The Cardinal went as he came. "On the 27th," says the Journal, "the rebels came out of the castles as they ought, and as, I hope, all those who are false to their King and their country will, _to be hanged_, or otherwise disposed of, as their Sovereign thought proper." They were placed in transports and brought under the sterns of the men-of-war, where we could see the leaders--as they were discovered by information--having irons put on them to be brought for safe custody to one of the men-of-war. They were embarked altogether in fourteen _polacres_, a kind of craft much used on the Italian coast. In the matter of the capitulation the rebels clearly protracted the negotiation for twenty-one days with the idea that the French fleet would arrive and _ipso facto_ cancel the treaty. This provision was perfectly natural, for unless the English fleet arrived, Captain Foote, with his weak squadron, and the Cardinal, with his rough levies, had hardly the means of reducing such strong places as the Citadel and the Castles. Therefore, unless the English fleet arrived, Captain Foote did well enough in getting such strong places on terms. When the English fleet did arrive, I have no doubt that what did actually happen was what both French and rebels expected to happen. And if it had not happened, they would have laughed at the simplicity of the English in feeling bound by an arrangement which no French commander would have entertained under the circumstances. And neither Captain Foote nor the Cardinal had any more power to conclude a treaty than a serjeant commanding a picket of a regiment would have to make arrangements binding on his Colonel. Moreover, as the capitulation was not to take effect until the forts were evacuated, and evacuation of the forts had not commenced when the Admiral proclaimed the treaty at an end, it never came into effect at all. The same day the Admiral landed thirteen hundred men from his own ships and those of Her Most Faithful Majesty to besiege the French in St. Elmo, giving the command to Captain Troubridge, and appointing second in command Captain Ball of His Majesty's ship _Alexander_, the same that had had the command at Malta. With them went Will, of which going I shall have much to say anon; but here I shall go a little out of the order to describe an event which has had far more importance conferred on it than it deserved, by a malignant Opposition having made it their dagger to stab our great and good Admiral in the back. I refer of course to the affair of Prince Caracciolo. It was not more than nine o'clock on the morning of the 29th, when a _barca_ full of villainous-looking Calabrians--"the Christian Army" they were called--pulled alongside. In their midst was a short, thickset man, with his hands bound behind him, in such rags, so emaciated, so smothered in dirt, with his hair and beard so clotted, that I did not at first recognise our old enemy of the Trattoria at Resina.