The sanfedisti now marched across the instep of the foot of Italy towards the Adriatic. Maida and Cutro surrendered, but at Cotrone on the coast they met resistance from the republican citizens and thirty-two French soldiers whose boat had been blown off course on its voyage back from Egypt. The walls were weak; the defenders had few arms and little ammunition. After the first assault, they sued for peace. Ruffo would accept only unconditional surrender. This was refused, the siege continued, and finally the defences collapsed and the city was sacked.
Catanzaro was the next obstacle in the path of the Holy Army – a city with substantial fortifications and 16,000 citizens well armed and supplied. A delegation came to negotiate with Ruffo, saying they were quite willing to resume their loyalty to the king. Ruffo agreed that, if the civil guard was replaced with Bourbon loyalists, and 12,000 ducats paid towards the costs of his crusade, no vendetta would be pursued against the republicans and the city would be left in peace. His terms were accepted: the Bourbon standard was raised over the city. With his hinterland secured, Ruffo now led his sanfedisti north towards Naples.
*
The news of Ruffo’s success encouraged those already fighting a guerrilla war against the French, among them the notorious Fra Diavolo. These drew on a pool of the disaffected – soldiers from the disbanded private armies, retainers of expropriated Bourbonists who had lost their livelihoods, servants thrown out of work and some disillusioned by the Parthenopean Republic.
In Naples, General Championnet had been replaced by General Macdonald. To stop the advance of the sanfedisti, Macdonald first issued ferocious proclamations: any town that rose against the republic was to be razed to the ground. All rebels and accomplices of the rebels were to be shot, whether they be laymen, cardinals, archbishops, abbots or priests. He then dispatched General Duhesme to stop Ruffo with an army of six thousand men. Accompanying this French force were a thousand republican volunteers under Ettore Caraffa, Count of Ruvo and heir to the Duke of Andria. A republican from his youth, Caraffa had been imprisoned in the fortress of Saint Elmo in 1796, had escaped, fled the kingdom, and returned with the army of General Championnet. Now, with Duhesme, he besieged the city of Andria north of Bari, a fief of his family in the hands of the Bourbonists. Andria was taken. Ettore Caraffa, to prove his zeal, insisted on punishing its citizens. The population was slaughtered and the buildings burned to the ground – ‘a marvellous instance of self-denial’, wrote the historian Pietro Coletta, ‘or thirst for vengeance’.
Another zealous republican, Giuseppe Schipani, led an army of twelve hundred patriots due south from Naples, hoping to add to that number of those fleeing before the advancing sanfedisti. Schipani was a trained soldier; a junior officer in King Ferdinand’s army, he had been dismissed for his liberal views but reinstated as a general when the republicans came to power. He now passed through Salerno, Eboli, Albanella, Controne and Capaccia, all in republican hands, and first saw a Bourbon flag flying from the bell tower of the church of a small village, Castellucia. His mission was to engage the forces of Cardinal Ruffo, but he was provoked by this gesture of defiance and decided to take this little Bourbon outpost en route.
The citizens of Castellucia, seeing the approach of an army equipped with artillery, assembled in the church and decided to surrender. ‘But it happened,’ wrote Pietro Coletta, ‘that a Captain Scarpia was present who accused them of cowardice.’ If they were prepared to fight, he would take command, but if they were not, he would withdraw with his men and fight on better terrain, leaving them and their womenfolk at the mercy of the republicans. ‘They answered with one voice, demanding war,’ and, after being blessed by their parish priest, were deployed by Scarpia to meet the imminent assault.
When the republican troops reached the outskirts of the town, they were met by ‘a brisk fire of musketry from invisible enemies’. General Schipani, with drawn sword, led them on, but when they reached the gates of the town, they encountered a further fusillade. The spirit of the republicans faltered; Schipani ordered a retreat; and as his men fell back, the Bourbonists leapt out from behind the walls and pursued the fugitives down the slope, killing some and capturing others. Schipani fell back with his remaining troops into the city of Salerno.
3
Scarpia, accompanied by Spoletta, had landed as planned on the mainland of Italy at the port of Sapri in the Gulf of Policastro. He had been met by three of his family’s retainers – the major-domo and two grooms – and the news that their mistress, Marcella di Torre della Barca, had died three days before. They rode to Barca and the next day Scarpia buried his mother. He was the only child to throw a handful of earth on her coffin: his brother Domenico was under house arrest in Naples.
Scarpia had no time to grieve, and anyway felt that he might soon join her. He had sent word in advance of his arrival, and there gathered at Barca over the next few days not just feudatories and tenants of his mother’s family but the bishop of the diocese, a number of the local clergy and a dozen neighbouring landowners – excited by Cardinal Ruffo’s landing and impatient for further news from Palermo. Scarpia had letters from King Ferdinand and Cardinal Ruffo which he showed to the bishop who in turn blessed his mission and promised eternal rewards to those who should choose to join the Army of the Holy Faith.
Scarpia now organised his men according to their ability – trained soldiers to form the vanguard, the untrained to follow on behind. The number of volunteers doubled day by day. Five men led by a Tommaso Crivelli arrived with dispatches from Cardinal Ruffo. ‘I send you these witnesses to the cruelty of the enemies of the faith. Their wives and children were all killed in Andria.’ Why had Ruffo sent them? To stiffen his resolve? Yet in the same letter Ruffo urged Scarpia to be merciful. ‘Remember, we are emissaries of Christ. Those who submit must be treated well and even the defeated merit clemency. Vengeance is to be left to the Lord.’ The cardinal’s sentiments did not seem to be shared by Crivelli and his friends. They sat apart from the other volunteers, priming their pistols and sharpening their swords.
After only a week of rudimentary training, Scarpia felt ready to lead his force north from Barca. Most of the neighbouring communes had already proclaimed their loyalty to the king. Others further afield sent out civic leaders as he approached to negotiate their surrender; and, following the guidance given to Scarpia by Ruffo, cities were spared if they replaced their republican magistrates with Bourbon loyalists and contributed towards the costs of the campaign. It was only by chance that Scarpia was present in Castellucia to rally its inhabitants against the assault by the republicans under Schipani.
Scarpia first met outright defiance when he and his men reached the commune of Certosino di San Marco that they met defiance – the gates closed and the republican tricolour flying from its ramparts. It was the largest of the towns they had yet encountered. Scarpia was told by the peasants who lived nearby that the chemists, notaries and merchants were all republicans; they had raised a militia and, forewarned of Scarpia’s approach, had called in a small contingent of republican troops from Salerno. This was led by a signor nobile and had two cannon.
The town was invested and bombarded with Scarpia’s few cannon. A breach was made in the wall. Scarpia led his soldiers through the opening, a pistol in his left hand, his German sword in the right, clambering over the rubble of the breach and the soft corpses of the defenders. As they advanced up the street, a cannon fired shrapnel, which lacerated a number of his men. Scarpia took cover under arches and in doorways, and, as he moved forward, felt both horror and a strange elation as he saw faces blown off by grapeshot, ducked the bayonets of his adversaries and, reaching the cannon, fired at one soldier with his pistol and plunged his sword into the belly of another. The sound of shrieks and shots stunned his ears; the smell of blood and dust clogged his nostrils; expressions of fury, fear, shock and pain passed before his eyes, as instinct drove him to kill before being killed.
The defenders of Certosino di San Marco retreated into narr
ow streets. The sanfedisti followed, Crivelli and his men, like eager staghounds sniffing prey, bounding ahead of their commander and dodging the bullets fired from snipers on the roofs of the houses as if they were gnats – any instinct of fear overwhelmed by their thirst for revenge. In their wake was a trail of decapitated bodies, and when the city was finally taken, there came first the shrieks of women, and then the file of the triumphant victors returning to camp with heavy portmanteaus, bulging pockets and wearing absurdly handsome clothes.
Thirty prisoners were taken. Crivelli demanded that they be shot. Scarpia hesitated. With Crivelli were not just the men who had come with him but a number of others whose families had suffered from the republican atrocities at Andria. A cry went up. ‘Death to the Jacobins. Up against the wall.’ Scarpia silenced them. ‘We are ordered by the cardinal to offer every prisoner the chance to repent.’ A priest with a Bible was summoned and, with Scarpia sitting in judgement at a trestle table in the central square, the prisoners were brought forward. One by one they fell on their knees and begged to be forgiven. One by one they laid their hand on the Bible, swore to repudiate the republic and remain loyal to God and the king. The line shifted forward. Scarpia glanced at the besmirched and bloodstained faces of the frightened men; and then, at the end of the queue, a figure in the uniform of an officer, the signor nobile, his head tilted upward in disdain and a face that showed no fear – a figure, a head, a face which Scarpia recognised: that of his former prisoner, Count Vicenzo Palmieri.
Spoletta too recognised the prisoner from the Castel Sant’Angelo and muttered to Scarpia: ‘You see who we have here?’
Scarpia nodded.
‘Better not be too friendly. It might be misunderstood.’
The queue advanced. Clearly, Palmieri had recognised Scarpia long before he himself had been recognised, lowering his head every now and then to glance at his captors with scorn and then darting a look almost of amusement at Scarpia. He had aged – the smooth, youthful features that Scarpia remembered were broken by lines and wrinkles – and the eyes that had so often looked idealistically into the middle distance, as if the future could be discerned in the ether, now focused on the priest with a look of complete contempt.
‘And do you repent?’ The priest put the question as Palmieri came before Scarpia.
Scarpia leaned forward. Involuntarily, his thoughts had turned to Simona Palmieri, and for a moment, forgetting Spoletta’s warning not to treat his captive as a friend, he was about to greet him as if the two men had met at a reception, but he was wrenched out of this absurd reverie when Palmieri, in answer to the priest’s question, spat on the Bible and then, half turning, spat in Scarpia’s face.
The abate shrank back with horror and, after a momentary hesitation, wiped the spittle off the holy book with the sleeve of his cassock. A roar of rage went up among those surrounding Palmieri and the sanfedista on his left slapped his face. Scarpia was not angry. He wiped his face with a handkerchief, already stained with dirt and blood, and then raised it to command those pushing forward to belabour Palmieri to desist. ‘Wait, wait,’ he said. ‘Let the man speak . . .’ He said this though Palmieri had shown no inclination to add words to his actions. He darted a questioning look at Scarpia, rather as if he had departed from the script, and was perhaps encouraged to say something by Scarpia’s look of confusion. The pulsing blood had ebbed in his veins with the image of Simona Palmieri: he felt that the spittle on his face was deserved.
Palmieri now turned away from Scarpia and faced the angry men surrounding him. ‘Soldiers! Peasants! My brothers! My friends! Don’t you see you have been deceived? You have been fighting for a cowardly king who cringes in Palermo, leaving it to his lackeys to fight his wars. Don’t be duped by superstition! Do you think God is on the side of greedy despots? Or does He want you to share the goods of this earth and be free?’
‘But you do not believe in God,’ said Spoletta suddenly – his voice not raised but rasping and clear.
Palmieri hesitated. ‘God, if He exists –’
‘If He exists!’ the priest repeated. And then, holding the holy book aloft: ‘He spat on the Bible!’
‘Sacrilege! Blasphemy!’ The cries went up from the crowd.
‘Citizens,’ shouted Palmieri, ‘we are approaching a new century. We are living in the age of philosophy and science. We can feed the hungry and cure the sick. We can inoculate your children against smallpox and teach you to read.’
‘And San’ Gennaro?’ cried a voice.
‘San’ Gennaro?’ Palmieri repeated in a tone of bewilderment.
‘He is the enemy of San’ Gennaro,’ cried another Neapolitan.
‘And of Christ,’ said the priest.
‘I am your friend,’ said Palmieri. ‘I am your brother. I fight so that you may be equal and free.’
‘We don’t want your liberty and equality,’ said a voice in coarse Calabrian from the crowd. ‘We want our king and our Holy Faith!’
The crowd shouted their approval. ‘The king! Our Holy Faith!’ And, as if judging that the time had come to settle the matter, Crivelli now stepped forward to the trestle table and, looking first at Scarpia, and then turning to face the crowd, cried: ‘Enough! This man and his friends say they want to free us, but how do they free us? With rape and pillage and slaughter. My wife, my daughter, both violated and then killed in Andria. Are we to let this man go free?’ He turned once again to face Scarpia and repeated his question: ‘Are we to let this man go free?’
Scarpia raised his hand. The crowd was silent. He turned to Palmieri. ‘Do you refuse to accept the pardon offered by His Eminence Cardinal Ruffo in the name of King Ferdinand to those who repent?’
‘I refuse.’
‘Then I hereby pronounce sentence. You will be shot at dawn.’
There was a growl from the crowd.
‘Why wait?’ asked Crivelli. ‘Let us shoot him now.’
Again, the growl from the crowd.
‘I am your commander,’ said Scarpia. ‘We will do as I say. The prisoner will be shot at dawn.’
*
It was not long until dawn. The crowd of soldiers dispersed, some to sleep in the camp outside the walls to guard their booty, others in rooms in the deserted houses. Palmieri was led away to the dungeon of the castello and Scarpia with Spoletta withdrew to the rooms above. They did not sleep. ‘I cannot let him be killed,’ Scarpia said to Spoletta. Spoletta’s lack of a rejoinder suggested that he knew why.
Some food had been found for them: they sat together eating cold chicken, cheese and bread.
‘There will be trouble if you let him go,’ said Spoletta.
‘I know.’
‘You can’t count on the priest to show any mercy. He would happily burn him at the stake.’
‘Can we count on anyone?’
‘Perhaps a dozen of the men from Barca.’
‘Get hold of them. They shall be the firing squad. Tell them to put powder into their muskets but not shot. And tell Palmieri that when the shots are fired, he should fall as if dead.’
‘And then?’
‘Take away his body. Throw it on a dungheap.’
‘Shouldn’t you be the one to tell him?’
‘No. If it is me, he might refuse.’
‘He might refuse anyway and laugh in our faces or wriggle once he is down.’
‘Then the men can finish him off with bayonets. We will have done what we can.’
*
Palmieri was led out to be shot in dim light shortly before the sun had risen. He was escorted out of the eastern gates of the town by a contingent commanded by Spoletta. The priest accompanied the condemned man, ready to absolve him should he choose to repent before meeting his Maker. Many of the sanfedisti were still drunk and so asleep, but Crivelli and his contingent from Andria, together with thirty or so others, stood by the gates to see that justice was done. Outside the eastern gates there were terraces with olive trees and vines. Palmieri was placed against the wall o
f the town close to the gates, his eyes covered by a scarf. The soldiers stood in a line facing him, raised their muskets and fired at Spoletta’s command. The quiet of the early morning was shattered by the sharp sound. Palmieri fell to the ground. There was a moment of silence and apparent paralysis. The priest crossed himself. Spoletta walked forward to the wall and, looking down, fired his pistol into the corpse – the coup de grâce. Then he gestured to four of his soldiers, who lifted the body of Palmieri onto a bier improvised with their muskets. They carried it away from the wall and tipped it over the edge of a terrace.
‘Food for the dogs,’ said Spoletta to Crivelli.
‘We must return to bury it,’ said the priest.
‘Later,’ said Spoletta. ‘Now it is time for Mass.’
All now followed the priest back into the town and to the church. A Te Deum was sung to give thanks for this victory of God’s army. The priest assured his congregation that their comrades who had died in the battle were now in Paradise and, making the sign of the cross over the congregation, absolved them of any sins that might have been committed in the heat of battle. At ten in the morning, the army broke camp and marched north. The surviving citizens set about burying the many dead. When sent by the priest to find the body of Palmieri, they returned to say that it had already been carried off by the dogs.
4
By the middle of April 1799, throughout the Abruzzi, Calabria and Puglia, only Pescara and a few towns garrisoned by the French remained in republican hands. The contingents led by Scarpia and the other Bourbonist irregulars, Pronio, Mammone and Fra Diavolo, had been as successful as Cardinal Ruffo. A force of five hundred English marines landed at Castelmare and, joining with the sanfedisti, took the city of Salerno. The Parthenopean Republic was reduced to a few square miles around the city of Naples and events in the north of Italy now led the French to waver in their support. On 5 April 1799, in the valley of the Po, a French army under General Scherer had been defeated by an Austrian army under the Hungarian Pal Kray; and three weeks later, at Cassano d’Adda north of Milan, the Russian General Alexander Suvorov routed a second French army led by General Moreau. It was clear to General Macdonald in Naples that he could expect no reinforcements, and that his lines of supply were now at risk. It was time to withdraw from Naples, but how should he present this desertion to his republican allies? As common sense. In an address to the Legislative Council of the Parthenopean Republic on 1 May, he told its members that the cost of supporting the French army of occupation was crippling the Neapolitan economy and, since the presence of a foreign army had provoked the insurgency, its absence would bring an end. If the friends of Liberty showed the courage of their convictions, they could easily deal with the sanfedisti themselves. ‘A state that depends upon foreign arms cannot consider itself to be wholly free.’
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