ruined during the war, were glad of peace on any terms, and looked upon
Murat as a firebrand, come to renew their calamities. They assailed the
adventurers and drove them to the shore. But when Joachim would fain
have re-embarked, he saw his ship standing out to sea. The treacherous
commander had betrayed him for the sake of the valuables he had left on
board. And Murat, the chivalrous, the brave, remained a prisoner in the
hands of his former subjects, scoffed at and reviled by the lowest of
the people. Five days afterwards, twelve bullets in the breast
terminated his misfortunes. It was a soldier's death, but had been
better met on the battle-field. There, amidst the boom of artillery, and
the din of charging squadrons, should have terminated the career of the
most dashing cavalry officer of modern times, of one who might well have
disputed with Ney the proud title of the "_brave des braves_."

We have purposely dwelt upon the earlier portion of General Pépé's work,
to the exclusion of its latter chapters. We can take but little interest
in Neapolitan history since 1815, in the abortive revolutionary
struggles and manoeuvres of the Carbonari and other would-be
liberators. Nor do the ample details given by the general greatly
increase our respect for Italian patriotism; whilst we trace more than
one discrepancy between the conclusions he draws and the results he
exhibits. He holds his countrymen to have been long since ripe for a
constitutional government and free institutions, and yet he himself
shows us that, when a revolution was achieved, and those great objects
attained, the leading men of his party, those who had been foremost in
effecting the change, proved traitors or dupes, and that the people,
organised in militia and national guards, displayed so little
self-devotion, such small zeal in defence of their newly acquired
liberties, as to be utterly disheartened by the very first conflict with
their treacherous king's supporters, and to disperse, never again to