the conquerors of Rome. A Court cowardly almost beyond the example of Courts, a police that had trained every Neapolitan to look upon his neighbour as a traitor, an administration that had turned one of the hardiest races in Europe into soldiers of notorious and disgraceful cowardice--such were the allies whom Nelson, ill-fitted for politics by his sailor-like inexperience and facile vanity, heroic in his tenderness and fidelity, in an evil hour encouraged to believe themselves invincible because they possessed his own support. On the 14th of November, 1798, King Ferdinand published a proclamation, which, without declaring war on the French, announced that the King intended to occupy the Papal States and restore the Papal government. The manifesto disclaimed all intention of conquest, and offered a free pardon to all compromised persons. Ten days later the Neapolitan army crossed the frontier, led by the Austrian general, Mack, who passed among his admirers for the greatest soldier in Europe. [68] [Ferdinand enters Rome, Nov. 29.] The mass of the French troops, about twelve thousand in number, lay in the neighbourhood of Ancona; Rome and the intermediate stations were held by small detachments. Had Mack pushed forward towards the Upper Tiber, his inroad, even if it failed to crush the separated wings of the French army, must have forced them to retreat; but, instead of moving with all his strength through Central Italy, Mack led the bulk of his army upon Rome, where there was no French force capable of making a stand, and sent weak isolated columns towards the east of the peninsula, where the French were strong enough to make a good defence. On the approach of the Neapolitans to Rome, Championnet, the French commander, evacuated the city, leaving a garrison in the Castle of St. Angelo, and fell back on Civita Castellana, thirty miles north of the capital. The King of Naples entered Rome on the 29th November. The restoration of religion was celebrated by the erection of an immense cross in the place of the tree of liberty, by the immersion of several Jews in the Tiber, by the execution of a number of compromised persons whose pardon the King had promised, and by a threat to shoot one of the sick French soldiers in the hospital for every shot fired by the guns of St. Angelo. [69] Intelligence was despatched to the exiled Pontiff of the discomfiture of his enemies. "By help of the divine grace," wrote King Ferdinand, "and of the most miraculous St. Januarius, we have to-day with our army entered the sacred city of Rome, so lately profaned by the impious, who now fly terror-stricken at the sight of the Cross and of my arms. Leave then, your Holiness, your too modest abode, and on the wings of cherubim, like the virgin of Loreto, come and descend upon the Vatican, to purify it by your sacred presence." A letter to the King of Piedmont, who had already been exhorted by Ferdinand to encourage his peasants to