everywhere, although, aside from the losses they suffered in battle, more than sixty thousand of their number were put to the sword among the ruins of their cities or upon the ashes of their cottages, we never left them truly subdued anywhere.