Princess Maria Sofia of Bavaria,
sister of the Empress of Austria. The news from Upper Italy hastened
his end; he is said to have exclaimed not long before he died: 'They
have won the cause!'

The accession of a youth, of whom nothing bad was known, to a throne
that had been occupied by a sovereign so out of place in modern
civilisation as Ferdinand, would appear at first sight a fortunate
circumstance for the chances of the dynasty; but it was not so. In an
eastern country it matters little whether the best of the inhabitants
loathe and detest their ruler; but it matters much whether he knows
how to cajole and frighten the masses, and especially the army, into
obedience. Naples, more Oriental than western, possessed in Ferdinand
a monarch consummately expert in this side of the art of government.
Though without the higher military virtues, his army was his favourite
plaything; he always wore uniform, never forgot a face he had once
seen, and treated the officers with a rather vulgar familiarity,
guessing at their weaknesses and making use of them on occasion. The
rank and file regarded him as a sort of supernatural being. Francis
II., who succeeded him, could scarcely appear in this light even to
the most ignorant. Popular opinion considered him not quite sound in
his mind. Probably his timorous, awkward ways and his seeming
stupidity were simply the result of an education conducted by bigoted
priests in a home that was no home: populated as it was by the
offspring of a stepmother who hated him. His own mother, the charming
Princess Cristina of Savoy, died while the city was rejoicing at his
birth. The story is well known of how, shortly after the marriage,
Ferdinand thought it diverting to draw a music-stool from under his
wife, causing her to fall heavily. It gives a sample of the sufferings
of her brief married life. An inheritance of sorrow descended from her
to her child.

If Francis II. was not popular, neither was the new queen. Far more
virile in character and in tastes than her husband, her high spirit
was not what the Neapolitans admire in women, and those who were
devoted to the late King accused her of having shown impatience during
his illness for the moment when the crown would fall to Francis.
Malicious gossip of this kind, however false, serves its end. Thus,
from one cause or another, the young King exercised a power sensibly
weaker than that of his father, while, besides other enemies, he had
an in