walls announced that the people of Naples would follow the example
of the inhabitants of Palermo if the _gabelles_ were not taken off,
especially the fruit tax, which pressed the hardest upon the populace;
the better the season was, the more the poor felt themselves debarred
from the enjoyment of a cheap and cooling food. The Viceroy was stopped
by a troop of people as he was going to mass at the Church of Santa
Maria del Carmine; he extricated himself from his difficulty as well as
he could, laid the blame on the nobility who had ordered the tax, and
promised what he never intended to perform. The associations of nobles
assembled, but they could not agree. Some were of opinion that the tax
should be kept, because the change would interfere with their pecuniary
interests; others because the money asked for by the government could
not otherwise be procured.

Notwithstanding these unfavorable circumstances the Duke of Arcos, the
Spanish Viceroy of Naples, allowed most of the Spanish and German troops
to march into Lombardy; he was deliberating how to meet the attack of
the French in the North of Italy without considering that he was
stripping the country of armed forces at a moment when the continuance
of the Spanish rule was more than ever in jeopardy.

On the great market-place at Naples, the scene of so many tragedies and
so many disturbances, stood a miserable cottage, with nothing to
distinguish it from the others but the name and arms of Charles V, which
were placed on the front wall. Here a poor fisherman lived, Tommaso
Aniello, generally called by the abbreviated name of Masaniello. His
father, Francesco or Cicco, came from the coast of Amalfi, and had
married in 1620 Antonia Gargano, a Neapolitan woman.

In the Vico Rotto, by the great market, which is only inhabited by the
poorest people, and where the pestilence began in the year 1656, four
months later, the son was born who was destined to act so remarkable a
part. Tommaso Aniello was baptized in the parish church of Sta.
Catherina in Foro on June 20, 1620. On April 25, 1641, he married
Bernardina Pisa, a maiden from the neighborhood of that town. Their
poverty was so great that often Masaniello could not even follow up his
trade of a fisherman, but earned a scanty livelihood by selling paper
for the fish to be carried in. He was of middle height, well made and
active; his brilliant dark, black eyes and his sunburnt face contrasted
singularly with his long,