The price of oil and of corn was fixed. It was forbidden to show one's
self in the streets after the second hour in the night, excepting to
minister the last rites of the Church, or to visit the sick and women in
labor. All priests were to present themselves, that it might be
investigated whether they were real ecclesiastics or banditti in
disguise. A number of burdensome directions about costume were
published. There was a rich harvest for spies and accusers.
What had been at the first a defence against tyranny and arbitrariness
became now only worse tyranny. No families of noble rank could remain.
None could trust or even order about their servants, for Masaniello
summoned the domestics to arms and rewarded their treachery to their
lords. Armed bands, under known leaders, had formed themselves, and went
their own ways unchecked. Five days were sufficient to put an end to all
discipline and order. During these wild doings no privacy could be had.
If the errors of the nobility had been borne hitherto, now began the
saturnalia of the populace, and they were far more bloody and horrible
than those of the nobles.
This was the condition of the town of Naples at the time when King
Philip's Viceroy and the Captain-general of the Most Faithful People met
in the cathedral on July 17th to publish solemnly the new treaty. The
venerable church had witnessed many changes in the relations and
destinies of the kingdom proclaimed in her vaulted halls, with the
history of which it had, so to speak, grown up; but never had it been
the theatre for such a degradation of the royal power.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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