The islands in the bay of Naples were joyfully delivered up by the
inhabitants, who were in a state of famine already, from the effect
of this baleful revolution. Troubridge distributed among them all his
flour, and Nelson pressed the Sicilian court incessantly for supplies;
telling them that L10,000 given away in provisions would, at this time,
purchase a kingdom. Money, he was told, they had not to give; and the
wisdom and integrity which might have supplied its wants were not to be
found. "There is nothing," said he, "which I propose, that is not,
so far as orders go, implicitly complied with; but the execution is
dreadful, and almost makes me mad. My desire to serve their majesties
faithfully, as is my duty, has been such that I am almost blind and worn
out; and cannot in my present state hold out much longer."

Before any government can be overthrown by the consent of the people,
the government must be intolerably oppressive, or the people thoroughly
corrupted. Bad as the misrule at Naples had been, its consequences had
been felt far less there than in Sicily; and the peasantry had that
attachment to the soil which gives birth to so many of the noblest as
well as of the happiest feelings. In all the islands the people were
perfectly frantic with joy when they saw the Neapolitan colours hoisted.
At Procida, Troubridge could not procure even a rag of the tri-coloured
flag to lay at the king's feet: it was rent into ten thousand pieces by
the inhabitants, and entirely destroyed. "The horrid treatment of the
French," he said, "had made them mad." It exasperated the ferocity of a
character which neither the laws nor the religion under which they lived
tended to mitigate. Their hatred was especially directed against
the Neapolitan revolutionists; and the fishermen, in concert among
themselves, chose each his own victim, whom he would stiletto when the
day of vengeance should arrive. The head of one was sent off one morning
to Troubridge, with his basket of grapes for breakfast; and a note from