CHAPTER THE THIRTEENTH.

1803 to 1806.

MISSION TO NAPLES.

MR. ELLIOT, being at the time on leave in England, was sent to Naples at twenty-four hours' notice, in May 1803, Lord Nelson giving him a passage to the Mediterranean in the "Victory."

War had been declared on the 20th of May between Great Britain and France, and the First Consul had announced an intention of requiring all neutral nations to close their ports against British ships, while foreign courts suspected of leanings to British influences were threatened with an army of invasion. Bonaparte assumed that France was the head of the Southern Confederacy of Europe, and declared that he would not suffer either Spain, Portugal, or the States of Italy to deviate in any degree from the system of politics adopted by France.

At the moment of Mr. Elliot's arrival at Naples (June 1803) a French army was approaching the frontier on its way to take possession of Tarentum and other ports on the Adriatic, which the First Consul

own purposes than that of French emigrants at foreign courts."

"The Queen herself," he wrote to Lord Nelson, "is well inclined towards us; yet she is continually drawn into scrapes and inconsistencies by these designing people, who are in their hearts equally hostile to Great Britain and to General Acton."

1

General Acton,1 highly trusted by the King, and in Mr. Elliot's estimation the only man in the kingdom capable of forming and sustaining such a policy as would ensure its independence, had by his constant assertion of the rights of his sovereigns, and his resistance to the unjust and arrogant demands of the French Ambassador at the Court of Naples, become an object of persecution to Bonaparte, who never failed to insist upon his removal from the high situation he had held for more than twenty years. Unfortunately General Acton was old and infirm, and his opposition to the Queen's schemes for the aggrandisement of her French favourites had rendered him obnoxious to her; while "her experienced management of every female wile and snare, of which the constant

1 Sir John Acton, Bart. of Aldenham, born in 1726, was for many years the Neapolitan prime minister and commander-in-chief of the land and sea forces of Naples. Though he had succeeded to the baronetcy on the death of a cousin in 1791, he is invariably styled "General Acton" throughout the correspondence, both in official and private letters. "General Acton," wrote Mr. Elliot in one of his despatches, "had in early life passed from the service of the Great Duke of Tuscany into that of his Sicilian Majesty, for the purpose of reforming and directing the Neapolitan naval department. His subsequent rise took its origin as much from the Queen's known partiality towards him as from the King's favour."