of the market-place, close to which, as already has been
described, was the church and convent of the Carmelites, and this castle
was besieged and defended by troops of the people. The great mass of the
assailants was formed out of a band of lads of the lowest class, about
four hundred in number, who painted the greatest part of their bodies
and their faces black and red; their tattered clothes gave them an
oriental appearance. They were armed with sticks, and called the company
of the Alarbes, perhaps an Arabian name. They were drilled by
Masaniello, and considered him as their chief.

It is easy to conceive how ill the people spoke of the tax-gatherers,
who, by their severity and roughness in their daily treatment, kept up
perpetual quarrels and ill-will with the equally rough populace, who
therefore tried to deceive them. On one beautiful summer night the
custom-house in the great market-place flew up into the air. A quantity
of powder had been conveyed into it by unknown hands, and in the morning
nothing remained but the blackened ruins. It had been intended by this
action to oblige the Viceroy to take off the taxes; but, without loss of
time, in an opposite building, a new custom-house was established. The
collectors were only the more angry and unmerciful, and every day seemed
to bring the outbreak nearer.

Thus the morning of July 7, 1647, approached. It was Sunday, and a
number of fruit-sellers, with carts and donkeys and full baskets, came
into the town very early from Pozzuoli, and went as usual to the great
market. Scarcely had they reached it when the dispute began. The
question was not so much whether the tax should be paid, as who was to
pay it. The men of Pozzuoli maintained that the Neapolitan dealers in
fruit were to pay five _carlins_ on a hundredweight; the others said it
was not their business: thus the disturbance began.

Some respectable people who foresaw the evil hastened to the Viceroy,
who commissioned Andrea Naclerio, the deputy of the people, to go
immediately to the market-place and restore peace. Naclerio was getting
into a boat to sail to Posilipo, where he intended to spend the day
with his colleagues belonging to the association of nobles, when he
received the order. He turned back, coasted along the shore of the
Marinella, and got out by the tanner's gate, near the fort which takes
its name from the church of the Carmelites. Here a different Sunday
scene awaited him from that which he