“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.

The Maltese, Barbara, was going off not only with Murat’s fortune, but with his hopes likewise, his salvation, his very life.  They could not believe in such treachery, and the king took it for some manoeuvre of seamanship, and seeing a fishing-boat drawn up on the beach on some nets, he called to his two companions, “Launch that boat!”

They all began to push it down to the sea with the energy of despair, the strength of agony.

No one had dared to leap from the rock in pursuit of them; their enemies, forced to make a detour, left them a few moments of liberty.

But soon shouts were heard:  Giorgio Pellegrino, Trenta Capelli, followed by the whole population of Pizzo, rushed out about a hundred and fifty paces from where Murat, Franceschetti, and Campana were straining themselves to make the boat glide down the sand.

These cries were immediately followed by a volley.  Campana fell, with a bullet through his heart.

The boat, however, was launched.  Franceschetti sprang into it, Murat was about to follow, but he had not observed that the spurs of his riding-boots had caught in the meshes of the net.  The boat, yielding to the push he gave it, glided away, and the king fell head foremost, with his feet on land and his face in the water.  Before he had time to pick himself up, the populace had fallen on him:  in one instant they had torn away his epaulettes, his banner, and his coat, and would have torn him to bits himself, had not Giorgio Pellegrino and Trenta Capelli taken him under their protection, and giving him an arm on each side, defended him in their turn against the people.  Thus he crossed the square as a prisoner where an hour before he had walked as a king.