The Life Of Nelson, Volume I.
The abrupt execution of Caracciolo was an explosion of fierce animosity long cherished, pardonable perhaps in a Neapolitan royalist, but not in a foreign officer only indirectly interested in the issues at stake; and hence it is that the fate of that one sufferer has aroused more attention and more sympathy than that of the numerous other victims, put to death by the King's command after ordinary processes of law. It stands conspicuous as the act of an English officer imbued with the spirit of a Neapolitan Bourbon official. "Could it ever happen," he wrote to Acton, some months after this, "that any English minister wanted to make me an instrument of hurting the feelings of His Sicilian Majesty, I would give up my commission sooner than do it.... I am placed in such a situation -- a subject of one King by birth, and, as far as is consistent with my allegiance to that King, a voluntary subject of His Sicilian Majesty -- that if any man attempted to separate my two Kings, by all that is sacred, I should consider even putting that man to death as a meritorious act."[87] On the other hand, it must be considered that Nelson, though humane, tended even in his calmest moments to severity towards military offenders. Writing with reference to a captain convicted of misbehavior before the enemy, he said, "If a man does not do his utmost in time of action, I think but one punishment ought to be inflicted;" and it may be inferred that he would have approved Byng's execution, where cowardice was not proved, but grave military dereliction was. On the 10th of July the King of the Two Sicilies arrived from Palermo in the Bay of Naples, and went on board the "Foudroyant," which, for the whole time he remained, -- about four weeks, -- became practically his seat of government. There the royal standard was hoisted, there the King held his levees, and there business of State was transacted.
|