This method of bestowing the blessings of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity was received by the Neapolitans with a frenzy from which there sprang a demoniac retaliation.  Societies were formed to carry out the most atrocious crimes against the Neapolitan revolutionists, whom the Royalists hated more than they did the French.  The fishermen and other miscreants came to a solemn conclusion that it was clearly their duty as a Christian people to combine, and each choose one whom they should privately guillotine when the opportunity offered.  With the idea of paying a high compliment to Troubridge, who had so splendidly protected the Royalists, fought the French, and subdued the revolutionists, they made him the recipient of a decapitated head which had proudly sat on the shoulders of a revolutionist.  This trophy was actually sent to him with his basket of breakfast grapes.  In making the present the gallant fisherman conveyed his compliments to the Admiral, and reminded him that it was a token of his high appreciation of the Admiral’s brilliant services to the Royalist cause.

The Court was infested with traitors who would first carry out their vengeance against their rebellious compatriots and then cunningly lay the blame on those under whose protection they were.  One of their judges informed Troubridge that he must have a Bishop to excommunicate some of the traitor priests before he could have them executed, and the fine sailor, who was sick of the crafty devils and the task he had been allocated to carry out, replied, “For the love of God hang the damned rascals first, and then let the Bishop deal with them if he did not think hanging was a sufficient degradation.”  Nothing in the annals of history can surpass the effrontery of these intriguers, which throws a lurid light on the class of administrators who associated with the British nation and spilt the blood of the flower of our land in bolstering up a government that was a disgrace and put all human perfidy in the shade.

These allies of ours, who were joyously butchering and robbing each other, demanded a British warship to take the priests to Palermo, so that they might be degraded in a proper, Christian fashion and then brought to Naples for execution.  Troubridge was audaciously requested to appoint a hangman (it may be he was asked to combine this with his other naval duties), and knowing the fine sense of noble dignity in the average sailor, we can easily imagine the flow of adjectives that accompanied the refusal, and how he would relate the outrage to which he had been subjected in quarterdeck language, that need not be here repeated, to his superior officer, Admiral Nelson, who must have felt the degradation of being selected to carry out as dirty a piece of work as ever devolved upon a public servant.  To fight for his King and country was the joy of his soul, but to be selected as wet-nurse to the kingdom of Naples and the dignitaries that were at the head of it would have been an unbearable insult to his sense of proportion had it not been for the fulsome flattery, to which he was so susceptible, which was adroitly administered by the ladies of the Court, headed by the Queen and supplemented by the wife of Sir William Hamilton.