Naples and Sicily Under the Bourbons, Sketches (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1867. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... cessor of the necessity of extensive reforms. The changes that had taken place in Northern Italy, the popularity of Victor Emmanuel throughout the whole peninsula, the adoption by the great powers of a policy of non-intervention, the advice of the Count of Syracuse, who at once assumed a prominent part in the direction of affairs, and above all, the manifest impossibility of keeping up the system of the late king, all gave hopes of a beneficial change. Francis II. possessed none of the abilities of his father; he was at once dull in intellect, and cold in heart. He formed exactly the same contrast with the late king as Francis I. had done with his father, and if there were any hope of energetic action, they rested only on the young queen, who was clever, ambitious, and thoroughly detested by her mother-in.law. During the late king's illness, both she and her husband had testified the greatest indifference as to his sufferings, and the princess had looked with scarcely concealed exultation to her reversionary throne. But the king soon showed that he was a true Bourbon. So far as he could, he determined to carry out his father's policy, and though he temporized with his uncle, the Count of Syracuse, and with others who advised a more liberal line, it was plain to all who knew him that he was resolved to grant nothing that he could help. He had not been king a week before plots began to break out around him. Some, real and serious enough, others but the phantoms of a timid imagination. Many arrests took place, and, of course, many imprisonments; and we have already seen what imprisonment meant in Naples. Among the most important of these conspiracies was that said to be organized by the Queen Dowager, a plot dating long before the death of Ferdinand, and having for ..