Sicily, after creating a Regency at Naples, by whom commissioners were immediately despatched to the French head quarters. They entered into stipulations for the surrender of the capital and all the fortified posts, and this agreement was carried into effect; with the exception of the fortress of Gaeta, under the command of the Prince of Hesse-Philipstadt, who disavowed the authority of the commissioners. The siege of that place was accordingly directed. General Regnier had orders to pursue the Neapolitan army, which was directing its retreat on Calabria. He overtook and defeated them at San Lorenzo, Lago Negro, and Campo Tenese.

Joseph made his entry into Naples on the fifteenth of February, 1806, and was received with open arms by the people as their deliverer. He availed himself of these favourable indications by retaining in public stations the greater part of those who then occupied them. No sooner had he organized a provisional administration in the capital, than he determined to make a personal examination into the state of the kingdom generally, and also to satisfy himself, by actual inspection on the spot, of the feasibility of an attempt upon Sicily. With these views, he commenced a tour, attended by a corps d'élite under the command of General Lamarque. The course adopted as he advanced, was eminently calculated to afford him accurate and practical information of the character, peculiarities, and wants of the country and its inhabitants. He halted in all the villages-entered the principal churches, where the clergy were in the habit of assembling the people. The condition to which the country was reduced, favoured his views in this investigation. Beneath the most enchanting sky, in the shade of the orange and the myrtle, it was not uncommon to find an entire population covered with rags and worn down by poverty and starvation, prostrated on the luxuriant soil, from which moderate industry might with ease obtain an ample support-uttering the most abject supplications for charity and compassion. Nor was it difficult to perceive that these unhappy beings entertained the most absolute indifference as to political changes, resulting from the conviction that whatever the result of the new order of things then announced to them might be, their own situation could by no possibility be rendered worse. So far had their former rulers been successful in desolating and destroying the fair work of nature!

It was during this journey, that Joseph first received intelligence that the emperor had recognised him as king of Naples, and that the other sovereigns of the European continent were disposed to do the same within a short period. On his arrival at Palma, at the entrance of the Straits of Messina, he was forced to admit the impossibility of an expedition against Sicily. The enemy had concentrated his forces there, and carried off with him

Thus com

all means of transportation, even the smallest skiffs. pelled to postpone the attempt, he continued his journey across that Magna Græcia, once so celebrated and flourishing, then so humbled and degraded. His course led him along the shores of the Ionian sea, passing through Catanzaro, Cotroni, and Cassano. It was during this progress that he caused an examination to be made by competent officers, into the character and practicability of a project long since conceived, of uniting the Ionian and Tyrrhenian seas by a canal, and ordered surveys to be made and plans drawn, which might serve hereafter for the direction of that magnificent enterprise. He visited Tarentum, traversed the Basilicate and a part of Apulia, and returned to his capital, where he was awaited by a deputation of the French senate, appointed to offer the felicitations of that body on his accession to the throne of Naples, and express the hope of still preserving him as grand elector and a prince of France. This deputation consisted of Marshal Perignon, General Ferino, and Count Roederer. The last accepted the department of finance at Naples, and skilfully availing himself of the aid and support afforded by the king in reorganizing the fiscal affairs of the kingdom on new bases, established a public credit which has maintained itself under all the changes that have subsequently occurred. Marshal Jourdan, who had been appointed governor of Naples by the emperor before the accession of the king, was retained in the same station.

Congratulations were tendered by all classes of his subjects. The clergy led by Cardinal Ruffo, the nobility, and the people, vied with each other in celebrating the arrival of the new monarch. The capital and the provinces united in expressing their satisfaction in the result.

In the formation of his government, Joseph appointed a council of state, composed of a large number of individuals, in the choice of whom he was guided by public opinion, without distinction of birth or party. It was a ministry in which the most celebrated lawyers found themselves associated with barons of the loftiest birth. The French whom he admitted to his council or to his court, were generally men who had been most distinguished for their abilities in the national assemblies of France; Roederer, Salicetti, Mathieu Dumas, Miot, Cavagnac, Stanislas Girardin, Jancourt, Arcambal, Dedon, Maurice Mathieu, Saligny, Ferri, Hugo, Blagniac, &c. &c.

Such modifications and improvements as had been suggested by his unreserved conversations with men of all classes of his subjects in the long progress he had then completed, were marked out for accomplishment in proper time, and in a calm and deliberate manner. His council of state he divided into sections, and gave in charge to each committee the task of digesting all practicable reforms pertaining to its peculiar department, holding

up to them as a model, the French Revolution, but at the same time earnestly cautioning them to avoid its evils, whilst they imitated and improved upon the fortunate changes it had introduced. Upon all he enjoined strict justice and moderation-the only true guides to the happiness of nations.

The war, however, was not at an end. Gaeta kept a portion of the army employed-the English squadron was on the coastthe Neapolitan troops, although beaten and dispersed, had formed themselves into numerous private bands, which infested and pillaged the country. The Sicilian Court had instigated the landing of an English army in the Gulf of St. Euphemia, where four thousand Poles and a handful of French soldiers were beaten, an occurrence which for the moment fomented partial insurrections. Earnestly engaged in concentrating the requisite means for reducing Gaeta, Joseph proceeded in person to that fortress, and at the same time ordered thither a flotilla of gun-boats, which he had caused to be built, armed, and equipped-he visited the trenches. and the most advanced batteries-he reconnoitred the post where the brave Vallongue, general of engineers, had been recently killed, and ordered the immediate erection of a monument to his memory.

On the seventh of July the king was again under Gaeta, accompanied by Generals Campredon of the Engineers, and Dulauloy of the Artillery, and in his presence a battery of eighty pieces of cannon opened its fire with such effect, that on the eighteenth two breaches were practicable, and Marshal Massena was making his dispositions for the assault, when the garrison of seven thousand men proposed a capitulation which was signed the same day. Massena and his corps d'armée were then directed on Calabria, whence the English retired, on his approach, to Sicily-Joseph himself moved on Lago Negro with a reserve. The marshal having received orders to rejoin the Army of Germany, the king substituted General Regnier in the government of Calabria. This officer effectually destroyed a body of troops, consisting of about six thousand men, which had been landed from Sicily under the command of the Prince of Hesse-Philipstadt. The post of Amantea was captured, that of Marathea had been taken some days before by General Lamarque. On the side of the Adriatic, General St. Cyr, commanding the Italian divisions, had quieted those provinces and taken Civitella del Tronto. Affairs began to assume a more settled aspect. The chiefs of the most active bands had fallen, all attempts at the assassination of the new king had proved abortive, and the national guards which had been organized in all the provinces under the command of the wealthiest proprietors, (who had all espoused the new régime,) contributed greatly to extinguish the flame of revolt and preserve

the tranquillity of the country, as soon as the principal masses of the enemy had been beaten and dispersed by the army.

Before returning to Naples the king renewed his visit to the provinces, and persevered in the same course of inquiry and inspection which had produced so much satisfactory information on the former occasion. Mingling freely with the inhabitants, he interrogated them directly as to their wants and wishes-inquired into abuses--called certain dishonest functionaries to a severe account -and by the strict impartiality he maintained, as well as the sincere interest he exhibited in the welfare of his subjects, inspired universal confidence and secured a peaceful triumph over their hearts and affections, far more glorious than any which owes its origin to authority or force. Rich in the personal knowledge he had thus acquired of his people-of their necessities and desires, he fully developed his plans of reform to the councillors of state, whom he had appointed on his first arrival, and found little difficulty in persuading this intelligent and patriotic ministry that the individual good of each class was to be found only in the meliorated condition of the whole. Few instances on record more strikingly exemplify the power of reason over the minds of the most bigotted than the events of this revolution. The principal nobles of the kingdom were the first to applaud and sustain the projects of reform: thus, feudal rights were abolished with their free consent, and the most enlightened prelates, also members of the council of state, approved and voted for the suppression of the monastic orders, whose funds soon contributed to the solidity of public credit. A judicious administration introduced order and system into the finances. The feudal judges whose jurisdictions had been annulled, were for the most part selected for judicial appointments in the new royal institutions. In a word, the national welfare and regeneration were attained without blood or tears, or the oppression of a single individual. Every thing was done for the people, but nothing by the people, and the awful convulsions attendant upon the sudden rising of an oppressed nation were thus carefully avoided. Wisdom and moderation presided over these important changes. Monks, priests, nobles, all were satisfied with the public felicity in which they each enjoyed a

share.

The provincial intendants received instructions to engage such of the ex-monks as possessed the competent ability and inclination, in the work of public education. Those who were deemed suitable for the duties of a parochial clergy were not removed. The more infirm who had grown old in the cloister and survived all their relatives, were assembled, protected, and encouraged in large public establishments, where they continued, with ecclesiastics of different orders, to live in common. The learned among

them, still possessed of youth and health, who preferred living thus, were permitted to devote themselves to the prosecution of those sciences which had so signally illustrated their predecessors, and the famous houses of Monte-cassin and La Cava were assigned to them, where the libraries and manuscripts of other religious houses were collected. These precious deposits were consigned to their care. Other individuals of the monastic orders, who yet retained the vigour of youth, occupied the two great establishments of Cinquemiglia and Monte Tenese, which were regulated on the plan of that which exists at St. Bernard; and the peculiar duty assigned to them was to watch over the safety of travellers in the lofty regions of Calabria and the Abruzzi, which are generally covered with snow.

The prisons, encumbered with crowds of unhappy wretches, who had languished for years within their pestilential enclosures, were emptied of their tenants by the sentences of four tribunals erected for that express object. An ignominious method of recruiting the armies from the prisons, known under the name of the trullati, was abolished. In each province a college and house of female education was established. The daughters of officers and of public functionaries enjoyed the benefit of a central institution, under the immediate protection of the queen, at Aversa, into which the most distinguished pupils of the provincial schools were, of right, admitted at the end of each year. The provincial administration, the military and the civil engineer corps were emulously employed on public works. Practicable roads for wheel-carriages were opened as far as Reggio, from one extremity of the kingdom to the other, and by the energy and skill of those bodies, an enterprise, commenced ages before, and then known only by the tax existing under the name and pretext of the Calabrian road, was promptly completed:-in a single year the road was finished, and the impost abolished. From time immemorial in the Neapolitan dominions the royal progresses had been an oppressive charge upon the people, owing to the privileges enjoyed by each officer of the royal household. These privileges were annulled and the exactions discontinued.

The people of the Abruzzi having expressed a wish to receive a visit from the king, similar to that which he had made to the Calabrians, he acceded to their wishes, and on the tour he made in their country, enjoyed the gratification of beholding the entire population of several districts meet him on his passage-labouring with ardour to open new roads, and to improve the face of their country-already convinced that the change from sloth and listlessness to active and enterprising industry was the most acceptable homage which they could offer to their new king.

His attempts to conciliate those who, from their connection with the foreign troops or from other causes, were inimical to his