The Latest Exploit of the House of Bourbon

* The House of Bourbon has not yet reached the goal of its glorious career
No. 1, June 1, 1848
Neue Rheinische Zeitung.
arrived. Admittedly, its white flag has been fairly soiled of late, admittedly the withering lilies let their heads droop pitiably. Charles Louis of Bourbon bartered away one duchy and had to abandon a second ignominiously; Ferdinand of Bourbon lost Sicily and in Naples was compelled to grant the revolution a constitution; Louis Philippe, though only a crypto-Bourbon, nevertheless went the way of all French-Bourbon flesh across the Channel to England. But the Neapolitan Bourbon has brilliantly avenged the honour of his family.

The Chambers are summoned to Naples. The opening day is to be used for the decisive struggle against the revolution. Campobasso, one of the chief police chiefs of the notorious Del Carretto, is quietly recalled from Malta. The sbirri, with their old leaders at their head, once again patrol Toledo Street for the first time in a long while, armed and in broad bands; they disarm the citizens, tear the coats off their backs, compel them to cut off their moustaches. The 14th of May, the opening day of the Chambers, draws near. The King demands that the Chambers bind themselves by oath to alter nothing in the constitution he has granted. They refuse. The National Guard declares for the deputies. Negotiations follow; the King gives way; the ministers resign. The deputies demand that the King proclaim the concession he has made by an ordinance. The King promises the ordinance for the next day. During the night, however, all the troops stationed in the vicinity march into Naples. The National Guard realises that it is betrayed; it throws up barricades, and 5,000–6,000 men take up position behind them. But they are confronted by 20,000 soldiers, partly Neapolitans, partly Swiss, with 18 cannon; between the two, for the time being taking no part, stand the 20,000 Lazzaroni of Naples.

On the morning of the 15th the Swiss still declare that they will not attack the people. But one of the police agents, who has mingled with the crowd, fires on the soldiers in the Strada de Toledo; immediately Fort St Elmo hoists the red flag – and at this signal the soldiers hurl themselves on the barricades. A horrific butchery begins; the National Guards defend themselves heroically against fourfold superior strength, against the soldiers’ cannon fire; from ten in the morning until midnight the fighting continues; despite the superior numbers of the soldiery, the people would have won, had not the vile conduct of the French Admiral Baudin induced the Lazzaroni to join the royalist party.

Admiral Baudin was stationed off Naples with a fairly strong French fleet. A simple but timely threat to bombard the palace and the forts would have forced Ferdinand to yield. But Baudin, an old servant of Louis Philippe, accustomed to the mere tolerated existence of the French fleet in the times of the *entente cordiale*, Baudin kept quiet and thereby decided the Lazzaroni, who were already inclining towards the people, to side with the troops.

This move by the Neapolitan lumpenproletariat sealed the defeat of the revolution. Swiss Guard, Neapolitan line, Lazzaroni, united, fell upon the barricade fighters. The palaces of Toledo Street, swept clean with grapeshot, collapsed under the soldiers’ cannonballs; the raging band of victors rushed into the houses, stabbed the men, impaled the children, ravished the women only to murder them afterwards, plundered everything, and abandoned the devastated dwellings to the flames. The Lazzaroni proved the greediest, the Swiss the most brutal. Words cannot describe the infamies, the barbarities that accompanied the victory of the four times stronger and well-armed Bourbon mercenaries and the ever-Sanfedist Lazzaroni over the almost annihilated National Guard of Naples.

At length even Admiral Baudin found it too much. Refugee after refugee came aboard his ships and told what was going on in the city. The French blood of his sailors boiled. Then, at last, when the king’s victory was decided, he thought of bombardment. The bloodshed was gradually stopped; no more murders were committed in the streets; they confined themselves to robbery and rape; but the prisoners were taken to the forts and there shot out of hand. By midnight everything was over, Ferdinand’s absolute rule was de facto restored, the honour of the House of Bourbon washed clean in Italian blood.

That is the latest exploit of the House of Bourbon. And, as always, it is the Swiss who fight the Bourbons’ cause against the people. On 10 August 1792, on 29 July 1830, in the Neapolitan struggles of 1820 – everywhere we find the grandsons of Tell and Winkelried as lansquenets in the pay of the house whose name has for years become synonymous throughout Europe with that of absolute monarchy. This will soon come to an end, of course. After long wrangling, the more civilised cantons have pushed through the prohibition of military capitulations; the sturdy sons of the free old Switzerland will have to renounce trampling Neapolitan women underfoot, revelling in the plunder of outraged cities, and being immortalised, in the event of defeat, by Thorvaldsen lions, like those who fell on 10 August.

For the time being, however, the House of Bourbon may breathe again. The reaction that set in again after 24 February has nowhere gained so decisive a victory as in Naples; and it was precisely from Naples and Sicily that the first of this year’s revolutions proceeded. But the revolutionary storm-flood that has burst over old Europe cannot be dammed up by absolutist conspiracies and coups d’état. With the counter-revolution of 15 May, Ferdinand of Bourbon has laid the foundation stone of the Italian republic. Already Calabria is in flames, a provisional government has been set up in Palermo; the Abruzzi will likewise break out, the inhabitants of all the sucked-out provinces will march on Naples and, united with the people of the city, take revenge on the royal traitor and his brutal lansquenets. And if Ferdinand falls, he will at least have the satisfaction of having lived and fallen as a true Bourbon.