Читать книгу Adventures of an Aide-de-Camp (Historical Novel of Napoleonic Wars) - James Grant - Страница 5

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Soon after halting, we received intelligence of the successful issue of Sir Sydney Smith's attack on the Castle of St. Amanthea; a strong fort, which, being quite inaccessible on the land side, he carried by assault on the seaward, capturing four hundred prisoners, and a quantity of arms and military stores.

In the evening, I was despatched by Sir John to a young Neapolitan noble; who, in anticipation of our expedition had some time before secretly quitted Palermo, and had been residing among his countrymen, for the purpose of ascertaining their sentiments towards the British as allies, and the probable number that would rise in arms, on our displaying the Union-Jack in Italy.

This personage, to whom I took a letter from the general, bore the titles of Visconte di Santugo, and Grand Bailiff of Lower Calabria, and was the most powerful Feudatory in the provinces. Our leader requested that he would use all his influence to arouse the peasantry to arms, for the service of his Majesty the King of Naples, in support of whose cause our expedition had now landed on the Italian shore. We soon found, however, that the hardy Calabrese required no other incentive than their own intense hatred and deep-rooted detestation of the French. I had been ordered to return next morning with any volunteers the Visconte could collect; and was not averse from the prospect of remaining a night at his villa, as my undressed wound was becoming a little troublesome.

At that time, the two Calabrias, the Abruzzi, and all the Italian mountains and fastnesses, were swarming with hordes of armed peasantry—half patriots and half bandits. This system of disorganization and immorality was promoted by a mortal hatred—the rancorous enmity of Italian hearts—against the usurper Buonaparte, and his slavish law of conscription; which aimed at the military enrolment of all classes, without distinction or permitting substitution. The proud noble who could trace his name and blood to the warriors and senators of ancient Rome, and the humble peasant were to be alike torn from their homes, turned into the ranks as private soldiers, and sent forth, at the pleasure of this foreign tyrant, to fight and to perish among the wild sierras of Spain, or the frozen deserts of Russia. In consequence of this invasion of the rights of the Italian people, many young men of high birth, and others whose condition in life had, previous to the French aggression, been respectable, now fled to the mountains and wilderness, and became outlaws, rather than yield submission to the yoke of a Corsican conqueror. Ranged under various leaders, these spirited desperadoes, in conjunction with the banditti and the Loyal Masse, harassed the French incessantly, by a guerilla warfare of attacks, skirmishes, and assassinations; and with such effect, that Buonaparte computed his loss by the stiletto and rifle at not less than twenty thousand soldiers, during his attempts to subdue the brave outlaws of the Calabrian mountains.

In every town there was a French garrison, and every garrison had its prison-house, which was filled with those whom the French chose to designate rebels: these they put to death by scores; waging against the unhappy paesani a war of extermination, and maintaining it with a cruelty unworthy of the heroes of Arcole and Marengo, and the representatives of the boasted "first nation in Europe." By sentence of a drum-head court-martial, and more often without the form of a trial, the poor peasants were shot to death in vast numbers; and their bodies, after being suspended on gibbets for a day or two, were cast into an immense pit dug close by, in order that the gallows might be clear for the next detachment of victims brought in by the troops employed in scouring and riding down the country. These outrages considered, it was no matter of wonder to us that the country rose en masse on our landing, and that the Neapolitan cry of "Ferdinando nostro, e la Santa Fede!" rang from the shores of the Mediterranean to the waves of the Adriatic.

As I rode from the camp on my solitary mission towards St. Eufemio, I thought of the lawless state of the country, and could not but feel a little anxious about my personal safety: the gay trappings of a staff uniform were likely to excite the cupidity of some villanous bandit, or unscrupulous patriot. What scattered parties of the French might be lurking in the great forest I knew not; but an encounter with them seemed preferable to one with the Calabrian brigands: of whose atrocious ferocity I had heard so many horrible stories circulated by the gossiping Sicilians, in the gardens and cafés, the salons and promenades, of Palermo. My first adventure gave me a vivid, but rather unpleasant, illustration of the fierce manners and unsettled state of the country we had come to free from invaders.

While crossing a rustic bridge, the parapets on each side of which were garnished with an iron cage, containing a human head in a ghastly state of decay, my ears were shocked, as my eyes had been, by the cries and exclamations of a man in great agony and terror. Quickening the speed of Cartouche from a trot to a gallop, and unbuttoning my holster flaps in readiness for drawing my pistols, I rode towards the place whence these outcries proceeded. In a rocky hollow by the wayside, I beheld a Sicilian struggling desperately with about twenty armed ruffians, whom I had no hesitation in believing to be banditti. They were all handsome and athletic men, in whose appearance there was something at once striking, picturesque, and sufficiently alarming. All wore high, conical, Calabrian hats, encircled by a broad, red riband, that streamed over the right shoulder; jackets and breeches of bright coloured stuffs, ornamented with a profusion of tags, tassels, and knots, and girt round the waist with a scarlet sash of Palmi silk; and leathern gaiters, laced saltire-wise up the legs with red straps: a musket, dagger, and powder-horn completed their equipments. Coal black hair streamed in extravagant profusion over their shoulders; long locks being esteemed in the Calabrias a sign of loyalty to the king and enmity to the French: thus the extent of a man's patriotism was determined by the length of his hair. But the unfortunate Sicilian in their hands was destitute alike of flowing curls and twisted pig-tail; hence his captors, supposing him unquestionably to be a traitor (or at least not a true subject to King Ferdinand) in having conformed to the fashion of the French, were determined to punish him in the mode which the wild spirits of these lawless provinces adopted towards those who fell into their hands with hair shorn short: the head having become, since the commencement of the war, "the political index by which they judged whether men were Jacobins, Bourbonists," or Buonapartists.

The brigands greeted my approach with a shout of welcome, and while I was deliberating how best to interfere and save from their fury the unhappy man, he called upon me piteously for aid; saying that he "was a poor tanner of Palermo—a follower of our camp—and one who knew nothing of the fashions of Calabria!" But I was too late to yield him the least assistance, for the horrible punishment was inflicted the moment I drew bridle: and, in truth, I did not feel very chivalric in his cause, on learning that he was one of the villanous tanners of Palermo—that community of assassins so terrible to all Sicily.

The right hand of the poor wretch was chopped off with a bill-hook, and thrust bleeding into his mouth, which they compelled him to open by pressing the hilt of a poniard behind his right ear. A sheep's tail was then fastened to the back of his head, to supply the deficiency of hair; and bidding him wear it in remembrance of Francatripa, the whole party, after kicking him soundly, bade me 'good-evening,' and vanished among the rocks. The mutilated tanner lay on the ground, writhing in agony of body and bitterness of spirit, calling on San Marco the glorious, Santa Rosalia of Sicily, San Zeno, the blessed Madonna of Philerma, and innumerable other saints, to ease him of his pain; but as none of these spiritual potentates seemed disposed to assist him, he then applied to mortal me.

Dismounting, I raised him from the ground, and tearing my handkerchief into bandages, bound up the stump of his arm to staunch the blood; he bemoaning his misfortune in piteous terms. He had a wife and children, he said, who must perish now, unless the Conciarotti (tanners) of Palermo—to whose unruly corporation he belonged—would support them.

"Oh! Excellenza," he added, "believe me, I am no traitor: and surely the want of my hair will not make me one. I fell in with a French patrol, who compelled me to cut off my long hair, in token of submission to King Peppo." (Peppo, a contraction of Giuseppe, or Joseph, was the name by which Joseph Buonaparte was commonly known.) "Maledictions drive them from purgatory to the deepest dens of hell! They have destroyed me—curses upon them! May they all hang as high as Tourloni the cardinal, and may their bones bleach white in the rain and the sunshine! Had I lost the left hand, instead of the right, I could still have revenged myself. Maledetto! Oh! blood for blood! Am I not one of the Conciarotti, at whose name the king quakes, at Naples, and his viceroy, at Palermo? But, oh! Madonna mia, never can revenge be mine; for the hand that is gone can grasp the acciaro no more!" And thus cursing and lamenting, he rolled on the grass till he foamed at the mouth. I was obliged to leave him, and pursue my journey.

By the road-side, I passed some of the bodies of those who had fallen in the skirmish of the morning. Stripped by the peasantry, they had lain all day sweltering under a burning sun; and now the vultures were screaming and flapping their wings, as they settled in flocks wherever one of these poor fellows lay unburied, with his blackened and gory wounds exposed to the gaze of every passer-by.

At the gate of St. Eufemio, I told several persons who were lounging and smoking under the shadow of the walls, of the condition in which I had left the tanner among the rocks; but instead of going immediately to his assistance, they only cursed him as a traitorous Sicilian.

"He is some false follower of Joseph the Corsican—cospetto! Let him die!—yes, die like a dog!" was the answer I received on all sides.

On entering the town, I was greeted by the shouts of the people, who had donned the red cockade of the Neapolitan king. Gentlemen bowed, and ladies smiled and waved their handkerchiefs from verandahs and sun-shaded windows; women held their children aloft at arms' length, and the ragged artisan flourished his broad straw hat over the half door of his shop; all joining in the general burst of welcome, and cries of long life to King Giorgio of Great Britain.

While riding through the principal street, with all the hurry and importance of an aide-de-camp bearing the fate of empires and of armies in his sabretache, I could behold on every hand the traces of that dreadful earthquake which, two hundred years before, had overwhelmed the ancient and once-opulent city, converting it in a moment into a vast fetid marsh. Here and there stood a palace, rearing its time-worn facade amid the miserable houses or filthy hovels of which the modern St. Eufemio is principally composed; while fragments of columns, crumbling capitals, and shattered entablatures still lay strewn on every side.

The mansion of the podesta, or mayor, and of Ser Villani, the principal lawyer, as well as others of a better description, bore marks of French violence and rapine. Torn from its foundations, lay a column with the arms of Luigi d'Alfieri, the grand bailiff, carved upon it; here lay a statue, there a fountain broken to pieces; the madonnas at the street corners were all demolished, the niches empty, the lamps gone; and many gaps appeared on each side of the way, where houses had been pulled down for firewood, or wantonly burned by the brigade of the Marchese di Monteleone—a Buonapartist commander, whom common report declared to be an Englishman. All the stately trees that once bordered the Marina, or promenade, along the sea-shore, had been cut away and destroyed; probably, less from necessity than for the purpose of annoying the people: for the French, if allowed to be the most gallant nation, are also considered the most reckless soldiers in Europe.