Breaking the Line by David Donachie Read Free Book Online

Emperor were inflicting defeats where Bonaparte hadrouted them three years previously. The Russians crossed from Corfu to Italy to support Ruffo, which made his army even more formidable, squeezing the beleaguered enemy back into a shrinking pocket of possession.
    Troubridge sailed for Naples to take command there, immediately sending back news that all the islands off Naples had surrendered to the King. He also informed Nelson that he had several dozen prisoners who, it was claimed, were traitors, and added a request for Neapolitan judges to try them. Nelson obliged him, but later regretted it, given the nature of the justice meted out.
    Trials were held at which the accused were neither represented nor present, where ‘witnesses’ could speak against the supposed traitors without the truth of their statements being checked. Troubridge was ordered to arrange hangings that he declined to undertake, suspecting that a great number of old scores were being settled under the guise of royal retribution. It had ended with Troubridge turfing the ‘judges’ off his ship, and refusing to be party to such a sham affair.
    ‘Doubtless there is much to be desired in the way these matters are handled,’ Sir William commented, on reading Troubridge’s latest despatch, ‘but I do think we must look to our primary aim.’ That, he and Nelson had long agreed, was to get the King and Queen back to Naples. ‘Not just to Naples,’ Sir William insisted, ‘but to a place in which they will be secure and the body politic stable enough to support the interests of Britain’s policy.’
    Sir William, Nelson noted, was in a positive mood, forceful in his opinions and clear as to his ambassadorial objectives. The evening before, at dinner, he had been distracted and feeble. ‘You do not hold then with Cardinal Ruffo’s suggestion of an amnesty?’ Nelson asked.
    Ruffo had written to the King to insist that the simplest way to retake Naples was to offer those who had espoused the Republican cause a pardon for their sins. His aim was to avoid a bloodbath. Edigio Bagio, the leader of the lazzaroni, claimed to have enough followers to cleanse the city. What Ruffo saw in this was a variation of the Terror that had gripped France: peasants would kill anyone of gentle birth, regardless of their allegiances, just as they had in the interregnum between Ferdinand’s flight and the arrival of the French in Naples.
    ‘Only a committed Papist believes in redemption through forgiveness,’ said Sir William. ‘I have rarely known a single blackguard change his ways through absolution.’
    ‘Ruffo is a Catholic,’ observed Nelson.
    ‘He is also a cardinal, Nelson, not a simple priest, and should know better. Can we really hope that those who plotted against their King will settle for a restoration? They will not. They will plot and plan for their damned republic as they did in the past, treating again with our enemies, undermining the state, merely waiting for another opportunity to rebel – this time with more success in the article of regicide. We cannot always have a fleet in Naples Bay. Therefore we must root out the need.’
    ‘And Troubridge’s reservations about justice?’ asked Nelson.
    ‘Let the Neapolitans worry about the justness of what they do.’
    Less formal discussions with Emma produced much the same response. She had passed through Paris in ’89 and seen how the mobs controlled the streets, how they had been manipulated by clever men, who finally got the heads of their anointed sovereigns. For Emma the loyalty was personal as much as political: she was a partisan of the Queen, a friend to her children.
    Nelson disliked treachery, and the society which Ferdinand and Maria Carolina had ruled was rampant with it. Many of the rebels had fawned upon their king and queen, had taken everything that royal generosity could bestow, only to turn on their benefactors for personal advantage. Officers of the army and the marine had sworn a