In December 1856, a soldier named Ageslao Milano attempted to assassinate the King of the Two Sicilies at a review. He belonged to no sect, but he had long premeditated the act. A few days later an earthquake occurred in the kingdom of Naples, by which over ten thousand persons lost their lives. Ferdinand II. grew morose, and shut himself up in the royal palace of Caserta. The constant lectures of France and England annoyed him without persuading him to take the means to put a stop to them. Not till 1859 did he open the doors of the prisons in which Poerio, Settembrini and their companions were confined. Many plans were made, meanwhile, for their liberation, and English friends even provided a ship by which they were to escape; but the ship foundered: perhaps fortunately, as Garibaldi, with characteristic disinterestedness, had agreed to direct the enterprise, which could not have been otherwise than perilous, and was not unlikely to end in the loss of all concerned. Disaster attended Baron Bentivegna's attempt at a rising at Taormina in 1856, and Carlo Pisacane's landing at Sapri in the summer of the following year had no better result. Pisacane, a son of the Duke Gennaro di San Giovanni of Naples, had fought in the defence of Rome and was a firm adherent of Mazzini, in conjunction with whom he planned his unlucky venture. Pisacane watched the growing ascendency of Piedmont with sorrow; he was one of the few, if not the only one of his party to say that he would as soon have the dominion of Austria as that of the House of Savoy. But if he was an extremist in politics, none the less he was a patriot, who took his life in his hands and offered it up to his country in the spirit of the noblest devotion. He had the slenderest hope of success, but he believed that only by such failures could the people be roused from their apathy. 'For me,' he wrote, 'it will be victory even if I die on the scaffold. This is all I can do, and this I do; the rest depends on the country, not on me. I have only my affections and my life to give, and I give them without hesitation.'