120 'Italy. 



oaths of their kings, were sacrificed to their despotic vengeance ; 

 many suffered an ignominious death, and numbers avoided the 

 scaffold by flying from their country after having lost all their 

 possessions. 



These unsuccessful patriotic movements increased the oppression 

 of Italy. Austria, which before had great influence over its desti- 

 nies, now almost occupied the whole peninsula with its devastating 

 armies. As the short-lived constitutional government of Naples had 

 been obtained chiefly in consequence of the efforts of the Carbonari, 

 that sect was of course cruelly persecuted throughout Italy, and all 

 those who were supposed to belong or to have belonged to it, became 

 the object of the thunders of the Vatican, were excommunicated by 

 a Pontifical Bull, and were also declared outlaws by the civil and 

 military authorities. Carbonarism is a new political institution, and 

 was originally founded in Calabria in 1808 at the instigation of 

 Caroline of Austria, then reigning in Sicily by the grace of God and 

 England. The avowed scope of the Carbonari of that epoch, who, 

 with few exceptions, were brigands, sbirri, monks, and Sicilian assas- 

 sins, was to expel the French from Naples, and to restore the exiled 

 Bourbons to their former throne. Murat, however, having been, 

 informed in time of their plan, frustrated all their projects by keep- 

 ing them well watched by his police, and continually surrounded by 

 an imposing military force; and when in 1812, during the Russian 

 campaign, they were on the eve of attempting a counter-revolution 

 in favour of the expelled dynasty, the greatest part of their chiefs 

 and agents were unexpectedly arrested, quickly tried, and con- 

 demned, some to death, and others to imprisonment for life ; 'but as 

 the execution of this sentence had not yet taken place when Murat, 

 after the disastrous retreat of the Imperial army from Russia, returned 

 suddenly to Naples, those conspirators were wisely declared by him 

 to be insane, and were ordered to be kept in mad-houses until their 

 return to reason and judgment, and after a few months' incarceration 

 almost the whole of them were restored to liberty by Murat. In 

 consequence of this political stratagem of that valorous but unfortu- 

 nate king, the Carbonari changed their principles, expelled all 'the 

 brigands, sbirri, monks, and assassins, and having admitted into their 

 brotherhood many freemasons of all classes, re-organised their insti- 

 tution for the purpose of promoting national independence, and 

 civil and religious liberty. When Murat, confiding in his personal 

 courage and intrepidity, and foolishly relying on the promises of his 

 generals, marched an army against Austria in 1815, on the expecta- 

 tion that the Italians would espouse his party in favour of Napoleon, 

 who had mysteriously returned to France, was soon conquered and 

 expelled from Naples, Ferdinand I. and his satellites were restored 

 to the throne, and recommenced their reign of despotism and oppres- 

 sion with so great a stubbornness that the nation soon became dis- 

 contented, and Carbonarism was resorted to by all classes as the 

 only means of putting an end to their misrule and tyranny, and in 

 1820 the object of the patriotic efforts of the Neapolitans was at 

 length realized, Since 1821, notwithstanding the terror, vigilance, 

 and persecution of the ecclesiastical and temporal rulers of Italy, 



