rtheless it was
accomplished, although the fugitives, with one exception, were promptly
retaken. Pepe and his companion now made a merit of not having
participated in it, and wrote to their friends at Naples, entreating
them to urge their release. This would hardly have been obtained but for
the outbreak of hostilities. Ferdinand, without waiting to see the
result of the struggle between Austria, Russia, and France, declared
against the latter power. He soon had reason to repent his
precipitation. The crushing campaign of Austerlitz, followed by the
march of Massena upon Naples, sent him and his court flying into Sicily.
In the confusion that ensued, Pepe was set at liberty. Embarking at
Messina, he once more landed in his native province of Calabria, and
reached Naples, a wiser and better man than he had left it. Three
years' study and reflection had cooled the rash fervour of his youthful
aspirations. His desire for his country's freedom was unabated, but his
Utopian visions of a republic had lost much of the brilliant colouring
that had dazzled his boyish imagination. Prudence told him that it was
unwise, by aiming at too much, to risk obtaining nothing. He was not
singular in this modification of his views. The great majority of the
liberal party had also moderated their pretensions; and in Naples, as in
France, the word republic was now seldom spoken but in derision. Pepe
was content that the desired changes should come more gradually than
would have suited him before three years of thought and dungeon-life had
sobered and matured his judgment. And henceforward we find his
endeavours directed, steadily and unceasingly, to the establishment of
free institutions under a constitutional monarchy.

By the grace of his brother the king-maker, Joseph Buonaparte was now
upon the throne of Naples. On arriving in that capital, Pepe was
presented to the minister of war, General Dumas. "From my extreme
anxiety to produce the well or ill digested theories I had imbibed in
prison, I was very loquacious, and urged so strongly the danger
threatened to Calabria by the impending landing, not only of the
British, but of all Cardinal Ruffo's banditti levies, who had acquired
consequence in 1799, that he ordered a militia to be raised throughout
the country." By Dumas, the young theorist, whose predictions, however,
were not ill-founded, was presented to King Joseph, of whom he speaks in
no very favourable terms. He admits him to have