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That there were such was obvious; for the published treaty made no mention of the Kings of Sardinia and of the two Sicilies, in whom Alexander had taken so deep an interest. But the second request annoyed the Czar; and this feeling was intensified by our action at Copenhagen. It would seem, however, that this double-dealing was prompted by naval considerations.
The formidable monarchy which Charles V. and his son had unnaturally constructed of the Netherlands, Milan, and the two Sicilies, and their distant possessions in the East and West Indies, was under Philip III. and Philip IV. fast verging to decay.
Meanwhile Nelson, "distressed for the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies," was beating back to the westward against the wind which had carried him rapidly to the coast of Egypt.
Thus the dozen kingdoms of Spain, the seventeen provinces of the Netherlands, the kingdoms of the Two Sicilies, the duchy of Milan, and certain fortresses and districts of Tuscany, in Europe; the kingdom of Barbary, the coast of Guinea, and an indefinite and unmeasured expanse. of other territory, in Africa; the controlling outposts and cities all along the coast of the two Indian peninsulas, with as much of the country as it seemed good to occupy, the straits and the, great archipelagoes, so far as they had been visited'by Europeans, in Asia; Peru, Brazil, Mexico, the Antilles the whole recently discovered fourth quarter of the world in short, from the "Land of Fire" in the South to the frozen regions of the North as much territory as the Spanish and Portuguese sea-captains could circumnavigate and the pope in the plentitude of his power and his generosity could bestow on his fortunate son, in America; all this enormous proportion of the habitable globe was the private property, of Philip; who was the son of Charles, who was the son of Joanna, who was the daughter of Isabella, whose husband was Ferdinand.
North of the Alps, all Europe was convulsed, while Italy was still but a sleeper who tosses in his sleep. In the two Sicilies, the arrogance and perfidy of the government gave a few martyrs to the cause, and in Bologna there was a brief revolutionary outbreak; but for the most part the Italian states were sinking into inanition.
Yet neither the Netherlands nor the Milanese could, in physical advantages, vie with the kingdom of the Two Sicilies, a land which nature had taken pleasure in enriching and adorning, a land which would have been paradise, if tyranny and superstition had not, during many ages, lavished all their noxious influences on the bay of Campania, the plain of Enna, and the sunny banks of Galesus.
Forty-eight hours later Nelson felt called upon, as representative of the King of the Two Sicilies, to take action more peremptory and extreme than anything he had hitherto done. On the 29th of June, Commodore Francesco Caracciolo, lately head of the Republican Navy, was brought on board the "Foudroyant," having been captured in the country, in disguise.
For over two months after the flight to Palermo, the condition of affairs for the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was seemingly critical to the verge of desperation; for neither the preparations of the Coalition, nor the hollowness of the French successes, were understood, and news was slow to reach the remote city where the Court now dwelt.
When the ink was hardly dry with which the profession was made of this earnest desire to draw more closely, if it were but possible, the bonds which united us to the King of the Two Sicilies, that Her Majesty's Government should, behind his back, and without a word of notice, avow their intention deliberately, but instantly, to acknowledge the usurper upon whose head his insurgent subjects were about to place the crown they had wrested from the brow of their lawful King!
The original adjustment of our claims and the anxiety displayed to fulfill at once the stipulations made for the payment of them are highly honorable to the Government of the Two Sicilies.
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