But they had hardly left the square before a great disturbance broke out.  A man named Giorgio Pellegrino came out of his house with a gun and crossed the square, shouting, “To your arms!”

He knew that Captain Trenta Capelli commanding the Cosenza garrison was just then in Pizzo, and he was going to warn him.

The cry “To arms!” had more effect on the crowd than the cry “Long live Joachim!”

Every Calabrian possesses a gun, and each one ran to fetch his, and when Trenta Capelli and Giorgio Pellegrino came back to the square they found nearly two hundred armed men there.

They placed themselves at the head of the column, and hastened forward in pursuit of the king; they came up with him about ten minutes from the square, where the bridge is nowadays.  Seeing them, Murat stopped and waited for them.

Trenta Capelli advanced, sword in hand, towards the king.

“Sir,” said the latter, “will you exchange your captain’s epaulettes for a general’s?  Cry ‘Long live Joachim!’ and follow me with these brave fellows to Monteleone.”

“Sire,” said Trenta Capelli, “we are the faithful subjects of King Ferdinand, and we come to fight you, and not to bear you company.  Give yourself up, if you would prevent bloodshed.”

Murat looked at the captain with an expression which it would be impossible to describe; then without deigning to answer, he signed to Cagelli to move away, while his other hand went to his pistol.  Giotgio Pellegrino perceived the movement.

“Down, captain, down!” he cried.  The captain obeyed.  Immediately a bullet whistled over his head and brushed Murat’s head.

“Fire!” commanded Franceschetti.

“Down with your arms!” cried Murat.

Waving his handkerchief in his right hand, he made a step towards the peasants, but at the same moment a number of shots were fired, an officer and two or three men fell.  In a case like this, when blood has begun to flow, there is no stopping it.

Murat knew this fatal truth, and his course of action was rapidly decided on.  Before him he had five hundred armed men, and behind him a precipice thirty feet high:  he sprang from the jagged rock on which he was standing, and alighting on the sand, jumped up safe and sound.  General Franceschetti and his aide-de-camp Campana were able to accomplish the jump in the same way, and all three went rapidly down to the sea through the little wood which lay within a hundred yards of the shore, and which hid them for a few moments from their enemies.

As they came out of the wood a fresh discharge greeted them, bullets whistled round them, but no one was hit, and the three fugitives went on down to the beach.

It was only then that the king perceived that the boat which had brought them to land had gone off again.  The three ships which composed the fleet, far from remaining to guard his landing, were sailing away at full speed into the open sea.