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NELSON, Horatio, Viscount (1758-1805). Autograph letter signed (‘Nelson’) to Sir John Acton Foudroyant , Bay of Naples, 28 June 1799.
NELSON, Horatio, Viscount (1758-1805). Autograph letter signed (‘Nelson’) to Sir John Acton Foudroyant , Bay of Naples, 28 June 1799. One page, 330 x 205mm, integral address leaf (to Acton in Palermo) with franking signature by Nelson, remnant of seal bearing the text ‘Nelson 1st August 1798’ (the date of the battle of the Nile), (seal tear). ‘I approve of no one thing which has been and is going on here’. On the day of one of his most controversial actions, in which he cancelled an amnesty accorded to the Jacobin rebels in Naples, Nelson writes to Acton, the prime minister of Naples, to express his dismay at the situation and urge the swift return from Palermo of the King and Queen. Provenance : Edwin Wolf 2nd collection; Christie’s, 21 June 1989, lot 228. Nelson refers to a simultaneous letter from Sir William Hamilton which will provide full details, but states unequivocally his opposition to the way in which Cardinal Ruffo, the leader of the counter-revolutionary forces, has conducted matters at the conclusion of the siege of Naples: ‘I approve of no one thing which has been and is going on here, in short If the Cardinal was an angel, the Voice of the people is ag[ains]t his conduct. I see nothing but little cabals and complaints which in my humble Opinion nothing can remove, but the presence of the King, Queen and the Neapolitan Ministers, that the regular government may again go on. [B]ad to say no worse as is the present system going on here, had I followed my inclination the Capital would been in a worse state for the Cardinal would have done worse than nothing … I would come over [to Palermo] in the Foudroyant but if I was to quit this place the consequences might be fatal’. Threatened by French forces, the Neopolitan royal family and government had abandoned Naples, under Nelson’s escort, in December 1798, leaving the French to establish the ‘Parthenopean Republic’ in the city under local leaders drawn from the aristocracy and educated classes. By April 1799, the Jacobin forces were effectively besieged in Naples by a popular army under Cardinal Fabrizio Ruffo, who finally in late June concluded an armistice which guaranteed the rebels safe passage to France, arrangements with which Nelson’s deputy, Captain Foote, concurred. Nelson reached the city on 25 June, and on 28 June – the day of the present letter – cancelled the armistice, with the result that the rebels, who by this stage had boarded ships which they expected to take them to safety, were instead handed over to the Neapolitan government, and many of them executed. The incident was to be a significant stain on Nelson’s reputation.