Kingdom of the Two Sicilies

“ But then it would be necessary that the Two Sicilies as an independent and separate State should be well governed, and should have an enlightened Sovereign. This unfortunately has become hopeless and impossible under the Bourbon Dynasty, and no Englishman could wish to see a Murat or a Prince Napoleon on the Throne of Naples.4 The course of events since last summer seems to have finally decided the fate of Sicily and Naples, and there can be no doubt that for the interest of the people of Italy, and with a view to the general balance of Power in Europe, a united Italy is the best arrangement. ”

“ Action’s aggressive action and his constantly hostile policy might in former times have afforded France a legitimate cause of war, which she would never have undertaken with the intention of uniting the Two Sicilies to the French Empire. ”

“ The French were attacked furiously on all sides. Those who attempted to defend themselves were soon overpowered; others, who endeavoured to pass for Italians, were known by their pronunciation of two words, which they were made to repeat—ceci and ciceri, and were, on their mispronunciation, immediately put to death. In a few hours more than four thousand weltered in their blood. Every town in Sicily followed the example of Palermo. Thus the Sicilian Vespers overthrew the tyranny of Charles of Anjou and of the Guelfs; separated the kingdom of Sicily from that of Naples ”

“ Two courses were open to him when, after losing Sicily, he saw the loss of his other kingdom and of his throne staring him in the face. One was to go forth like a man at the head of his troops to meet the storm. There had been such a thing as loyalty in the Kingdom of Naples; not loyalty of the highest sort, but still the sentiment had existed. Who knows what might not have been the effect of the presence of their young Sovereign on the broken moral of the Neapolitan soldiers? ”

“ Last of all the great molders of Sicily came the Normans, knights who with their keen blades carved a slice out of the Byzantine Empire on the Italian mainland and, conquering the Sicilian Muslims, built up a kingdom for themselves. Sicily’s period of greatest glory dawned with their conquest. They developed a splendid fabric of feudalism; and all the arts as well as the more usual graces of civilization stamped the new kingdom for their own. The very Italian language, as Dante himself acknowledges, had its feeble beginnings in the court of the Emperor Frederick II at Palermo. ”

“ In Sicily the revolutionists were purely insular in their aspirations and bitterly hostile to the Neapolitans, and the attempts at conciliation, although favoured by Lord Minto, failed, for Naples wanted one constitution and one parliament, whereas Sicily wanted two, with only the king in common. The Sicilian assembly met in March 1848, and SettimoSicily. in his inaugural speech declared that the Bourbon dynasty had ceased to reign, that the throne was vacant and that Sicily united her destinies to those of Italy. ”

“ No wonder the Sicilians should be prepared to admire and regard with reverence a constitution which unites in itself the advantages of all other forms of government, the freedom of democracy, the vigour of monarchy, and the stability with the peacefulness of aristocracy. ”

“ From that time we will neither regard nor call ourselves king of Sicily, but until our son becomes of age we will have the kingdom ruled by some suitable person who shall in all respects be subject to the Roman church, because the government of that kingdom is known to belong to her. We promise to do this because, if we should become emperor and at the same time be king of Sicily, it might be inferred that the kingdom of Sicily belonged to the empire. And such an inference would do injury to the Roman church as well as to our heirs. ”

“ Charles, crowned by the pope in 1266, marched to take possession of his lord's grant. Manfred was defeated and slain at Benevento. The whole Sicilian kingdom became the spoil of a stranger who was no deliverer to any class of its people. The island sank yet lower. Naples, not Palermo, was the head of the new power; Sicily was again a province. But a province Sicily had no mind to be. In the continental lands Charles founded a dynasty; the island he lost after sixteen years. ”

“ Sicily formed a separate government. Corsica and Sardinia belonged to the exarchate of Africa. The reorganization of the province of Italy into the ex arch ate was forced on the emperors by the Lombard invasion, which began in 568, and their permanent settlement. The Lombards thrust a wedge into Italy. Its base was in Venetia, and its point was advanced to the Tiber. From the early days of the conquest they spread to the south, and established the duchies of Spoletum and Beneventum in the modern kingdom of Naples. ”

“ While this man was praetor the Sicilians enjoyed neither their own laws nor the decrees of our senate, nor the common rights of every nation. Every one in Sicily has only so much left as either escaped the notice or was disregarded by the satiety of that most avaricious and licentious man. ”

“ The name of Sicily is illustrious in history. If the reputation of a people had for sole foundation and measure the number of inhabitants, the extent of its territory, the duration of its influence, the Sicilians, impoverished by continual revolutions, decimated by sucessive tyrannies, more isolated from the general progress by their internal organisation, than from the mainland by their geographical position, would hold, perhaps, in the annals of the world, no more room than their island occupies on the map of Europe. ”

“ Life, the creative and the powerful, flows now in other directions. Palermo is bright as yet with the past, whilst it glances onward, waiting for a new, an approaching life.
The want of unity and independent power has made the people of Sicily, for centuries, a ball to be played with by foreign powers, has made them dependent on foreign rulers whom they obey without loving, and it has made them what they are at the present time. ”

“ Few countries have experienced more revolutions than Sicily; the richness of the soil and the temperature of the climate, added to its commanding situation, having always made it an object of attraction. After the dark ages it was successively possessed by the Greeks, and the Carthaginians, the Romans, the Goths, and the Saracens.
In later times, it has generally shared the fate of Naples; but by the Treaty of Utrecht, it was given to the Duke of Savoy, who, however, was soon obliged, by the Quadruple Alliance, to return it to the Emperor, in exchange for Sardinia. ”

“ He is still there, and the Sicilians silently sigh over their inability against the superior force of Naples. The people are of a nobler type than the Neapolitans and regard themselves as of a nobler race, they are also more industrious and earnest, and still greater lovers of freedom. But the want of independence breeds in the cities frivolity and immorality, especially in Palermo, and that amongst all classes. Sicily is still rich and beautiful, as in ancient times, and is still worthy to be called the gem of the Mediterranean. ”

“ The sister kingdom of Sicily had long shared the lot of Naples, in all the distresses which the tyrannical and impolitic government of Spain could inflict upon the people. The Sicilians were only more fortunate than their continental neighbours, as the inferior wealth and resources of their island rendered them a less inviting prey to the insatiable necessities of Spain, to the drain of her wars, and the rapacity of her ministers. ”

“ England, interested as ever in Sicilian affairs, impressed upon the Sicilian leaders the urgency of an early settlement. The elections were held in haste. On July 12, at two in the morning, the vote was announced in Parliament. The Duke of Genoa, Albert Amadeus of Savoy, Charles Albert's second son, was elected King. The British and French warships in Sicilian waters fired a royal salute. For Charles Albert this only meant fresh embarrassment. In case of acceptance, he was sure to be King of Sardinia wary involved in war with Naples in the south, as well as with Austria in the north. ”

“ That domain is regularly let out to farmers by the censors. There are two federate cities, whose tenths are not put up to auction; the city of the Mamertines and Taurominium. Besides these, there are five cities without any treaty, free and enfranchised; Centuripa, Halesa, Segesta, Halicya, and Panormus. All the land of the other states of Sicily is subject to the payment of tenths; and was so, before the sovereignty of the Roman people, by the will and laws of the Sicilians themselves. ”

“ Simultaneously with Rome the south of Italy had entered into the movement so characteristic of the year 1848. The scenes of 1820 and 1821 were repeated." The Sicilians again demanded independence; expelled the Neapolitan garrison from Palermo; refused to accept a constitution proffered by King Ferdinand II., which created a united parliament for Naples and Sicily; voted in a Sicilian parliament the perpetual exclusion of the Bourbon dynasty from the throne, and offered the crown of Sicily to a son of the king of Sardinia, who declined the gift. ”

“ It is not expedient that he should become emperor, because thereby the kingdom of Sicily would be united with the empire to the danger of the church; for, to say nothing of other dangers, he would, like his father before him, be unwilling to prejudice the dignity of the empire by taking the oaths of fidelity and homage to the pope for the kingdom of Sicily. ”

“ In the later mapping out of the empire into purely military divisions, the theme (thema) of Sicily took in both the island and the nearest peninsula of the mainland, the oldest Italy. The island itself was divided for financial purposes, almost as in the older times, into the two divisions of Syracuse and Lilybaeum. The revolutions of Italy hardly touched a land which looked steadily to the eastern Rome as its head. The Lombard and Frankish masters of the peninsula never fixed themselves in the island. ”

“ From 201 down to the outbreak of the Slave War in 136 there was unbroken peace in Sicily, and its part in the history is limited to its important functions in supplying Rome with corn and in provisioning and clothing the Roman legions. [157] It became every year a more integral part of Italy; and a large proportion even of the land itself passed gradually into the hands of enterprising Roman speculators. The governors of the two Spains had very different work to do from that which fell to the lot of the Sicilian praetors. ”

“ Thus at last a single man put the period to the island’s troubled history, ended definitely her ambitions for individual greatness and made her an important part of a greater and more powerful whole.
So it is clear that there has never been a Sicilian nation, nor has there ever been even a Sicilian language; but every great race that dwells about the Mediterranean at some time has had a part in Sicily’s story, and each race in its turn has left an indelible imprint upon language and customs, upon architecture and people. Here one sees a pure Greek face of classic beauty ”

“ Sixteen years later, in 1282, the French paid dearly for their oppression in the terrible massacre of the Sicilian Vespers, when they were exterminated throughout the island.
Then the Sicilians invited Don Pedro de Aragón, the son-in-law of Manfred, their last Norman king, to rule them; and the Aragonese dynasty, with varying fortunes, lasted until 1409, when it became extinct, and Sicily was attached to Spain and governed by Spanish viceroys. Never did a government care less for its subjects ”

“ In questions of legislation, as well as in those relating to political economy, the kingdom of Sicily was far in advance of its contemporaries. The constitution of England, and especially the organization of the House of Commons, owe much to the Sicilian Parliament. While the duties of its members were ordinarily confined to the registering of royal edicts and the imposition of taxes, it presents the first example of a truly elective, representative assembly that is mentioned in history. ”

“ The Sicilian Court. The court of Ferdinand IV., one of the most worthless and corrupt of the old feudal dynasties, was maintained in Sicily by the army, the navy, and the purse of England. His Sicilian majesty received from the British Government an annual subsidy of four hundred thousand pounds sterling ($2,000,000) , to support the dignity of his throne, and to pay for the troops which Sicily furnished England for her interminable warfare against the French Empire. ”

“ To the south lay the independent Lombard duchies, and the possessions which still remained to the Eastern Empire. ♦The Norman kingdom of Sicily not an Imperial fief.♦ These changed in time into the Norman duchy of Apulia and kingdom of Sicily; but that kingdom, held as it was as a fief of the see of Rome, was never incorporated with the Italian kingdom of the Emperors, nor did its kings ever become the men of the Emperor. Particular Emperors in the thirteenth century, in the sixteenth, and in the eighteenth, were also kings of one or both the Sicilian kingdoms ”

“ You imagine, I suppose, that the Sicilians enjoy the same rights as you, and that as you hold your council at Naupactus under your own laws, presided over by magistrates of your own choice, and with full power of forming alliances or declaring war as you please, so it is with the councils which meet in the cities of Sicily, in Syracuse or Messana or Lilybaeum. ”