Soon after halting, we received intelligence of the successful issue of Sir Sydney Smith’s attack on the Castle of St. Amanthea; a strong fort, which, being quite inaccessible on the land side, he carried by assault on the seaward, capturing four hundred prisoners, and a quantity of arms and military stores. In the evening, I was despatched by Sir John to a young Neapolitan noble; who, in anticipation of our expedition had some time before secretly quitted Palermo, and had been residing among his countrymen, for the purpose of ascertaining their sentiments towards the British as allies, and the probable number that would rise in arms, on our displaying the Union-Jack in Italy. This personage, to whom I took a letter from the general, bore the titles of Visconte di Santugo, and Grand Bailiff of Lower Calabria, and was the most powerful Feudatory in the provinces. Our leader requested that he would use all his influence to arouse the peasantry to arms, for the service of his Majesty the King of Naples, in support of whose cause our expedition had now landed on the Italian shore. We soon found, however, that the hardy Calabrese required no other incentive than their own intense hatred and deep-rooted detestation of the French. I had been ordered to return next morning with any volunteers the Visconte could collect; and was not averse from the prospect of remaining a night at his villa, as my undressed wound was becoming a little troublesome. At that time, the two Calabrias, the Abruzzi, and all the Italian mountains and fastnesses, were swarming with hordes of armed peasantry—half patriots and half bandits. This system of disorganization and immorality was promoted by a mortal hatred—the rancorous enmity of Italian hearts—against the usurper Buonaparte, and his slavish law of conscription; which aimed at the military enrolment of all classes, without distinction or permitting substitution. The proud noble who could trace his name and blood to the warriors and senators of ancient Rome, and the humble peasant were to be alike torn from their homes, turned into the ranks as private soldiers, and sent forth, at the pleasure of this foreign tyrant, to fight and to perish among the wild sierras of Spain, or the frozen deserts of Russia. In consequence of this invasion of the rights of the Italian people, many young men of high birth, and others whose condition in life had, previous to the French aggression, been respectable, now fled to the mountains and wilderness, and became outlaws, rather than yield submission to the yoke of a Corsican conqueror. Ranged under various leaders, these spirited desperadoes, in conjunction with the banditti and the Loyal Masse, harassed the French incessantly, by a guerilla warfare of attacks, skirmishes, and assassinations; and with such effect, that Buonaparte computed his loss by the stiletto and rifle at not less than twenty thousand soldiers, during his attempts to subdue