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Updated: June 13, 2025
When the capitulation was signed at two o’clock in the afternoon of the 29th, the small Pontifical army had ceased to exist, and the Piedmontese, now free to follow out their plans, could go to join the bands of Garibaldi, under the walls of Gaeta, and, together with him, complete “the extirpation of the Papal cancer,” or, as one of their school, Pinelli, said, “Crush the sacerdotal vampire.” But although right had been trampled down, it knew how to do battle and to die. “For the first time,” observed a Protestant journal, the new Gazette of Prussia, “a general of the party of legality has dared to lead his troops against the enemy.
The garrison at Aversa had capitulated after a heroic resistance, and it was known only too well that if the King of Hungary could get so far as the walls of Naples, he would not have to endanger his life in order to seize that city. Happily the Provencal galleys had reached port at last. The king and the queen had only just time to embark and take refuge at Gaeta.
There were risings in Vienna, in Milan, in Rome. Venice was proclaimed a republic, the Pope fled to Gaeta, the streets of Berlin ran with the blood of the populace. The Magyars rose against Jellalic and his Croat troops; the Czechs demanded their autonomy; in response to the revolutionary feeling in Germany, Schleswig-Holstein was up in arms.
Down they went; startling Gaeta with an attack as they passed; found Charles of Anjou's French and Sicilian fleet at Messina, fought it, beat it, and burned twenty-seven of its ships.
To this the Trifaldi made answer, "Sancho, you may freely commend yourself to God or whom you will; for Malambruno though an enchanter is a Christian, and works his enchantments with great circumspection, taking very good care not to fall out with anyone." "Well then," said Sancho, "God and the most holy Trinity of Gaeta give me help!"
So he shut himself up in Castel Nuovo and gave permission to Gaeta and to Naples to treat with the conqueror. Gaeta bought immunity from pillage with 60,000 ducats; and Naples with the surrender of the castle.
His father, who had been Governor of Gaeta, but who had come to France in consequence of political convulsions in Naples, had earned no small reputation as a financier, and devised the form of life insurance known as the Tontine. The Prince de Conti recommended the son to La Salle; and, as the event proved, he could not have done him a better service.
The precedent of his father's return from Gaeta may have strengthened the King's illusion; every day he received highly-coloured reports of a gathering reaction, and as the French fleet in the bay prevented Admiral Persano from attacking from the sea, he believed that the time which he could hold out was indefinite.
"We received information," he said, in precise, business-like tones, "that Neri escaped from Gaeta two months since, and was aided and abetted in his escape by one Andrea Luziani, owner of the coasting brig 'Laura, journeying for purposes of trade between Naples and Palermo. You are Andrea Luziani, and this is the brig 'Laura, we are right in this; is it not so?"
Princes naturally begin the world at an earlier age than most men, and Charles may be said to have begun the world in 1734, when, as we have seen, at the age of fourteen, he took part in the siege of Gaeta as a general of artillery, and bore himself, according to overwhelming testimony, as became a soldier.
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