L-MASANIELLO THE FISHERMAN,

THE Gulf of Salerno, a sister bay of

TH

Naples, sheltered from rude Boreas by the walls of the Apennines, opens its arms to the soft, warm airs that play on the Mediterranean. Nature there has lavished her chief gifts upon this charming, sunlit water, and has left the shore rude and bare. The mountains send their stony arms into the dancing waves, and leave no room for grove or field. Man there is forced, as much by Recessity as inclination, to look outward upon the bay, and not downward on the soil. He calls his home upon that rocky shore, but his daily toil is in the floating craft.

Among the nestling towns amidst those cliffs and crags is Amalfi. Boasting no classic origin, but reared in Christian times, it is of especial interest to us from its Norman connexion. Within ten years after William's conquest of England, a party of Norman knights became masters of the republic of Amalfi, and laid the foundation of that Neapolitan throne which their descendants have retained to our own day. The Spanish Bourbon, Francis II., retains as much Norman right to Naples as the House of Hanover to England. The fortunate Victor Emmanuel and the ill-fated Francis had, strange to say, the same grandfather. So curious are the parallels of history.

Amalfi had been celebrated for its carrying trade, and dared to dispute with Pisa and Genoa the commerce of the Levant. In the crusading times the activity of this little rockgirt port was inferior to few. Its merchants had factories at Jerusalem, Tunis, Alexandria, Bagdad, and Constantinople. The victories of the Infidels ruined the trade of the East, and made bankrupt the marts of Italy. A convulsion of nature swallowed up the harbour, overthrew the defences, and left Amalfi but a fishing village. It retains, however, a name at present from

its possession of the body of St. Andrew the Apostle, said to have been brought from Constantinople,and a devout object of pilgrimage to all good Catholics.

Among the fishermen of Amalfi, in 1647, was Tommaso Angelo Maya. These names were popularly amalgamated, and yet abbreviated, in the appellation of MASANIELLO. Tall in

stature, powerful in frame, beautiful in person, intelligent in mind, and energetic in purpose, he was the admired of women and honoured of men. Proud of his profession, which the chief apostle of the Church had sanctified, he carried his fish to the market of Naples, just round the isle of Capri. He had followed the example of his favourite saint, St. Peter, in taking to himself a wife. Impulsive and ardent, virtuous and loving, he endured no long bachelorship, for we find him at the period of our story, at three-and-twenty, the father of a family.

This brother Englishman of ours (for, in truth, his independent soul must have been nurtured by some Norman blood at Amalfi) was not enervated by the luxurious airs of his sunny clime, to become the mere selfish votary of commerce or pleasure. Industrious and earnest, thoughtful and prudent, his trade had prospered, and a secret store of ducats was being gathered for future days. Thus blithely would have passed his life had not his sympathies extended beyond his family circle, and his patriotism absorbed his private interests.

At this epoch of Neapolitan history, a Spanish dynasty was ruling. Viewed simply as a province of the empire, and removed from the seat of government, a viceroy was resident in Naples. Under the vigorous hand of Charles V., the country shared in the glory of victory, but paid for it in blood and treasure. Constant wars withdrew its youth from labour, and increased the burden of its taxation. The revenue rose as the exigencies of state demanded. Donations,

or

or forced benevolences, were obtained by Charles and his son Philip to an enormous extent. But when the crown of Spain fell into feebler hands, the yoke of oppression grew intolerable, and precipitated a revolution. It is somewhat curious that, in the two countries gained by the Normans, Naples and England, and which had in the interim become so different in religion and manners, the same cause-unjustifiable taxation should at the same period have excited rebellion. The circumstances which in one place called forth a peaceable citizen into the fields of battle, as Oliver Cromwell, led a humble fisherman to assume the reins of power by the Bay of Naples.

The viceroys had successively increased the burdens of the unhappy Neapolitans, especially in the Gabelles, or taxes upon articles of common consumption. This had brought the labouring classes into extreme misery. The nobles and gentry had long groaned beneath the neglect of their country, and the foreign absorption of its resources; but the decline of trade, together with the high price of provisions, drove the working community to desperation. Still one article was free from the obnoxious gabelle; and fruit, thus exempted, became almost the only food of the poor. When, then, the Duke d'Arcos laid the impost upon that also, the spirit of the nation was broken. As if to gall the people further, there lay then in the harbour a galleon richly freighted with three years' collection of taxes, ready to convey it to Spain. One night the ship was discovered to be in flames, and was burnt before adequate aid could be procured. The act was deemed that of an incendiary, and the discontented Neapolitan nobles were charged with inciting the people to this outrage. Two princes were seized on suspicion, and were imprisoned in the tower.

Masaniello became a victim of tyranny. His wife had accompanied him to Naples one day, and, to assist in the family, took a quantity of fruit to sell in the market. She shared in the general feeling of hatred to the gabelle, and had been stirred in her spirit by the indignant expressions of her libertyloving husband. She secretly resolved, a feeble young woman as she was, to offer a passive resistance to the obnoxious law. She would not pay the tax. Approaching the barriers, therefore, she

made no halt, but proceeded onward without paying toll. For this she was seized and thrown into prison. An example must be made; and who so likely to be taken as one connected so dearly with the fisherman of Amalfi? Already had he made himself known and feared-known to his own order, feared by the tyrants. He was skilled in rude speech, and prompt in his denunciation of the tax. The wife of Masaniello was in a dungeon, and her husband was sentenced to pay a fine for her of one hundred ducats. The secret hoard was dragged forth-the saving of years of toil; his home was sold, and with the proceeds of both the fine was paid, and the heroic woman delivered. Beggared, but not spiritcrushed, the fisherman of Amalfi became the tenant of a wretched hovel in Naples, and dwelt with the lazzaroni of the bay. With these wretchedly poor and homeless loiterers and fishermen of the city, he was esteemed at once a martyr and a leader. with a sense of his private wrongs, and burning with indignation at his country's sufferings, it is not surprising that the young fisherman became a conspirator and a rebel.

II. MASANIELLO A REBEL.

Stung

Our hero of Neapolitan freedom was aroused one day from his moodiness in his miserable hut by the visit of some comrades. They announced to him that he had been chosen captain of the lazzaroni of Naples, in the contest at the Gran festa. He was to lead the band for the honour of Our Lady of Carmel.

It was the custom at the festival of the Virgin, called Our Lady of Carmel, for a sort of carnival to take place. One of the games was a sham fight in the Largo del Mercato, a large square near the water side. The church and convent of the Carmelites were in the Piazza. The amusement savoured of the times. It was a contest between the city and the Turks. A fortress was erected in the square, and was defended by some hundreds of young men dressed up as orientals, and called the Alarbes. The besiegers, representing the Neapolitan people, were, of course, the victors in the assault. Loud laughter, singing, fireworks, and fun ended this bloodless struggle of the triumph of the cross over the crescent.

The

The weapons were canes and reeds, and a conflagration of the captured fortress terminated the conflict. On the present occasion, however, other thoughts entered the minds of the imaginative Neapolitans. The desolating enemies of their country, the hated Spanish dynasty, were to be typified in the Saracenic besieged. Yes; they, the lazzaroni, would assail the mimic fort in the Piazza with the idea of their tyrants being there. Who, then, shall they have for their captain-who but Masaniello? They went to that miserable hut for that personation of the sufferings of the people.

It was in July. Both parties assembled. The Alarbes were under Pione, a youth of eighteen; the Neapolitans were reviewed by Masaniello. It was early as they marched into the Mercato or market-place. The fruiterers and gardeners from the environs of the city were there with their produce. They came from beyond the grotto of Posilipo, from the Phlegrean fields of volcanic waste, from the graveyard of Pompeii. As often had occurred before, there were angry disputes in the market about the enforcement of the hateful gabelle. Some promise had been held out that the tax upon fruits should be removed, but such had not been fulfilled.

The Largo was crowded. The tradesmen were unusually courageous. They quarrelled more than ever with the officers of the government. In their excitement, the gardeners threw the fruit upon the ground, declaring they would not sell at all, but would give it away rather than pay the duty. The tumult reached the ears of the viceroy. He sent his general of police to disperse the marketers; but the bands of Pione and Masaniello were there. They thronged in around the peasants and sympathized loudly with the oppressed. The tumult became a riot. Masaniello leaped upon the steps of the Carmelite church, raised his tall, handsome form before the assemblage, and in a stern commanding voice exclaimed, My people, from this moment there is no gabelle in Naples!'

This voice came upon the Neapolitans like a word from heaven. They rent the air with their cries. They shouted, From this moment there is no gabelle in Naples! They crowded round their leader with Viva Masaniello!' In a few minutes thousands

arranged themselves at his order, and followed him to the palace of the viceroy. With no weapons still but the reeds and canes with which they came to the mimic combat, they stood, a firm mass of insurrectionists beneath the windows of the governor, and loudly demanded his presence at the balcony. Like all tyrants, the man was a coward. He sent off his family for safety to the castle. He called his German guards and court around him. He then stood trembling before the fisherman below and his lazzaroni followers. Yes, he would remove the gabelle on fruit. No, he could not promise to abolish the gabelle on flour; but he would certainly moderate its rigour.

Masaniello saw the hesitancy, knew the strength of his present position, relied upon the excited anger of the people, and suddenly called upon them to follow him. In a moment he threw himself amidst the German mercenaries at the gate, forced his way through their armoured ranks, rushed across the courtyard, and seized the palace of the viceroy. The duke, alarmed at the movement, and dismayed at the scattering of his guard, found means by secret passages to retreat to that dread stronghold of despotism, the castle of St. Elmo. There, upon the heights, seated over caverned dungeons of cruelty, he felt himself secure. The lazzaroni were masters of the palace. Poor to starvation, clothed but in rags, they disdained to act the part of banditti, and laid hands upon nothing. Their captain gave orders to collect the gorgeous furniture, the splendid adornments of this luxurious abode, the product of a nation's degradation and poverty. A vast pile was raised, and the torch of Masaniello was applied to the whole.

The people had one friend at courtwho had long sympathized with their sufferings, but felt impotent to relieve them. This was Cardinal Filomarino, the Archbishop of Naples. As a man of peace, his first thought was to save the shedding of blood. He hasted to St. Elmo. There he not alone sought to propitiate the anger of the viceroy, but he boldly and even tenderly pleaded the cause of the people. Through his entreaties the haughty Spaniard promised to negotiate with the fisherman. He solemnly engaged to abolish the obnoxious gabelles upon provisions. At the same time he sent a trusty messenger to Masaniello,