n compared with the
advantages that would result from it. Amongst the most enthusiastic
liberals was young Pepe, who had already conceived that ardent love of
liberty, which, throughout life, has been his mainspring of action. He
hailed with delight the publication of the edict by which Naples was
erected into the Parthenopean Republic. He was eager to enter the new
army, whose organisation had been decreed, but his tender age made his
brothers oppose his wish, and he was fain to content himself with a post
in the national guard.

The new republic was destined to a very short existence. The provisional
government, consisting, in imitation of the French system, of six
committees, displayed little activity and still less judgment. It
neglected to conciliate and win over the popular party, which remained
stanch to the Bourbons and absolutism; it took little pains to convince
the bigoted multitude of the advantages and blessings of a free
constitution. The treasury was bare, the harvest had been bad, the coast
was blockaded, and their difficulties were aggravated by the heavy
taxes imposed, and rigorously levied by Championnet for the support of
his army. These impositions, and a decree for the disarming of the
people, produced discontent even amongst the friends of the new
institutions. Nevertheless, Championnet, by showing an interest in the
rising Republic, had gained a certain degree of popularity, when he was
recalled to Paris to be tried by a court-martial, for his opposition to
the exactions of a French civil commissary, "one of those voracious
blood-suckers, whom the French government was wont to fasten upon the
newly formed republics which it created, and upon which it bestowed the
derisive title of independent." General Macdonald succeeded Championnet;
the commissary, maintained in his functions, had full scope for
extortion, and the Republican government, unable, for want of money, to
organise an army that might have given permanence to its existence,
became daily more unpopular, and visibly tottered to its downfal.
Meanwhile, on the opposite coast of Sicily, Ferdinand, his adherents and
allies, were any thing but idle. They issued proclamations, lavished
money, spared no means to excite the people to revolt against the French
and their favourers. Every support and encouragement was given to the
disaffected, and at last Cardinal Ruffo landed in Calabria, and by
proclamations issued in his name, and in that of Fer