the exactions of a French civil commissary, "one of those voracious
blood-suckers, whom the French government was wont to fasten upon the
newly formed republics which it created, and upon which it bestowed the
derisive title of independent." General Macdonald succeeded Championnet;
the commissary, maintained in his functions, had full scope for
extortion, and the Republican government, unable, for want of money, to
organise an army that might have given permanence to its existence,
became daily more unpopular, and visibly tottered to its downfal.
Meanwhile, on the opposite coast of Sicily, Ferdinand, his adherents and
allies, were any thing but idle. They issued proclamations, lavished
money, spared no means to excite the people to revolt against the French
and their favourers. Every support and encouragement was given to the
disaffected, and at last Cardinal Ruffo landed in Calabria, and by
proclamations issued in his name, and in that of Ferdinand, promised the
property and estates of the patriots to those who should take up arms
for the holy cause of the king. Apulia was overrun by four Corsican
adventurers; the other provinces were infested by bands of ruffians,
mostly the outpourings of the prisons and galleys, which had been thrown
open by the furious populace when preparing to defend the city against
the French. A miller, by name Mammone, was one of the most ferocious and
dreaded leaders of these banditti. His cruelties, as related by General
Pépé, almost exceed belief. "He butchered in the most dreadful manner
all who fell into his power, and with his own hands murdered nearly four
hundred of them, chiefly Frenchmen and Neapolitans. Blood-thirsty by
nature, he seemed to revel in shedding blood, and carried his cruelty to
such a pitch, that when seated at his meals, he delighted in having
constantly before him a human head newly divided from the trunk and
streaming with blood. This monster, the perpetrator of so many horrors,
was, nevertheless, greeted by King Ferdinand and his Queen Caroline, in
the most affectionate manner by the title of 'dear general,' and of