The Neapolitan army retreated, as has been already stated, beyond the Garigliano.  Capua, isolated and surrounded, could render no material service to the royal cause; it capitulated on the 2nd of November, though not until the town had been bombarded for forty-eight hours.  The siege was witnessed by Victor Emmanuel, who said to General Delia Rocca:  ’It breaks my heart to think that we are sending death and destruction into an Italian town.’  Two days after the surrender of Capua, Cialdini threw a bridge over the Garigliano near its mouth, an operation covered by the guns of Admiral Persano’s squadron.  His first attempt on the 29th of October had met with a decided repulse, another proof that this last remnant of the Neapolitan army was not an enemy to be despised.  The second attempt, however, was successful; part of the Neapolitans fell back upon Gaeta, and the other part fled over the Papal frontier.

Gaeta, the refuge of the Pope and the fugitive Princes in 1848, now became the ultimate rock of defence of the Bourbon dynasty.  The position of the fortress is extremely strong and not unlike Gibraltar in its main features.  A headland running out into the sea and rising to a height of three or four hundred feet, it is divided by a strip of sand from the shore-line.  The principal defences were then composed of a triple semi-circle of ditches and ramparts one higher than the other.  Had the country been flat the difficulties of the siege would have been much increased; its hilly character allowed Cialdini to fix his batteries on heights which commanded the top of the Gaeta hill.  But to profit by this, the Piedmontese were obliged to make fourteen miles of roads by which to bring up their artillery.  For a month, 10,000 out of the 20,000 besiegers were at work with the spade.  The defending force amounted to 11,000 men, and was commanded by General Ritucci.  From the first, it was certain that the obstinate stand made at Gaeta could only result in what Lord John Russell called a useless effusion of blood; nevertheless it seems to have been prompted by a real belief that Francis would still recover his kingdom.  The precedent of his father’s return from Gaeta may have strengthened the King’s illusion; every day he received highly-coloured reports of a gathering reaction, and as the French fleet in the bay prevented Admiral Persano from attacking from the sea, he believed that the time which he could hold out was indefinite.  This policy of the French Government need not have greatly cheered him, as its motive was less to help Francis than to prepare the way, by hampering the Piedmontese, for a little fishing in troubled waters.  Prince Murat, descendant of the Beau Sabreur, was busy writing proclamations to remind the world that if Francis were impossible and Victor Emmanuel ‘wanted finish,’ there was an eligible young man ready to sacrifice the charms of the Boulevards for the cares of kingship.