660 Chapter XXVII
Royal Army. Since this host was sometimes also called the Army of the Holy Faith
(San Fede) the ensuing movement has been known as San Fedism, and repre-
sented as an outbreak of religious fanaticism. That it was basically a religious
movement is open to question; at least Cardinal Zurlo expressed disapproval at the
invasion by Cardinal Ruffo, and many priests were later punished for resistance to
the Armata Cristiana.^31 Nor was the movement a peasant uprising only, since up-
perclass townspeople sometimes assumed command of local troops, using the oc-
casion to seize the. property of fellow- townsmen who could be discredited as “Ja-
cobins.” It was upon the peasants, nevertheless, that Ruffo was able to rely for a
mass following, and he rallied them the more easily because he gave ear to their
grievances. He allowed them to reoccupy common lands, abolished certain taxes
and unpopular local offices, and declared the “abolition of feudalism.” When he
requisitioned food for his army he tried to pass the burden to the absentee land-
lords, and he issued a good many pardons to broaden the basis of his support. But
the swarm that swept over the country was under no control, and it descended
with fury on cities where the republicans had come into power; at Paola in Cal-
abria numerous Jacobins were killed, and all the upper- class homes, noble and
bourgeois, were looted. In May Ruffo reoccupied the city of Naples, and besieged
some of the last and most prominent of the republicans in the fortress of St. Elmo.
Ferdinand IV had instructed Ruffo to offer no terms. “We wish no mercy shown to
any rebel against God and me.”^32 Ruffo, nevertheless, in the king’s name, gave his
promise to the republicans at St. Elmo that if they surrendered their lives would be
spared. They surrendered on this understanding.
Ferdinand IV and Maria Carolina considered Ruffo entirely too indulgent to
traitors. The English at their court were of the same opinion. Nelson, whose fleet
now re- occupied the Bay, believed that countries should be governed like a British
warship—by rewards and by punishments. The queen was consumed by feelings of
vengefulness toward her own capital. “Enfin ma chère Milady” as she wrote to Lady
Hamilton in her international French, “je recommande à Milord Nelson de traiter
Naples comme si ce fut une ville rebelle en Irlande.”^33 Nelson pressed for severity, and if
there was any odium in the execution of Jacobins the king and queen were willing
enough to let him bear it. The king, still at Palermo, gave orders that the recogni-
tion of Ruffo’s terms of surrender should be left to Nelson’s judgment. A man of
stern duty, like Captain Vere in Billy Budd, Nelson also believed that the saving of
civilization from Ireland to the Straits of Messina required the condign and con-
spicuous execution of Jacobins. Discussing the terms of the surrender with Ruffo,
“that swelled up priest,” he was shocked when Ruffo referred to the rebels as
“patriots”—“what a prostitution of the word!”^34 To his own subordinate, Foote, he
31 Fifteen clerics were among the 119 executed at Naples and listed by name in Cuoco; Lucarelli,
p. 37, names twelve more for Apulia, as a mere sample from the official register.
32 Ferdinand IV to Ruffo, Palermo, April 11, 1799, quoted at length in H. C. Gutteridge, Nelson
and the Neapolitan Jacobins: Documents Relating to the Suppression of the Jacobin Revolution at Naples.
Printed for the Navy Records Society (London?, 1903), 38.
33 Ibid., 213.
34 Dispatches and Letters of Vice Admiral Lord Viscount Nelson, 7 Vols. (London, 1845), III, 334,
38 7.