taste for the French Revolution or for General Bonaparte. It is easy to
understand how extremely the high-spirited and haughty Queen of the Two
Sicilies must have been distressed and revolted by the sufferings and
death of her sister, Marie Antoinette. There was something very solemn
in the way in which she told her children what took place in Paris
October 16, 1793. She had them all summoned. They found her dressed in
deep black, with tears in her eyes; and she led them without a word to
the chapel in the royal palace of Naples, and there, before the altar,
she told them that the people of regicides had just put their aunt to
death upon the scaffold. Then she bade them all to pray together for
the peace of the victim's soul, and probably there mingled with Marie
Caroline's prayer thoughts of wrath and vengeance. From that time
she waged against the principles and the spread of the Revolution a
relentless, implacable war, of varying result, which filled her more and
more with detestation of the new France. On the occasion of Bonaparte's
expedition to Egypt, she deemed the time ripe for a general uprising in
Italy against the French. But Championnet had taken possession of Naples
when the Parthenopean Republic had been proclaimed, and the Queen had
been obliged, with her family, to take refuge at Palermo.

In the next year, 1799, the conditions of things changed; and while
Milan was recovered by Austria, and the Russian army, led by Suwarow,
completed the expulsion of the French from Northern and Southern Italy,
the Parthenopean Republic expired, and the Bourbon flag waved once more
over the walls of Naples.

Early in 1800 the French cause seemed forever lost in Italy; General
Massena alone held out at Genoa. Queen Marie Caroline had triumphed; and
she conceived the plan of going to Austria to visit her daughter, the
Empress, and to make the acquaintance of her grandchildren, whom she