England's Mistress_ The Infamous Life of Emma Hamilton - Kate Williams [126]
Only after much pressing from his wife, Nelson, the Hamiltons, and John Acton, as well as many of his courtiers, did Ferdinand stop hunting long enough to send Cardinal Ruffo, minister of war, to lead an army of Calabrians and Turks, accompanied by royalist Neapolitans, to attempt to recapture the city. By June, Ruffo had trapped most of the Neapolitan rebels and the French fighters in the city's castle. They offered their surrender on condition that they received a pardon. Ruffo and Nelson's Captain Foote signed the agreement and congratulated themselves on restoring order with a minimum of bloodshed. On June 24, Nelson arrived on his ship, the sparkling new Foudroyant, recently arrived to replace the battered Vanguard, itching to shatter the city's uneasy calm. Fired up by the commands of the queen and the king's obsession with his divine right to rule, he decided the agreement was invalid. "Rebels and traitors," he thundered, "must instantly throw themselves on the clemency of their sovereign, for no other terms would be allowed them."
Emma had accompanied Nelson and Sir William on the boat to Naples at the request of Maria Carolina. The queen had demanded Emma write daily informing her of what was going on, and also, according to Sir William, charged her with "many important Commissions."2 The king, queen, and John Acton demonized the rebels as evil traitors who deserved no mercy. Hamilton agreed and called the truce a "shameful capitulation." Chivvying for a "second Aboukir," Maria Carolina declared that no one could "deal tenderly with this murderous rabble." The British government had recently come down hard on insurrections in Ireland, nervous that the Irish might ally with the French, and the queen exhorted Nelson to handle Naples "as if it was a rebel city in Ireland behaving in like manner." She instructed him to "make an example of the leading representatives" with an "exact, prompt, just severity." Any female rebels should also be treated without pity.3 Captain Foote pleaded with Acton to show mercy, but to no avail.
Convinced he was defending Europe by following the orders of the Neapolitan king and queen, and believing himself the man able to stop Jacobin fury, Nelson assumed the mantle of divine vengeance and described himself as "the happy instrument of His punishment against unbelievers."4 The city exploded into violence once more. Royalist mobs, operating with unofficial sanction, roamed the streets, beating and burning suspected republicans. Officers arrested anyone who held a position in the Republic. Middle-class and poor men and women alike were sentenced to death, and about a hundred were executed. Among the rebels apprehended was Caracciolo, admiral to the royal family and old friend of the Hamiltons. Intent on showing that not even the most elevated Neapolitans could escape punishment, the court, assembled on Nelson's ship, sentenced him to death by hanging. Nelson refused Caracciolo's plea for execution by gunfire—the customary mode of death for a commander— and also his request for time to prepare. He commanded that the admiral be hanged the same day from the fore yardarm of his own ship, La Minerva. His body would remain there until sunset and then be thrown into the sea.
The crowds were already waiting on the shore by the ship to hear Caracciolo's sentence. When it was announced, there were hysterical cheers, while those sympathetic to him slunk away, too fearful of arrest to express their horror. Waiting in the Foudroyant, Caracciolo knew he would be hung in front of a jeering crowd and then left to be circled by the seagulls. Like most Catholics, he believed that without a proper confession, ceremony, and grave, he would not reach heaven. He begged for a moment apart from a guard to pray, but he was roughly refused. It was midday. All he could do was wait for the frame to be readied on the Minerva.
The Neapolitan sun was still hot at five o'clock. As the admiral