Note 139 — BOOK VIII[61]

A military revolution had broken out in Naples on the 2nd of July 1820. The army had been won over by the Carbonari, a vast secret society which covered a large part of Italy with its network. General Pepe had obliged Ferdinand I. King of the Two Sicilies to proclaim a constitution modelled on that which the Revolutionaries had lately established in Spain. The Austrians entered Naples on the 23rd of March 1821. The principal actors in the movement took refuge on foreign ships. The Parliament broke up, and the supreme council of the Carbonari pronounced its own dissolution. Ferdinand I., who had been forced to leave his capital on the 10th of December 1820, entered it again on the 15th of May 1821.—B.