the foreign enemy, except three small isolated garrisons, expelled beyond the borders of the kingdom six weeks before, and a great British fleet in possession of the anchorage.  Punishment in such case, however just, is not deterrent, but avenging.  True, Nelson was expecting the appearance of Bruix’s fleet; but he himself characterized as “infamous” the capitulation granted by Ruffo and Foote, to which they were largely moved by the same expectation, when wielding a much smaller force than he did.  The possible approach of the French fleet did not necessitate the hasty execution of a prisoner.

That Nelson yielded his convictions of right and wrong, and consciously abused his power, at the solicitation of Lady Hamilton, as has been so freely alleged, is not probably true,—­there is no proof of it; on the contrary, as though to guard against such suspicion, he was careful to see none but his own officers during Caracciolo’s confinement.  But it is true that he was saturated with the prevalent Court feeling against the insurgents and the French, which found frequent expression in his letters.  After living in the Hamiltons’ house for four months, during which, to use his own expression, “I have never but three times put my foot to the ground, since December, 1798,” in daily close contact with the woman who had won his passionate love, who was the ardent personal friend of the Queen, sharing her antipathies, and expressing her hatred of enemies in terms which showed the coarseness of her fibre,[86] Nelson was steeped in the atmosphere of the Court of Naples, and separated from that of the British fleet, none of whose strongest captains were long with him during that period.  The attitude more natural to men of his blood is shown in a letter signed by the officers of the “Leviathan,” Duckworth’s flagship.  Coming from Minorca, they were out of touch with Neapolitan fury, and they addressed Lady Hamilton, interceding for a family engaged in the rebellion; a fact which shows the prevailing impression—­whether well founded or not—­of the influence in her power to exert.  “We all feel ourselves deeply impressed with the horrid crime of disaffection to one’s lawful sovereign, ... but when we consider the frailty of human nature,” &c.  “Advise those Neapolitans not to be too sanguinary,” wrote Keith to Nelson, apparently immediately after receiving the news of Caracciolo’s hanging.

The abrupt execution of Caracciolo was an explosion of fierce animosity long cherished, pardonable perhaps in a Neapolitan royalist, but not in a foreign officer only indirectly interested in the issues at stake; and hence it is that the fate of that one sufferer has aroused more attention and more sympathy than that of the numerous other victims, put to death by the King’s command after ordinary processes of law.  It stands conspicuous as the act of an English officer imbued with the spirit of a Neapolitan Bourbon official.  “Could it ever happen,” he wrote to Acton, some months after this, “that