VOLUME I (OF 3) ***




Produced by Al Haines.





                              *ADVENTURES*

                                  *OF*

                           *AN AIDE-DE-CAMP:*

                                 *OR,*

                       *A CAMPAIGN IN CALABRIA.*


                                   BY

                           JAMES GRANT, ESQ.

                    AUTHOR OF "THE ROMANCE OF WAR."



_Claud._ I look'd upon her with a soldier's eye,
That liked, but had a rougher task in hand
Than to drive liking to the name of love:
But now I am returned, and that war thoughts
Have left their places vacant; in their rooms
Come thronging soft and delicate desires,
All prompting me how fair young Hero is,
Saying how I liked her ere I went to war.
  SHAKSPEARE.



                           IN THREE VOLUMES.
                                VOL. I.



                                LONDON:
                    SMITH, ELDER, AND CO., CORNHILL.
                                 1848.




                                London:
                     Printed by STEWART and MURRAY,
                              Old Bailey.




                              *CONTENTS.*

CHAPTER

I.--The Landing in Calabria
II.--The Pigtail
III.--The Visconte Santugo
IV.--Double or Quit
V.--Truffi the Hunchback
VI.--The Calabrian Free Corps
VII.--The Battle of Maida
VIII.--The Cottage.--Capture of the Eagle
IX.--Lives for Ducats!--Bianca D'Alfieri
X.--A Night with the Zingari
XI.--The Hunchback Again!
XII.--The Hermitage
XIII.--The Hermit's Confession
XIV.--The Siege Of Crotona
XV.--The Abduction.--A Scrape
XVI.--The Summons of Surrender
XVII.--Marching 'Out' with the Honours of War
XVIII.--Another Dispatch
XIX.--Narrative of Castelermo
XX.--The Villa Belcastro
XXI.--Sequel to the Story of Castelermo




                               *PREFACE.*


The very favourable reception given by the Press and Public generally,
to "The Romance of War," and its "Sequel," has encouraged the Author to
resume his labours in another field.

Often as scenes of British valour and conquest have been described, the
brief but brilliant campaign in the Calabrias (absorbed, and almost
lost, amid the greater warlike operations in the Peninsula) has never,
he believes, been touched upon: though a more romantic land for
adventure and description cannot invite the pen of a novelist; more
especially when the singular social and political ideas of those unruly
provinces are remembered.

Indeed it is to be regretted that no narrative should have been
published of Sir John Stuart's Neapolitan campaign.  It was an
expedition set on foot to drive the French from South Italy; and (but
for the indecision which sometimes characterized the ministry of those
days) that country might have become the scene of operations such as
were carried on so successfully on the broader arena of the Spanish
Peninsula.

Other campaigns and victories will succeed those of the great Duke, and
the names of Vittoria and Waterloo will sound to future generations as
those of Ramillies and Dettingen do to the present.  Materials for
martial stories will never be wanting: they are a branch of literature
peculiarly British; and it is remarkable that, notwithstanding the love
of peace, security and opulence, which appears to possess us now, the
present age is one beyond all others fond of an exciting style of
literature.

Military romances and narratives are the most stirring of all.  There
are no scenes so dashing, or so appalling, as those produced by a state
of warfare, with its contingent woes and horrors; which excite the
energies of both body and mind to the utmost pitch.

The author hopes, that, though containing less of war and more of love
and romantic adventure than his former volumes, these now presented to
the Reader will be found not the less acceptable on this account.  They
differ essentially from the novels usually termed military; most of the
characters introduced being of another cast.

The last chapters are descriptive of the siege of Scylla; a passage of
arms which, when the disparity of numbers between the beleaguered
British and the besieging French is considered, must strike every reader
as an affair of matchless bravery.

Several of the officers mentioned have attained high rank in their
profession--others a grave on subsequent battle-fields: their names may
be recognised by the military reader.  Other characters belong to
history.

The names of the famous brigand chiefs may be familiar to a few:
especially Francatripa.  He cost the French, under Massena, more lives
than have been lost in the greatest pitched battle. All the attempts of
Buonaparte to seduce him to his faction, or capture him by force, were
fruitless; and at last, when his own followers revolted, and were about
to deliver him up to the iron-hearted Prince of Essling, he had the
address to escape into Sicily with all their treasure, the accumulated
plunder of years.  Being favoured by the Queen, he, no doubt, spent the
close of his years in ease and opulence.  Scarolla became a true
patriot, and died "Chief of the Independents of Basilicata."

It is, perhaps, needless to observe, that many scenes purely fanciful
are mingled with the real military details.

The story of the Countess of La Torre, however, is a fact: the shocking
incidents narrated actually occurred in an Italian family of rank, many
years ago.  Strazzoldi's victim received no less than thirty-three
wounds from his poniard.  The author has given the real titles of the
infamous parties, and only trusts he has not marred a very sad story by
his mode of relating it.  In atrocity, the tale has lately found a
parallel in the Praslin tragedy: indeed, "truth is stranger than
fiction."  There is nothing so horrible in a romance but may be
surpassed by the occurrences contained in the columns of a newspaper;
where we often find recorded outrages against humanity, greater by far
than any conceived by the wildest imaginings of a French novelist.

Those feudal militia, or gens-d'armes, the _sbirri_, so often mentioned
in these pages, were a force maintained by the landholders.  The sbirri
received a certain sum daily to support themselves, and provide their
arms, clothing, and horses: they lived among the paesani in the
villages, but were completely under the orders and at the disposal of
their lord.  The sbirri were the last relics of the feudal system.

Since these volumes were written, the flames of civil war have passed
over the romantic Calabrias: the government of Naples has received a
severe, though perhaps wholesome, shock; and the brave Sicilians are
wresting from their obstinate sovereign those beneficial concessions
which he cannot safely withhold.  A still greater crisis for Italy is,
perhaps, impending: Lombardy is filled with the troops of Austria; and
if the _absolute_ policy of the veteran Metternich prevails, ere long
those "millions of cannon-balls" (which were so lately ordered by his
government) will be dealing death among the ranks of Italian patriots.
Should that day ever arrive, surely the Hungarian, the Bohemian, and the
brave Pole, will know the time has come to draw and to strike!  The eyes
of all Europe are at present turned upon the policy of Austria, and the
fate of Italy; and should matters ever take the turn anticipated, the
landing again of a British army on the Italian shores will prove a
death-blow to the ambitious projects of the House of Hapsburg.

A long preface may be likened to a hard shell, which must be cracked ere
one can arrive at the kernel.  The Author has to ask pardon of his
readers for trespassing so long on their patience; but he considered the
foregoing explanations in some degree necessary, to illustrate the
fortunes, mishaps, and adventures of the hero.

EDINBURGH, _February_ 1848.




                              *ADVENTURES*

                                *OF AN*

                            *AIDE-DE-CAMP.*



                              *CHAPTER I.*

                       *THE LANDING IN CALABRIA.*


On the evening of the last day of June 1806, the transports which had
brought our troops from Sicily anchored off the Italian coast, in the
Bay of St. Eufemio, a little to the southward of a town of that name.

The British forces consisted of H. M. 27th, 58th, 78th, and 81st
Regiments of the Line, the Provisional Light Infantry and Grenadier
Battalions, the Corsican Rangers, Royal Sicilian Volunteers, and the
Regiment of Sir Louis de Watteville, &c., the whole being commanded by
Major-General Sir John Stuart, to whose personal staff I had the honour
to be attached.

This small body of troops, which mustered in all only 4,795 rank and
file, was destined by our ministry to support the Neapolitans, who in
many places had taken up arms against the usurper, Joseph Buonaparte,
and to assist in expelling from Italy the soldiers of his brother.
Ferdinand, King of Naples, after being an abject vassal of Napoleon, had
allowed a body of British and Russian soldiers to land on his
territories without resistance.  This expedition failed; he was deserted
by the celebrated Cardinal Ruffo, who became a Buonapartist; and as the
French emperor wanted a crown for his brother Joseph, he proclaimed that
"the Neapolitan dynasty had ceased to reign"--that the race of Parma
were no longer kings in Lower Italy--and in January 1806 his legions
crossed the frontiers.  The "lazzaroni king" fled instantly to Palermo;
his spirited queen, Carolina (sister of the unfortunate Marie
Antoinette), soon followed him; and the usurper, Joseph, after meeting
with little or no resistance, was, in February, crowned king of Naples
and Sicily, in the church of Sancto Januario, where Cardinal Ruffo of
Scylla, performed solemn mass on the occasion.  All Naples and its
territories submitted to him, save the brave mountaineers of the
Calabrias, who remained continually in arms, and with whom we were
destined to co-operate.

When our anchors plunged into the shining sea, it was about the close of
a beautiful evening--the hour of Ave Maria--and the lingering light of
the Ausonian sun, setting in all his cloudless splendour, shed a crimson
glow over the long line of rocky coast, burnishing the bright waves
rolling on the sandy beach, and the wooded mountains of Calabria, the
abode of the fiercest banditti in the world.

The tricolor flaunted over the towers of St. Amanthea, a little town to
the northward of the bay, commanded by a castle on a steep rock, well
garrisoned by the enemy; and the smoke of their evening gun curled away
from the dark and distant bastions, as the last vessel of our armament
came to anchor.  The whole fleet, swinging round with the strong current
which runs through the Strait of Messina, lay one moment with their
sterns to the land and the next to the sparkling sea, which pours
through between these rock-bound coasts with the speed of a mill-race.

Italy lay before us: the land of the fabled Hesperia--the country of the
"eternal city;" and I thought of her as she was once: of "majestic
Rome," in all her power, her glory, and her military supremacy; when
nations bowed their heads before her banners, and her eagles spread
their wings over half a world.  But, alas! we find it difficult to
recognise in the effeminate Venetian, the revengeful Neapolitan, or the
ferocious Calabrian, the descendants of those matchless soldiers, whose
pride, valour, and ambition few since have equalled, and none have yet
surpassed.  We viewed with the deepest interest that classic shore,
which so many of us now beheld for the first time.  To me, it was a
country teeming with classic recollections--the sunny and beautiful land
whose very history has been said to resemble a romance; but the mass of
our soldiers were of course, strangers to all these sentiments: the
grave and stern Ross-shireman, and the brave bog-trotters of the
Inniskilling, regarded it only as a land of hard marches, short rations,
and broken heads; as a hostile coast, where the first soldiers of the
continent were to be encountered and overcome--for with us these terms
are synonymous.

Barbarized by the wars and ravages which followed the French revolution
and invasion,--swarming with disorderly soldiers, savage brigands, and
starving peasantry writhing under the feudal system--the Naples of that
time was very different from the Naples of to-day, through which so many
tourists travel with luxurious safety: at least so far as the capital.
Few, I believe, penetrate into that terra incognita, the realm of the
bandit Francatripa.

Orders were despatched by the general from ship to ship, that the troops
should be held in readiness to disembark by dawn next day.  The
quarter-guards and deck-watches were strengthened for the night, and
strict orders given to sentries not to permit any communication with the
shore, or with the numerous boats which paddled about among the fleet.
Our ships were surrounded by craft of all shapes and sizes, filled with
people from St. Eufemio, and other places adjacent: bright-eyed women,
their dark hair braided beneath square linen head-dresses, with here and
there a solitary "gentiluomo," muffled in his cloak, and ample hat,
beneath which glowed the red spark of a cigar; meagre and grizzled
priests; wild-looking peasantry, half naked, or half covered with rough
skins; and conspicuous above all, many fierce-looking fellows, wearing
the picturesque Calabrian garb, of whose occupation we had little doubt:
the gaiety of their attire, the long dagger gleaming in their sashes,
the powder-horn, and the well-oiled rifle slung across the back by a
broad leather sling, proclaimed them brigands; who came crowding among
their honester countrymen, to hail and bid us welcome as allies and
friends.

An hour before daylight, next morning, we were all on deck and under
arms.  Our orders were, to land with the utmost silence and expedition,
in order to avoid annoyance from the light guns of the French; who
occupied the whole province from sea to sea, and whom we fully expected
to find on the alert to oppose our disembarkation.

My first care was to get my horse, Cartouche, into one of the boats of
the _Amphion_ frigate. Aware that sharp work was before us, I personally
superintended his harnessing; having previously given him a mash with a
dash of nitre in it, and had his fetlocks and hoofs