THE resemblance between Colonel Peard and Garibaldi was so great that, being similarly dressed, the Englishman, pushing on so far in advance, was everywhere taken for the general, and he utilised this likeness to the utmost. The news of his rapid approach hastened the retreat of the Neapolitans. He sent fictitious telegrams to their generals as from private friends, magnifying Garibaldi’s forces, and representing that he was taking a line that would cut them off from Naples, and so sent them hurrying away at full speed and adding to the alarm and confusion of the government. “I suppose we had better push on with Garibaldi, grandfather?” Frank said one day, as they finished an unusually long march.
“Certainly, Frank,” Signor Forli said, somewhat surprised; “we shall be in Naples in another three or four days. I am sure Garibaldi will not wait for his troops; he was saying to me yesterday that he was most anxious to enter the city, as he had notice from a friend that Cavour’s party were hard at work trying to organise a general rising of the city before he arrives, and the issue of a manifesto declaring Victor Emmanuel king of Italy and inviting him to come at once. This Garibaldi is determined not to allow. He has from the first always declared that he came in the name of the king, and that when his work was done he would hand over Southern Italy to him. You know his loyalty and absolute disinterestedness; and the idea that he would endeavour to obtain any advantage for himself is absurd.
“If he had chosen, instead of accepting the dictatorship of Sicily he could have been elected king; and assuredly it is the same thing here. He is the people’s hero and saviour; the very name of the King of Sardinia is scarcely known in Sicily, and excites no interest whatever. It is the same thing in Calabria: the enthusiasm is all for Garibaldi, and had he consented to accept the crown he would have been elected unanimously. His wish and hope is to present to Victor Emmanuel Southern Italy cleared of all enemies, complete and undivided; and yet, rather than so receive it, Cavour, Farina, and the rest of them are intriguing at Naples, as they intrigued in Sicily, in order that the king should appear to take this wide accession of territory as the expression of the will of the people, and not from the hand of Garibaldi.
“It is pitiful to see such mean jealousy. In time, no doubt, even had there not been a Garibaldi, this would have come about, but it might have been fifteen or twenty years hence; and had it been done by means of a royal army, France and Austria would probably both have interfered and demanded compensation, and so left Italy still incomplete. It is the speed with which the change has been effected, and I may say the admiration with which Europe has viewed it, and the assurance of the government at Turin that it has had no hand in this business, but has taken all means in its power to prevent it, that has paralysed opposition. I trust that all these intrigues will fail, and that Garibaldi may have the sole honour that he craves—namely, that of presenting the kingdom of the two Sicilies to Victor Emmanuel. Should Cavour’s intrigues succeed, and Garibaldi be slighted, it will be the blackest piece of ingratitude history has ever recorded. However, why do you ask ‘shall we go on to Naples?’ I thought that you were burning to get there.”
“I am; but you see we are passing, without time for making any investigations, many places where my father, if alive, may be in prison. At Potenza, for example, I know that a large number of political prisoners are confined, and doubtless it is the same at many other towns. I cannot bear to think of the possibility that he may be in one of these, and that we have passed him by.”
“I can quite understand your feelings, Frank; but you know we are agreed that it is at Naples we shall most probably find him, if he is still alive. Bad as the prisons may be in other places, they are more loosely managed; there would be fewer conveniences for keeping one prisoner apart from the others, while there are ample opportunities in those of Naples for many to be kept in secret confinement. Certainly I was so kept myself at Reggio; but that was a royal fortress, and though used as a prison for political offenders, there were no malefactors there. In the jails in the provincial towns this could not be so, and I know that prisoners are all mixed up together, save those who can afford to pay, who can live in comparative comfort, while the rest are herded together anyhow, and can scarcely exist upon the rations allowed to them. The more I think of it, the more I am convinced that it is at Naples that we must look for your father. Now that we have arrived at Salerno, and that, as we hear, the Neapolitan troops are falling back from the capital, and taking up their position round Capua and Gaeta, there can be little doubt that Garibaldi will, in a day or two, go forward. There is, indeed, nothing to prevent you and me from going by train there to-morrow, if you lay aside that red shirt and scarf, and dress in clothes that will attract no attention. But I do not see that anything would be gained by it; you will still have to wait until Garibaldi is supreme there, and his orders are respected, and you may be sure that, as soon as he is in power, his first step will be to throw open the prisons and release all who are charged with political offences, to order these hideous dungeons to be permanently closed, and to thoroughly reorganise the system. You have told me that he did this at Palermo, and he will certainly do the same at Naples.”
Four days later the king issued a farewell notice to the people, and left Naples for Gaeta; and three hours afterwards Romano, his minister, who had drawn up his farewell, addressed the following telegram to Garibaldi:—
“To the Invincible Dictator of the two Sicilies.—Naples expects you with anxiety to confide to you her future destiny.—Entirely yours, Liborio Romano.”
A subsequent letter informed him that at a meeting of the ministers it had been decided that the Prince of Alessandria, Syndic of Naples, should go to Salerno, with the commander of the national guard, to make the arrangements for his entry into the capital. Garibaldi, however, did not wait. Were he to arrive at the head of his troops, the Neapolitan garrisons of the castle and other strong places in the city might oppose him by force; and, as ever, wishing to avoid bloodshed, he determined to rely solely upon the populace of Naples. He at once ordered a small special train to be prepared.
“I am only taking with me,” he said to Frank, “a few of my staff. You will be one of the number: you have a right to it, not only as the representative of your mother, to whose aid we are largely indebted for our being now here, but for your own personal services. Signor Forli shall also go: he stood by me on the walls of Rome twelve years ago, he has suffered much for his principles, he is your mother’s father, therefore he too shall come.”
There were but four carriages on the little train that left at nine o’clock in the morning on the 7th of September for Naples. Cosenz, and thirteen members of the staff, represented the national army; the remaining seats being occupied by various personal friends and two or three newspaper correspondents.
“‘Tis an affair not without risk,” Signor Forli said to Frank, as they walked towards the station. “That the people will receive Garibaldi with enthusiasm is certain, but the attitude of the troops is very doubtful. Certainly the flower of the Neapolitan army will have been left in garrison at Naples; and if but a score of these remain faithful to the Bourbons, Garibaldi’s life may be sacrificed. However, I cannot believe that Providence will permit one who has done so great and mighty a work to perish, just at the moment of the completion of his enterprise.”
The station-master at Salerno, as soon as the train had started, flashed the news to the various stations on the road; and the consequence was, that at every village the people assembled, and when half the journey was done the crowds were so vast, that they overflowed on to the line, and the train was brought to a standstill. National guards climbed on to the roofs of the carriages, and decorated them with flags and evergreens. At Torre del Greco, Resina, and Portici, progress became almost impossible, and the train had to proceed at a snail’s pace to Naples. Here the authorities had prevented all access to the station, but outside the scene was an extraordinary one: horses and carriages, men and women of the highest and of the lowest classes; national guards and gendarmes, members of Bertani’s and the Cavourian committees, were all crowded in confusion together. The houses were decorated with flags and tapestry, and thronged with eager spectators from basement to roof; and as Missori and three others rode out from the station on horseback, followed by Garibaldi in an open carriage with Cosenz, and by a dozen other carriages containing his staff and those who had arrived with him, the roar of welcome was overpowering.
It was with the greatest difficulty that the horsemen cleared the way; for all along the road the crowd was as great as at the station. The attitude of the troops, however, at the various points where they were massed, was sullen and threatening. At Castel Nuovo the guns were pointed on the road; the troops stood ready to fire. One shot, and the course of history might have been changed. Garibaldi ordered his coachman to drive slower, and sat in his carriage calmly, with his eyes fixed upon the troops. One officer gave the order to fire; but he was not obeyed. The calmness and daring of the lion-like face filled the soldiers with such admiration that, for the moment, their hostility evaporated; and while some of them saluted as if to a royal personage, others took off their hats and burst into a cheer. Garibaldi acknowledged it by lifting his hat, and by a cheery wave of his hand, and drove on as calmly as before.
In the carriages behind, all had held their breath at the critical moment.
“What an escape! What an escape!” Signor Forli murmured to Frank, who was sitting next to him. “Had but one musket been fired, we should all have been dead men in a minute or two; and, what is of more consequence, the freeing of Italy must have been postponed for twenty years.”
“It was horribly close,” Frank said. “I would rather go through ten hand-to-hand fights, than another time like the last three minutes; it has made me feel quite queer, and I own that what you say about putting back Italian freedom for twenty years never entered my mind. The one thought I had was, that we were all going to be smashed up without having the chance of striking a single blow. I went through some pretty sharp fighting at Palermo, but I was always doing something then, and did not think of the danger. I don’t mind saying that I was in a blue funk just now.”
Garibaldi drove straight, as was the custom of kings on first entering Naples, to the palace of the archbishop. Here the Te Deum was sung; and he then went on to the palace of Angri, where he and his staff took up their quarters. Vast crowds assembled outside the palace, and the general had to appear again and again on the balcony in reply to the roars of acclamation from the enthusiastic population. General Cosenz, who was himself a Neapolitan, was appointed to organise a government. This he did to the general satisfaction—moderate men only being chosen. Garibaldi requested Admiral Persano in the name of Victor Emmanuel to take command of the Neapolitan navy, decreeing that it should form part of the Sardinian squadron; and appointed to the pro-dictatorship the Marquis of Pallavicini, a staunch friend of the king. He had offered Signor Forli an apartment in the palace, and as soon as the first excitement had ceased the latter said to Frank, who had at Salerno received the portmanteau he had left at Genoa:—
“Let us go out and see the state of the city. But before we do so, you had best put on your ordinary clothes: we should simply be mobbed if you were to go out as one of Garibaldi’s officers.”
“Yes; we have had quite enough of that as we came along,” Frank said. “It will really be a comfort to go about for once in peace and quiet.”
They started in a few minutes, leaving the palace by one of the side entrances, and soon mingled in the crowd. The people seemed half mad with delight. As soon as the news of Garibaldi’s arrival spread through the town every house was decorated, and the whole population poured out into the streets. Among the better classes the joy that the government of the Bourbons had come to an end, and that the constitutional government, which had done so much for Northern Italy, would succeed the despotism which had pressed so heavily on all with anything to lose, was deep and sincere. Among the lower classes the enthusiasm manifested was but the excitement of some few minutes, and had Francesco returned a month later, at the head of his victorious troops, they would have shouted as lustily.
It was a fête, a special fête, and it mattered but little to the fickle and excitable population what was its cause. But here, as on all occasions when Italian people give way to bursts of enthusiasm, foreigners were struck with the perfect good-temper, the orderly behaviour, and the entire absence of drunkenness, among the population. In Paris the first step of people excited by a change of government would have been to fall upon those whom they considered to be the agents of their oppressors. The gendarmes, who had so long been feared, would not have dared show themselves in the streets; the emblems of royalty would have been torn down in the public buildings; the members of the last government would have been forced to fly for their lives. There was a little of this in Naples, but, as in Venice, six years later, this feeling of animosity for the past speedily passed away.
But how faint was the feeling of real patriotism in the minds of the Neapolitans is shown by the fact that only one inhabitant of the city joined Garibaldi’s army; that not a single house was open for the reception of his officers or soldiers; that after the battle of Volturno hundreds of wounded men were left lying all day on the pavements without aid or nourishment, without a single mattress being found for them to lie upon, by the inhabitants. Never, except by the King of Italy and the civil and military authorities of Piedmont to Garibaldi and his followers, who had won a kingdom for them, was such national ingratitude displayed as by the people of Naples.
“It is pleasant to see,” Signor Forli said, as he and Frank wandered about; “but it would be far more pleasant if one did not know that it means absolutely nothing. You have told me that it was the same thing at Messina: that, in spite of Garibaldi’s appeal to the ladies of the place, they did nothing whatever to aid the wounded in the hospitals—never contributed so much as a piece of lint or material for bandages; and, frivolous as the people there are, these in Naples are worse. If all Italy were like the Neapolitans, the country would not be worth shedding a drop of blood for. However, one must make some allowances for them. For centuries they have been slaves rather than free people; they have had no voice as to their own disposal, they could not express even an opinion on public affairs, without risking imprisonment or death; there has been nothing left for them but to amuse themselves; they have been treated like children at school, and they have become children. We can only hope that in time, under a free government, they will grow worthy of freedom, worthy of forming a part of an Italy to which the Lombards, the Piedmontese, and the Calabrians belong.”
It was already late in the afternoon, and until some of the troops arrived it would be impossible to take any steps with relation to public buildings. The castle of St. Elmo, and the prison of Santa M............