108

LIFE OF COLONEL MACERONI.

or indemnity to French citizens, -who had been imprisonedor pillaged by the Neapolitan despots, was amply pro-vided for in the treaty of peace, not forgetting the pledgeto discover and punish the robbers of the ambassadorMackau ’s papers, and their restitution. But the friends of !humanity, and more especially the mourning relatives andfriends of the thousands of innocent Neapolitans, pining in |the most horrid caves and dungeons, victims to suspicious, ;coward tyranny, were utterly astounded upon finding that 'their liberation had been entirely overlooked by the allpowerful Republican dictators of the terms of peace!!! Athrill of horror, shame, and indignation, creeps along myveins at this moment, when I am obliged to confess, thatthe price of this concession to the blood-loving propensitiesof despotism, was purchased of the French negociators bygifts and bribes, amounting to more than fifty thousandpounds ! Thus had the wretched Neapolitan people to paythe infamous price of their own misery and death! j

1 will here again take upon myself to interrupt the thread jof my narration, to give my readers, an anecdote concerning ,a man, with whom I was myself subsequently acquainted, iThe Prince of Paterno was invited from Sicily by KingFerdinand to aid him by his counsels in his tyrannical pro- .ceedings. He embarked on board a Turkish vessel as asafeguard from the Barbary pirates. But a Greek pilotacquainted with the riches of the Prince and of those hecarried with him, caused him to be intercepted when nearlyarrived in port by a Tunis pirate, and carried with bisnumerous suite into slavery. The booty amounted to two jhundred thousand ducats, and maugre all the applications* jof the Neapolitan King to the Ottoman Porte , his then ally, ;the Prince could only obtain his liberty by paying a further |sum of one million of Spanish dollars. This was good ]prospective retribution, as an Irish man might say. .]