"Caracciolo then, I am told, as a last hope, asked Lieut. Parkinson whether he thought an application to Lady Hamilton would be beneficial; upon which that officer went to the quarter-deck, but I am thankful was not able to meet with her. For this is what I dreaded. Dear Emma has such a soft heart that, having known the Prince as a friend, even his perfidy and wickedness to her beloved monarch might not have been able to shut up her bowels of compassion. For this reason I sat in my state-room with the door guarded by a sentry, and would see none but my officers until the sentence had been carried out. And I allowed time for Caracciolo to be stone dead before I would see Emma. From the hour that he was brought on board in the morning, I could not trust myself with her tender heart. "Knowing well the objection of a British Government to its officers being mixed up with foreign executions, I nevertheless gave orders for a Court Martial of Sicilian officers to be assembled on this ship for the trial of Caracciolo, for several reasons. In the first place, the good King had made me his Commander-in-chief of the whole expedition or campaign for the reconquest of Naples; and it therefore fell on me to take the steps to show the rebels that leading against their King would be visited with condign and summary punishment. It was necessary that the trial should take place, if anywhere, on a British ship, both for the prisoner and for his King. For the prisoner, because he had already been nigh torn to pieces by the Royalists, maddened by their wrongs; and for the King, because no Neapolitan, when left to himself, can be relied on not to sell his country. As to the other reason advanced, for its not being held on _La Minerva_--that it would have been dangerous to have ordered a Court Martial to assemble on her, from the love which Sicilian seamen bore to Caracciolo, and the fear of mutiny--it is not to be entertained, when _La Minerva_ was under the guns of a British ship. I am convinced we had nothing but treachery to fear. Besides, though the _Foudroyant_ is a ship belonging to His Britannic Majesty, it is also, for the time being, the seat of the Neapolitan Government. To the prisoner, at all events, trial on a British ship was an advantage, for where there were a number of British officers with free access to the trial, there could be no question of unfairness or violence.