The same ghastly scenes were being enacted in Piedmont. Backed by the French, a rabble from Genoa had invaded the King of Sardinia's mainland territories. Behind them as they advanced they left a chain of village churches in flames, with their pastors and congregations locked inside them.
In Bonaparte's pet creation, the Cisalpine Republic, everything had fallen into hopeless disorder. Owing to his wholesale looting of the treasuries of the cities the finances were in a state of chaos. General Brune had succeeded Berthier there and could keep the people down only by overawing them with displays of force. The pay of his troops was months in arrears; so he had to turn a blind eye to the beating, torturing and murdering of Italians by his officers and men, in an effort to extract money from them. Throughout all Italy everything connected with France had become a symbol for hatred and it was reported that the masses were only awaiting a signal from some bold hand to rise and slit the throat of every French robber in the peninsula.
On November 6th, having enjoyed four days of blissful relaxation, Roger took leave of his good Greek friends. After clearing the port of Alexandria the grain ship, by arrangement between Sarodopulous and her Captain, dropped round into the bay and Roger went off to her in a dhow. An hour later she was challenged by a British sloop-of-war and boarded by a small party, commanded by a Midshipman.
As the grain ship traded regularly to Crete, returning with cargoes of olive oil, the vessel was searched only perfunctorily. Roger, when questioned, said his name was Robert MacElfic, that he had represented a firm of Scottish merchants in Alexandria and that the French occupation had ruined his firm's trade with Egypt; so he had decided to return home. His mother had been a MacElfic and had always retained something of her Highland accent; so he had never had difficulty in imitating it. He soon convinced the ' Middy ' of his bona fides.
Roger knew, from his previous voyage, that the food and accommodation in a grain ship would be very primitive; so he had brought with him a supply of provisions. Philosophically, he resigned himself to possibly a week or more of considerable discomfort; but the weather and winds proved favourable, the crossing took only five days and he landed at Candia on the 11th.
He had decided on Naples as the next stage in his journey, as it had now become the principal British naval base in the
Mediterranean. He was certain that there he would be able to find a ship to carry him home, and it was home that he meant to go. Even Admiral Nelson, he felt, could not now consider him unpatriotic for deciding to give up his dangerous role as a secret agent. It would have been pointless to remain in Egypt as a cavalry officer. As it was he had come away with two further despatches from Bonaparte which, having read them within a few hours of receiving them, he knew would prove of considerable value. Moreover, he was in a position to give a far more detailed account of the French Army's situation and resources in Egypt than the British Government could possibly receive from other agents.
In the squalid little Turkish-ruled town of Candia he had to wait six days before he could get a passage to Naples, and then it was on a Turkish brigantine manned by Greek sailors. Again he took aboard a store of provisions, but they ran out long before he reached his destination. After leaving Crete the ship sailed smoothly up the Greek coast for four days, but on the fifth she was hit by one of the fierce storms that are apt to arise suddenly in the Mediterranean during winter. The Greeks, being good sailors, handled the brigantine well in the circumstances, but she lost her foremast and, despite all their efforts, was driven right off her course far up into the Adriatic.
Roger, as usual in bad weather, was wretchedly ill and spent three days of utter misery, unable to keep down even a few mouthfuls of biscuit. The thought of returning to England via Gibraltar, and probably having to endure another such prolonged nightmare while crossing the Bay of Biscay in December, caused him to alter his plans. He decided that he would instead travel up Italy and go home by way of France. With this in view, he asked the Captain to land him at Bari.
To his intense annoyance, the Captain refused to oblige him. Neither could he be bribed by a sum which Roger felt was as large as he was prepared to offer, since he could go home overland from Naples as easily as from Bari. He would now be losing only a little time, and time was now of no great importance to him.
Better weather came again, enabling the brigantine to beat round the heel of Italy and up through the Straits of Messina to Naples, where Roger landed on Monday, December 3rd.
In September, '95, he had been sent by Mr. Pitt on a mission to the Prince de Conde, who commanded the Royalist Army, and to General Pichegru, who commanded the Republican Army, both of which were on the Rhine. It was then that he had decided to assume a third identity as a non-existent nephew of his mother's, for which he took the name of Robert MacElfic; for he feared that, if he went to Conde as Roger Brook and to Pichegru as Citizen Representative Breuc, his two identities might become linked. Previous to that mission, while crossing the Atlantic, he had let his beard g^ow; so to fit himself for the part he had retained this slight alteration to his appearance.
The situation in Naples would, he knew, be very different from what it was when he had last visited the city early in the autumn of '89. Then, the doctrines of the French Revolution and Bonaparte's descent on a land of peace and plenty had not disrupted life throughout the peninsula. Now, although the Court of Naples was fanatically anti-French, many of the nobility and a large part of the bourgeoisie were said to hold strong Republican views. Numbers of them would have travelled in France; besides which it was certain that the French Embassy would be employing scores of secret agents in the city. Thus Naples had become another no man's land in which Brook might be linked with Breuc, and it was this which had decided Roger again to become MacElfic. Since leaving Egypt he had, therefore, again allowed his beard to grow; so after four weeks his cheeks and chin were now covered with short, crisp, slightly curly, brown hair.
On landing, he secured a carozza and told the driver to take him to Crocielle's Hotel. They had hardly set off along the waterfront before he saw that all the buildings were decorated with flags; so he called up to the man, asking the reason for this gay display. Turning on his box the driver replied cheerfully:
' Have you not heard, signor? We are celebrating our victory over those pigs the French. Tidings arrived yesterday that our good King Ferdinand entered Rome in triumph four days ago.'
This was surprising news indeed to Roger and he was even more surprised when he learned that the Neapolitan Army had invaded the Roman States only six days before it had captured Rome. Either the Italians must have shown most unusual dash or the French had suddenly gone to pieces.
At the hotel Roger learned further particulars of this new war that had broken out only while he was being desperately seasick in the Adriatic. Britain was said to be supporting it enthusiastically and Nelson was the hero of the hour. He had sailed on
November 22nd—the day before war had been declared—for Leghorn, with five thousand Neapolitan troops on board, to support the Grand Duke of Tuscany, a nephew of the Queen of Naples, in an attempt to throw the French out of his dominions. Austria, on the other hand, having only a defensive alliance with the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies—of which Naples was the capital—had not yet come in, although the Emperor—another nephew and also son-in-law of the Queen—had sent on loan his veteran General Mack to command the Neapolitan Army.
While eating the first enjoyable meal he had had for a month, Roger considered this entirely new situation which suddenly appeared to threaten the dominance of the French in Italy. He would have been delighted by it had he not had distinct misgivings about the outcome.
Admittedly the French forces were stretched to the limit, garrisoning Holland, Belgium, the ex-German provinces west of the Rhine, Switzerland, all northern and central Italy, Corsica, Corfu, Majorca and Malta, in addition to which their greatest General and finest regiments were marooned in Egypt. But, even so, how could a second-class Power li
ke the Two Sicilies possibly hope, unsupported by any other nation, to defeat the mighty Republic?
It was, too, only in recent years that the Sicilies had ranked even as a second-class Power. The kingdom was theoretically a fief of Spain. The Bourbon King of Spain, Philip V, had given it to his second son, Carlos, and had won the goodwill of the Neapolitans by a promise that the two crowns should never be united. In 1759 Carlos had succeeded his father as King of Spain, so had resigned Naples and Sicily to his son, the present King Ferdinand, who was then only eight years old.
During the boy's minority a Tuscan Minister, Bernardo Tenucci, had ruled in his name at the dictation of the Court of Spain; but at the age of seventeen Ferdinand was married to Caroline, the eldest daughter of the Empress Maria-Theresa of Austria, and from that moment the influence of Spain had begun to wane.
The young couple could hardly have been more ill-matched. Ferdinand was a boisterous, easy-going fellow, with no interests other than outdoor pursuits. What very little brain he possessed had been criminally restricted in its development by Tenucci, who had seen to it that his education should be rudimentary so that when he grew up he would be incapable of interfering in politics. Caroline, on the other hand, had an ungovernable temper, was well-educated, religious and inordinately ambitious.
Although the masses in both the Kingdom of Naples and the island of Sicily lived in the direst poverty and under the severe repression of corrupt officials, they never blamed this on King Ferdinand. On the contrary they adored him, because his simple pleasures brought him into intimate contact with them. Dressed in a jersey, woollen cap, coarse trousers and seaboots, he often spent the night fishing. In the morning he would sell his catch in the market, haggling like any other huckster for the best price he could get for each fish from a crowd of laughing housewives. Then he gave away the money he received. But the strongest hold he had acquired over the riff-raff of Naples was through having accepted the office of Master of the Guild of the Lazzaroni. This Guild consisted of literally thousands of professional beggars and petty criminals, who made a living by preying in a hundred ways on the better-off part of the population. Ferdinand encouraged and protected them and delighted in the nickname the people gave him of ' II Re dei Lazzaroni
His other main interest he termed ' hunting It consisted only of standing in a stone sentry-box, while hundreds of beasts and birds were driven past him. With an indefatigable lust for slaughter he stood there hour after hour, shooting them down. He was also a great practical joker and from time to time found it most amusing suddenly to decree that some staid visitor to his Court should be tossed in a blanket.
While this young moron was harmlessly enjoying himself, or bellowing with laughter at his sadistic pranks, Queen Caroline had been intriguing without pause to get the Government of the country into her own hands. Whenever Ferdinand put up the least opposition to her proposals for innovations she flew into such violent tempers that he was only too glad to escape from her at the price of giving way. Even when at table she screeched at him like an angry eagle, and on one occasion actually bit him. In due course she had succeeded in getting rid of Tenucci and replacing him with a Minister of her own choice.
This was General Sir John Acton, the son of an English physician who had settled in France. At an early age Acton had joined the French Army, but later left it for the Court of Tuscany. In '75 he had greatly distinguished himself while commanding a
Tuscan frigate in an expedition to suppress the pirates of Algiers. Four years later Queen Caroline had persuaded the Grand Duke to let her have Acton to reorganize the little Neapolitan Army.
The newcomer had at once set about building a Fleet out of all proportion to the resources of the country. To secure enough money for this he had to be made Minister of Finance, as well as of Marine. To these posts he had soon added that of Minister of War and, finally, Prime Minister. He was now sixty-three and for the past twenty years he and the Queen had run the country. Naples now had a Fleet of one hundred and twenty ships and, on paper, an Army of sixty thousand men, so had become a Power of some importance. But the effort had virtually bankrupted the country.
On the credit side, as Roger naturally regarded the matter, Acton was the firm friend of Sir William Hamilton, who had been British Ambassador in Naples for the past thirty-five years; while an even stronger tie existed between Sir William's wife, the beautiful Emma, and Queen Caroline. Working hand in glove, these four had weaned the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies away from Spain and France into the orbit of Austrian, and British influence. Above all, the triumph of Sir William's long career had been the securing for Britain of the magnificent harbour of Naples as a naval base, from which her sea power could command the Mediterranean.
Having finished his meal Roger decided to lose no time in calling on Sir William. He took a carozza up the hill to the beautiful Palazzo Sessa, which housed the British Embassy. Giving his name to the footman as Robert MacElfic, he added that he was a cousin of the Earl of Kildonan and that he would be grateful if the Ambassador could spare him a few minutes on urgent business.
He was kept waiting in the big marble hall only long enough for him to admire some of the ancient statues which formed a small part of the priceless collection of Roman remains that the Ambassador had acquired during his long residence in Naples; then the footman returned and showed him into the splendid library.
The elderly Ambassador rose courteously from behind a big desk to receive him, shook hands and waved him to a chair. He then raised his quizzing glass, looked at Roger again and said,
Your face is vaguely familiar to me, Mr. MacElfic. Surely we have met somewhere before? '
1 Indeed we have, sir,' Roger replied with a smile. 11 had the pleasure of being your guest here for a week in the autumn of '89. But you knew me then by my real name, Roger Brook.'
'Then why use any other?' Sir William asked. 'And why make free with that of my Lord Kildonan? '
'Since His Lordshig lives much in Rome, I thought it fairly certain that Your Excellency would know him and that might induce you to see me without delay.'
' That was a shrewd move,' Sir William remarked. ' I do know him slightly and it is to that you owe my prompt reception of you.'
Roger smiled. ' He is in fact my cousin, although I have never met him. My mother's family were all fanatical Jacobites. When she ran away with my father, who is a loyal servant of the Hanoverian line, they cut her off from them entirely. But to come to the point of my visit—you may perhaps recall that when I was last in Naples it was on behalf of Queen Marie Antoinette. I came to enquire if Queen Caroline would give her nephew the Dauphin asylum here, should the safety of the Royal Family in France become threatened by the revolutionary movement.'
' I do recall the matter. Queen Caroline and King Ferdinand agreed to receive the boy, but that poor, woolly-minded man Louis XVI later conceived the notion that his son belonged to the people; so he would not allow him to leave France.'
'Alas, yes. And now what I have to add is for Your Excellency's ear alone. On that occasion there was no reason against my using my own name. But since then I have spent long periods in France as an agent of Mr. Pitt, and I am known there as Colonel Breuc. I am, moreover, one of General Bonaparte's
aides-de-camp, and-'
' What's this you say! ' exclaimed the Ambassador. ' Surprising as it may sound, it is the truth,' Roger laughed,' and only this morning I landed here from Egypt. With me I have brought two despatches that General Bonaparte charged me to deliver in Paris. May I request that you have copies of them made by a safe hand and despatch them at the earliest opportunity to London? '
'Indeed I will! ' Sir William cried enthusiastically. 'And a copy for our dear Admiral, Sir Horatio Nelson, as I've not a doubt but that the contents of these despatches will be of value to him, too. But about yourself—this feat of yours is of surprising interest. Pray tell me more, and of what that terrible young Corsican bandit is up to in Egypt.'
For the
next half-hour the Ambassador sat enthralled, while Roger gave him an account of his doings since leaving England. Then he said, ' From all this you will appreciate why I arrived here as Robert MacElfic. As Roger Brook I might well have been identified as Colonel Breuc by some Frenchman, or by some Neapolitan who sympathizes with the Revolution and who, having been in France, might have met me there.'
' It was a wise precaution. And, alas, it is true enough that many Neapolitan intellectuals have allowed themselves to be contaminated by these pernicious doctrines. But now that Naples is at war with France Queen Caroline will soon take steps to deal with such traitors.'
' On landing I was very surprised to hear that Naples had challenged the Republic, and of the first splendid successes of her Army.'
Sir William smiled. ' The news could not be better. But we expected it. When General Mack inspected the Army before leading it against our enemies he said that he had never seen a finer body of men.'
'1 seem to recall hearing, sir, that when young you were an officer of the Foot Guards. May I ask if that was also your opinion? '
' Well, er . . . I could hardly say that. One must allow for the fact that the majority of them are peasants only recently called up. But their enthusiasm for a war against those atheists and robbers was unbounded.'
' Do you then count enthusiasm enough? I am no soldier, but I have seen enough of war to know how greatly experience of being shot at matters. Every French battalion has its leaven of old soldiers; not only men who fought under Bonaparte in Italy, but also under Dumouriez, Kellermann, Moreau, Jourdan, Pichegru, Hoche and other Generals during the long years of the Revolutionary Wars. At the Battle of the Pyramids, had there not been many such to show an example of calmness to the conscripts it is certain that the sight alone of the Mamelukes' ferocious onslaught would have been sufficient to cause the squares to break, and every man in them would have been massacred. Brave fellows as the Neapolitan levies may be, have you no fear that when the French have had time to concentrate their forces King Ferdinand's Army may suffer a terrible reverse? '
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