82 MONTHLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE. 



According to Gerumla nothing was more easy than to raise the Pugliesi, or 

 Apulians up in arms, provided only they could be made to believe that a bit 

 of royal Bourbon blood had come among them to solicit their help. The gain 

 to themselves would not be merely prospective and dependent on the chances 

 of a counter revolution, but immediate and sure, as money might be obtained 

 from the royalists, to say nothing of other kinds of donations. 



" 'And what is to hinder you/ said the farmer to Corbara, one of the Cor- 

 sicans, ' from representing Don Francesco, our hereditary prince ?' 



" The proposition would have been startling to most rogues, for there was 

 no likeness in the case the hereditary prince was fat, the Corsican thin ; 

 and unluckily the prince had been in that part of the kingdom, and seen by 

 thousands of the inhabitants not many months before. In spite of these con- 

 siderations, however, Corbara resolved to try his luck as hereditary prince ; 

 and in the course of the night it was further determined that Colonna should 

 represent the grand-constable of the kingdom in attendance on the prince ; 

 that Boccheciampe, the soldier and deserter, should represent the brother of 

 the king of Spain ; and De Cesare, the footman, his royal highness the Duke 

 of Saxony. 



" Gerunda, the Neapolitan, who knew the country well, and who were royal- 

 ists and who not, who gullible and who acute, undertook to be the avant- 

 coureur, the swearing witness and the trumpeter of this glorious piece of im- 

 posture. The bold impudence which this man afterwards displayed was 

 astonishingly great ; but he was well aware that a magazine of ignorance, stu- 

 pidity, superstition, and credulity was garnered in Puglia. 



" ' Before day broke/ says General Colletta, ' he went through the town of 

 Montejasi to reveal in a mysterious manner the arrival of the royal princes, 

 and to excite men's minds with the prospect of the honours and fortune that 

 would attend those who should be the first to follow their highnesses. He 

 was believed everywhere, and a numerous crowd of common people (and, the 

 author might have added, of respectable citizens), running to the humble 

 house where the grand personages were lodged, offered themselves with loud 

 acclamations as servants and soldiers. Colonna, the pretended grand-con- 

 stable, came forth into the street, thanked them in the name of the hereditary 

 prince for their loyal zeal, but begged them to retire and be quiet for the pre- 

 sent. In the mean while Gerunda had procured a carriage, and, as 

 Corbara stepped into it, the other three Corsicans paid the reverence and 

 etiquette due to the prince Francesco. His royal highness then said to the 

 spectators in the street, ' I throw myself into the arms of my people;' after 

 which he graciously saluted them, and the carriage drove off towards the 

 city of Brindissi. 



" ' The Corsicans make most excellent adventurers : thus these men adopted 

 as circumstances might require the haughtiness, the magnanimity, the great- 

 ness of princes. They set out from inhabited places before day, and arrived 

 at them at the fall of night ; and Gerunda always went on several miles before 

 them to prepare lodgings and banquets. Thus a thousand voices certified the 

 presence of the princes, every body saying, ' I have seen them!' and adding, 

 as is usual in narrating wonders, things which were not at all true, but 

 readily believed. Success increased the hopes and boldness of the Corsicans : 

 armed men followed the carriage, and kept guard round the house of the im- 

 postors ; and, pulling down the emblems and scutcheons of the republic, re- 

 established royalty and the arms of the Bourbons. The feigned prince Fran- 

 cesco dismissed magistrates and appointed new ones ; emptied the chests of 

 the fiscal receivers, and laid heavy fines on the families of the rebels of the re- 

 publicans ; and, because much bolder, he was obeyed more than if he had been 

 a true prince, and was seconded by a people prompt to execute. The Arch- 

 bishop of Otranto, who had long known the prince Francesco, and who, the 

 year before, had been with him in the ceremonies of the church and palace, 

 now participated in the deceit, and became himself a deceiver, solemnly asert- 



