Chapter II: Part 2

After the fall of Napoleon, Joachim Murat, who had succeeded Joseph Bonaparte as king of Naples in 1808, was dethroned, and Ferdinand returned to Naples. By a secret treaty he had bound himself not to advance further in a constitutional direction than Austria should at any time approve; but, though on the whole he acted in accordance with Metternich's policy of preserving the _status quo_, and maintained with but slight change Murat's laws and administrative system, he took advantage of the situation to abolish the Sicilian constitution, in violation of his oath, and to proclaim the union of the two states into the kingdom of the Two Sicilies (December 12th, 1816). He was now completely subservient to Austria, an Austrian, Count Nugent, being even made commander-in-chief of the army; and for four years he reigned as a despot, every tentative effort at the expression of liberal opinion being ruthlessly suppressed. The result was an alarming spread of the influence and activity of the secret society of the Carbonari (q.v.), which in time affected a large part of the army. In July 1820 a military revolt broke out under General Pepe, and Ferdinand was terrorized into subscribing a constitution on the model of the impracticable Spanish constitution of 1812. On the other hand, a revolt in Sicily, in favour of the recovery of its independence, was suppressed by Neapolitan troops.

The success of the military revolution at Naples seriously alarmed the powers of the Holy Alliance, who feared that it might spread to other Italian states and so lead to that general European conflagration which it was their main preoccupation to avoid (see EUROPE: _History_). After long diplomatic negotiations, it was decided to hold a congress _ad hoc_ at Troppau (October 1820). The main results of this congress were the issue of the famous Troppau Protocol, signed by Austria, Prussia and Russia only, and an invitation to King Ferdinand to attend the adjourned congress at Laibach (1821), an invitation of which Great Britain approved "as implying negotiation" (see TROPPAU, LAIBACH, CONGRESSES OF). At Laibach Ferdinand played so sorry a part as to provoke the contempt of those whose policy it was to re-establish him in absolute power. He had twice sworn, with gratuitous solemnity, to maintain the new constitution; but he was hardly out of Naples before he repudiated his oaths and, in letters addressed to all the sovereigns of Europe, declared his acts to have been null and void. An attitude so indecent threatened to defeat the very objects of the reactionary powers, and Gentz congratulated the congress that these sorry protests would be buried in the archives, offering at the same time to write for the king a dignified letter in which he should express his reluctance at having to violate his oaths in the face of irresistible force! But, under these circumstances, Metternich had no difficulty in persuading the king to allow an Austrian army to march into Naples "to restore order."

The campaign that followed did little credit either to the Austrians or the Neapolitans. The latter, commanded by General Pepe (q.v.), who made no attempt to defend the difficult defiles of the Abruzzi, were defeated, after a half-hearted struggle at Rieti (March 7th, 1821), and the Austrians entered Naples. The parliament was now dismissed, and Ferdinand inaugurated an era of savage persecution, supported by spies and informers, against the Liberals and Carbonari, the Austrian commandant in vain protesting against the savagery which his presence alone rendered possible.

Ferdinand died on the 4th of January 1825. Few sovereigns have left behind so odious a memory. His whole career is one long record of perjury, vengeance and meanness, unredeemed by a single generous act, and his wife was a worthy helpmeet and actively co-operated in his tyranny.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--The standard authority on Ferdinand's reign is Pietro
Colletta's _Storia del Reame di Napoli_ (2nd ed., Florence, 1848),
which, although heavily written and not free from party passion, is
reliable and accurate; L. Conforti, _Napoli nel 1799_ (Naples, 1886);
G. Pepe, _Memorie_ (Paris, 1847), a most valuable book; C. Auriol, _La
France, l'Angleterre, et Naples_ (Paris, 1906); for the Sicilian
period and the British occupation, G. Bianco, _La Sicilia durante
l'occupazione Inglese_ (Palermo, 1902), which contains many new
documents of importance; Freiherr A. von Helfert has attempted the
impossible task of whitewashing Queen Carolina in his _Konigin
Karolina von Neapel und Sicilien_ (Vienna, 1878), and _Maria Karolina
von Oesterreich_ (Vienna, 1884); he has also written a useful life of
_Fabrizio Ruffo_ (Italian edit., Florence, 1885); for the Sicilian
revolution of 1820 see G. Bianco's _La Rivoluzione in Sicilia del
1820_ (Florence, 1905), and M. Amari's _Carteggio_ (Turin, 1896).
(L. V.*)

FERDINAND I., king of Portugal (1345-1383), sometimes referred to as _el Gentil_ (the Gentleman), son of Pedro I. of Portugal (who is not to be confounded with his Spanish contemporary Pedro the Cruel), succeeded his father in 1367. On the death of Pedro of Castile in 1369, Ferdinand, as great-grandson of Sancho IV. by the female line, laid claim to the vacant throne, for which the kings of Aragon and Navarre, and afterwards the duke of Lancaster (married in 1370 to Constance, the eldest daughter of Pedro), also became competitors. Meanwhile Henry of Trastamara, the brother (illegitimate) and conqueror of Pedro, had assumed the crown and taken the field. After one or two indecisive campaigns, all parties were ready to accept the mediation of Pope Gregory XI. The conditions of the treaty, ratified in 1371, included a marriage between Ferdinand and Leonora of Castile. But before the union could take place the former had become passionately attached to Leonora Tellez, the wife of one of his own courtiers, and having procured a dissolution of her previous marriage, he lost no time in making her his queen. This strange conduct, although it raised a serious insurrection in Portugal, did not at once result in a war with Henry; but the outward concord was soon disturbed by the intrigues of the duke of Lancaster, who prevailed on Ferdinand to enter into a secret treaty for the expulsion of Henry from his throne. The war which followed was unsuccessful; and peace was again made in 1373. On the death of Henry in 1379, the duke of Lancaster once more put forward his claims, and again found an ally in Portugal; but, according to the Continental annalists, the English proved as offensive to their companions in arms as to their enemies in the field; and Ferdinand made a peace for himself at Badajoz in 1382, it being stipulated that Beatrix, the heiress of Ferdinand, should marry King John of Castile, and thus secure the ultimate union of the crowns. Ferdinand left no male issue when he died on the 22nd of October 1383, and the direct Burgundian line, which had been in possession of the throne since the days of Count Henry (about 1112), became extinct. The stipulations of the treaty of Badajoz were set aside, and John, grand-master of the order of Aviz, Ferdinand's illegitimate brother, was proclaimed. This led to a war which lasted for several years.

FERDINAND I., _El Magno_ or "the Great," king of Castile (_d._ 1065), son of Sancho of Navarre, was put in possession of Castile in 1028, on the murder of the last count, as the heir of his mother Elvira, daughter of a previous count of Castile. He reigned with the title of king. He married Sancha, sister and heiress of Bermudo, king of Leon. In 1038 Bermudo was killed in battle with Ferdinand at Tamaron, and Ferdinand then took possession of Leon by right of his wife, and was recognized in Spain as emperor. The use of the title was resented by the emperor Henry IV. and by Pope Victor II. in 1055, as implying a claim to the headship of Christendom, and as a usurpation on the Holy Roman Empire. It did not, however, mean more than that Spain was independent of the Empire, and that the sovereign of Leon was the chief of the princes of the peninsula. Although Ferdinand had grown in power by a fratricidal strife with Bermudo of Leon, and though at a later date he defeated and killed his brother Garcia of Navarre, he ranks high among the kings of Spain who have been counted religious. To a large extent he may have owed his reputation to the victories over the Mahommedans, with which he began the period of the great reconquest. But there can be no doubt that Ferdinand was profoundly pious. Towards the close of his reign he sent a special embassy to Seville to bring back the body of Santa Justa. The then king of Seville, Motadhid, one of the small princes who had divided the caliphate of Cordova, was himself a sceptic and poisoner, but he stood in wholesome awe of the power of the Christian king. He favoured the embassy in every way, and when the body of Santa Justa could not be found, helped the envoys who were also aided by a vision seen by one of them in a dream, to discover the body of Saint Isidore, which was reverently carried away to Leon. Ferdinand died on the feast of Saint John the Evangelist, the 24th of June 1065, in Leon, with many manifestations of ardent piety--having laid aside his crown and royal mantle, dressed in the frock of a monk and lying on a bier, covered with ashes, which was placed before the altar of the church of Saint Isidore.

FERDINAND II., king of Leon only (d. 1188), was the son of Alphonso VII. and of Berenguela, of the house of the counts of Barcelona. On the division of the kingdoms which had obeyed his father, he received Leon. His reign of thirty years was one of strife marked by no signal success or reverse. He had to contend with his unruly nobles, several of whom he put to death. During the minority of his nephew Alphonso VIII. of Castile he endeavoured to impose himself on the kingdom as regent. On the west he was in more or less constant strife with Portugal, which was in process of becoming an independent kingdom. His relations to the Portuguese house must have suffered by his repudiation of his wife Urraca, daughter of Alphonso I. of Portugal. Though he took the king of Portugal prisoner in 1180, he made no political use of his success. He extended his dominions southward in Estremadura at the expense of the Moors. Ferdinand, who died in 1188, left the reputation of a good knight and hard fighter, but did not display political or organizing faculty.

FERDINAND III., _El Santo_ or "the Saint," king of Castile (1199-1252), son of Alphonso IX. of Leon, and of Berengaria, daughter of Alphonso VIII. of Castile, ranks among the greatest of the Spanish kings. The marriage of his parents, who were second cousins, was dissolved as unlawful by the pope, but the legitimacy of the children was recognized. Till 1217 he lived with his father in Leon. In that year the young king of Castile, Henry, was killed by accident. Berengaria sent for her son with such speed that her messenger reached Leon before the news of the death of the king of Castile, and when he came to her she renounced the crown in his favour. Alphonso of Leon considered himself tricked, and the young king had to begin his reign by a war against his father and a faction of the Castilian nobles. His own ability and the remarkable capacity of his mother proved too much for the king of Leon and his Castilian allies. Ferdinand, who showed himself docile to the influence of Berengaria, so long as she lived, married the wife she found for him, Beatrice, daughter of the emperor Philip (of Hohenstaufen), and followed her advice both in prosecuting the war against the Moors and in the steps which she took to secure his peaceful succession to Leon on the death of his father in 1231. After the union of Castile and Leon in that year he began the series of campaigns which ended by reducing the Mahommedan dominions in Spain to Granada. Cordova fell in 1236, and Seville in 1248. The king of Granada did homage to Ferdinand, and undertook to attend the cortes when summoned. The king was a severe persecutor of the Albigenses, and his formal canonization was due as much to his orthodoxy as to his crusading by Pope Clement X. in 1671. He revived the university first founded by his grandfather Alphonso VIII., and placed it at Salamanca. By his second marriage with Joan (d. 1279), daughter of Simon, of Dammartin, count of Ponthieu, by right of his wife Marie, Ferdinand was the father of Eleanor, the wife of Edward I. of England.

FERDINAND IV., _El Emplazado_ or "the Summoned," king of Castile (_d_. 1312), son of Sancho El Bravo, and his wife Maria de Molina, is a figure of small note in Spanish history. His strange title is given him in the chronicles on the strength of a story that he put two brothers of the name of Carvajal to death tyrannically, and was given a time, a _plazo_, by them in which to answer for his crime in the next world. But the tale is not contemporary, and is an obvious copy of the story told of Jacques de Molay, grand-master of the Temple, and Philippe Le Bel. Ferdinand IV. succeeded to the throne when a boy of six. His minority was a time of anarchy. He owed his escape from the violence of competitors and nobles, partly to the tact and undaunted bravery of his mother Maria de Molina, and partly to the loyalty of the citizens of Avila, who gave him refuge within their walls. As a king he proved ungrateful to his mother, and weak as a ruler. He died suddenly in his tent at Jaen when preparing for a raid into the Moorish territory of Granada, on the 7th of September 1312.

FERDINAND I., king of Aragon (1373-1416), called "of Antequera," was the son of John I. of Castile by his wife Eleanor, daughter of the third marriage of Peter IV. of Aragon. His surname "of Antequera" was given him because he was besieging that town, then in the hands of the Moors, when he was told that the cortes of Aragon had elected him king in succession to his uncle Martin, the last male of the old line of Wilfred the Hairy. As infante of Castile Ferdinand had played an honourable part. When his brother Henry III. died at Toledo, in 1406, the cortes was sitting, and the nobles offered to make him king in preference to his nephew John. Ferdinand refused to despoil his brother's infant son, and even if he did not act on the moral ground he alleged, his sagacity must have shown him that he would be at the mercy of the men who had chosen him in such circumstances. As co-regent of the kingdom with Catherine, widow of Henry III. and daughter of John of Gaunt by his marriage with Constance, daughter of Peter the Cruel and Maria de Padilla, Ferdinand proved a good ruler. He restrained the follies of his sister-in-law, and kept the realm quiet, by firm government, and by prosecuting the war with the Moors. As king of Aragon his short reign of two years left him little time to make his mark. Having been bred in Castile, where the royal authority was, at least in theory, absolute, he showed himself impatient under the checks imposed on him by the _fueros_, the chartered rights of Aragon and Catalonia. He particularly resented the obstinacy of the Barcelonese, who compelled the members of his household to pay municipal taxes. His most signal act as king was to aid in closing the Great Schism in the Church by agreeing to the deposition of the antipope Benedict XIV., an Aragonese. He died at Ygualada in Catalonia on the 2nd of April 1416.

FERDINAND V. of Castile and Leon, and II. of Aragon (1452-1516), was the son of John I. of Aragon by his second marriage with Joanna Henriquez, of the family of the hereditary grand admirals of Castile, and was born at Sos in Aragon on the 16th of March 1452. Under the name of "the Catholic" and as the husband of Isabella, queen of Castile, he played a great part in Europe. His share in establishing the royal authority in all parts of Spain, in expelling the Moors from Granada, in the conquest of Navarre, in forwarding the voyages of Columbus, and in contending with France for the supremacy in Italy, is dealt with elsewhere (see SPAIN: _History_). In personal character he had none of the attractive qualities of his wife. It may fairly be said of him that he was purely a politician. His marriage in 1469 to his cousin Isabella of Castile was dictated by the desire to unite his own claims to the crown, as the head of the younger branch of the same family, with hers, in case Henry IV. should die childless. When the king died in 1474 he made an ungenerous attempt to procure his own proclamation as king without recognition of the rights of his wife. Isabella asserted her claims firmly, and at all times insisted on a voice in the government of Castile. But though Ferdinand had sought a selfish political advantage at his wife's expense, he was well aware of her ability and high character. Their married life was dignified and harmonious; for Ferdinand had no common vices, and their views in government were identical. The king cared for nothing but dominion and political power. His character explains the most ungracious acts of his life, such as his breach of his promises to Columbus, his distrust of Ximenez and of the Great Captain. He had given wide privileges to Columbus on the supposition that the discoverer would reach powerful kingdoms. When islands inhabited by feeble savages were discovered, Ferdinand appreciated the risk that they might become the seat of a power too strong to be controlled, and took measures to avert the danger. He feared that Jimenez and the Great Captain would become too independent, and watched them in the interest of the royal authority. Whether he ever boasted, as he is said to have boasted, that he had deceived Louis XII. of France twelve times, is very doubtful; but it is certain that when Ferdinand made a treaty, or came to an understanding with any one, the contract was generally found to contain implied meanings favourable to himself which the other contracting party had not expected. The worst of his character was prominently shown after the death of Isabella in 1504. He endeavoured to lay hands on the regency of Castile in the name of his insane daughter Joanna, and without regard to the claims of her husband Philip of Habsburg. The hostility of the Castilian nobles, by whom he was disliked, baffled him for a time, but on Philip's early death he reasserted his authority. His second marriage with Germaine of Foix in 1505 was apparently contracted in the hope that by securing an heir male he might punish his Habsburg son-in-law. Aragon did not recognize the right of women to reign, and would have been detached together with Catalonia, Valencia and the Italian states if he had had a son. This was the only occasion on which Ferdinand allowed passion to obscure his political sense, and lead him into acts which tended to undo his work of national unification. As king of Aragon he abstained from inroads on the liberties of his subjects which might have provoked rebellion. A few acts of illegal violence are recorded of him--as when he invited a notorious demagogue of Saragossa to visit him in the palace, and caused the man to be executed without form of trial. Once when presiding over the Aragonese cortes he found himself sitting in a thorough draught and ordered the window to be shut, adding in a lower voice, "If it is not against the _fueros_." But his ill-will did not go beyond such sneers. He was too intent on building up a great state to complicate his difficulties by internal troubles. His arrangement of the convention of Guadalupe, which ended the fierce Agrarian conflicts of Catalonia, was wise and profitable to the country, though it was probably dictated mainly by a wish to weaken the landowners by taking away their feudal rights. Ferdinand died at Madrigalejo in Estremadura on the 23rd of February 1516.

The lives of the kings of this name before Ferdinand V. are contained
in the chronicles, and in the _Anales de Aragon_ of Zurita, and the
History of Spain by Mariana. Both deal at length with the life of
Ferdinand V. Prescott's _History of the Reign of Ferdinand and
Isabella_, in any of its numerous editions, gives a full life of him
with copious references to authorities.

FERDINAND VI., king of Spain (1713-1759), second son of Philip V., founder of the Bourbon dynasty, by his first marriage with Maria Louisa of Savoy, was born at Madrid on the 23rd of September 1713. His youth was depressed. His father's second wife, Elizabeth Farnese, was a managing woman, who had no affection except for her own children, and who looked upon her stepson as an obstacle to their fortunes. The hypochondria of his father left Elizabeth mistress of the palace. Ferdinand was married in 1729 to Maria Magdalena Barbara, daughter of John V. of Portugal. The very homely looks of his wife were thought by observers to cause the prince a visible shock when he was first presented to her. Yet he became deeply attached to his wife, and proved in fact nearly as uxorious as his father. Ferdinand was by temperament melancholy, shy and distrustful of his own abilities. When complimented on his shooting, he replied, "It would be hard if there were not something I could do." As king he followed a steady policy of neutrality between France and England, and refused to be tempted by the offers of either into declaring war on the other. In his life he was orderly and retiring, averse from taking decisions, though not incapable of acting firmly, as when he cut short the dangerous intrigues of his able minister Ensenada by dismissing and imprisoning him. Shooting and music were his only pleasures, and he was the generous patron of the famous singer Farinelli (q.v.), whose voice soothed his melancholy. The death of his wife Barbara, who had been devoted to him, and who carefully abstained from political intrigue, broke his heart. Between the date of her death in 1758 and his own on the 10th of August 1759 he fell into a state of prostration in which he would not even dress, but wandered unshaven, unwashed and in a night-gown about his park. The memoirs of the count of Fernan Nunez give a shocking picture of his death-bed.

A good account of the reign and character of Ferdinand VI. will be
found in vol. iv. of Coxe's _Memoirs of the Kings of Spain of the
House of Bourbon_ (London, 1815). See also _Vida de Carlos III._, by
the count of Fernan Nunez, ed. M. Morel Fatio and Don A. Paz y Melia
(1898).

FERDINAND VII., king of Spain (1784-1833), the eldest son of Charles IV., king of Spain, and of his wife Maria Louisa of Parma, was born at the palace of San Ildefonso near Balsain in the Somosierra hills, on the 14th of October 1784. The events with which he was connected were many, tragic and of the widest European interest. In his youth he occupied the painful position of an heir apparent who was carefully excluded from all share in government by the jealousy of his parents, and the prevalence of a royal favourite. National discontent with a feeble government produced a revolution in 1808 by which he passed to the throne by the forced abdication of his father. Then he spent years as the prisoner of Napoleon, and returned in 1814 to find that while Spain was fighting for independence in his name a new world had been born of foreign invasion and domestic revolution. He came back to assert the ancient doctrine that the sovereign authority resided in his person only. Acting on this principle he ruled frivolously, and with a wanton indulgence of whims. In 1820 his misrule provoked a revolt, and he remained in the hands of insurgents till he was released by foreign intervention in 1823. When free, he revenged himself with a ferocity which disgusted his allies. In his last years he prepared a change in the order of succession established by his dynasty in Spain, which angered a large part of the nation, and made a civil war inevitable. We have to distinguish the part of Ferdinand VII. in all these transactions, in which other and better men were concerned. It can confidently be said to have been uniformly base. He had perhaps no right to complain that he was kept aloof from all share in government while only heir apparent, for this was the traditional practice of his family. But as heir to the throne he had a right to resent the degradation of the crown he was to inherit, and the power of a favourite who was his mother's lover. If he had put himself at the head of a popular rising he would have been followed, and would have had a good excuse. His course was to enter on dim intrigues at the instigation of his first wife, Maria Antonietta of Naples. After her death in 1806 he was drawn into other intrigues by flatterers, and, in October 1807, was arrested for the conspiracy of the Escorial. The conspiracy aimed at securing the help of the emperor Napoleon. When detected, Ferdinand betrayed his associates, and grovelled to his parents. When his father's abdication was extorted by a popular riot at Aranjuez in March 1808, he ascended the throne--not to lead his people manfully, but to throw himself into the hands of Napoleon, in the fatuous hope that the emperor would support him. He was in his turn forced to make an abdication and imprisoned in France, while Spain, with the help of England, fought for its life. At Valancay, where he was sent as a prisoner of state, he sank contentedly into vulgar vice, and did not scruple to applaud the French victories over the people who were suffering unutterable misery in his cause. When restored in March 1814, on the fall of Napoleon, he had just cause to repudiate the impracticable constitution made by the cortes without his consent. He did so, and then governed like an evil-disposed boy--indulging the merest animal passions, listening to a small _camarilla_ of low-born favourites, changing his ministers every three months, and acting on the impulse of whims which were sometimes mere buffoonery, but were at times lubricous, or ferocious. The autocratic powers of the Grand Alliance, though forced to support him as the representative of legitimacy in Spain, watched his proceedings with disgust and alarm. "The king," wrote Gentz to the hospodar Caradja on the 1st of December 1814, "himself enters the houses of his first ministers, arrests them, and hands them over to their cruel enemies"; and again, on the 14th of January 1815, "The king has so debased himself that he has become no more than the leading police agent and gaoler of his country." When at last the inevitable revolt came in 1820 he grovelled to the insurgents as he had done to his parents, descending to the meanest submissions while fear was on him, then intriguing and, when detected, grovelling again. When at the beginning of 1823, as a result of the congress of Verona, the French invaded Spain,[1] "invoking the God of St Louis, for the sake of preserving the throne of Spain to a descendant of Henry IV., and of reconciling that fine kingdom with Europe," and in May the revolutionary party carried Ferdinand to Cadiz, he continued to make promises of amendment till he was free. Then, in violation of his oath to grant an amnesty, he revenged himself for three years of coercion by killing on a scale which revolted his "rescuers," and against which the duke of Angouleme, powerless to interfere, protested by refusing the Spanish decorations offered him for his services. During his last years Ferdinand's energy was abated. He no longer changed ministers every few months as a sport, and he allowed some of them to conduct the current business of government. His habits of life were telling on him. He became torpid, bloated and horrible to look at. After his fourth marriage in 1829 with Maria Christina of Naples, he was persuaded by his wife to set aside the law of succession of Philip V., which gave a preference to all the males of the family in Spain over the females. His marriage had brought him only two daughters. When well, he consented to the change under the influence of his wife. When ill, he was terrified by priestly advisers, who were partisans of his brother Don Carlos. What his final decision was is perhaps doubtful. His wife was mistress by his death-bed, and she could put the words she chose into the mouth of a dead man--and could move the dead hand at her will. Ferdinand died on the 29th of September 1833. It had been a frequent saying with the more zealous royalists of Spain that a king must be wiser than his ministers, for he was placed on the throne and directed by God. Since the reign of Ferdinand VII. no one has maintained this unqualified version of the great doctrine of divine right.

King Ferdinand VII. kept a diary during the troubled years 1820-1823,
which has been published by the count de Casa Valencia.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] Louis XVIII.'s speech from the throne, Jan. 28, 1823.

FERDINAND II. (1810-1859), king of the Two Sicilies, son of Francis I, was born at Palermo on the 12th of January 1810. In his early years he was credited with Liberal ideas and he was fairly popular, his free and easy manners having endeared him to the _lazzaroni_. On succeeding his father in 1830, he published an edict in which he promised to "give his most anxious attention to the impartial administration of justice," to reform the finances, and to "use every effort to heal the wounds which had afflicted the kingdom for so many years"; but these promises seem to have been meant only to lull discontent to sleep, for although he did something for the economic development of the kingdom, the existing burden of taxation was only slightly lightened, corruption continued to flourish in all departments of the administration, and an absolutism was finally established harsher than that of all his predecessors, and supported by even more extensive and arbitrary arrests. Ferdinand was naturally shrewd, but badly educated, grossly superstitious and possessed of inordinate self-esteem. Though he kept the machinery of his kingdom fairly efficient, and was a patriot to the extent of brooking no foreign interference, he made little account of the wishes or welfare of his subjects. In 1832 he married Cristina, daughter of Victor Emmanuel I., king of Sardinia, and shortly after her death in 1836 he took for a second wife Maria Theresa, daughter of archduke Charles of Austria. After his Austrian alliance the bonds of despotism were more closely tightened, and the increasing discontent of his subjects was manifested by various abortive attempts at insurrection; in 1837 there was a rising in Sicily in consequence of the outbreak of cholera, and in 1843 the Young Italy Society tried to organize a general rising, which, however, only manifested itself in a series of isolated outbreaks. The expedition of the Bandiera brothers (q.v.) in 1844, although it had no practical result, aroused great ill-feeling owing to the cruel sentences passed on the rebels. In January 1848 a rising in Sicily was the signal for revolutions all over Italy and Europe; it was followed by a movement in Naples, and the king granted a constitution which he swore to observe. A dispute, however, arose as to the nature of the oath which should be taken by the members of the chamber of deputies, and as neither the king nor the deputies would yield, serious disturbances broke out in the streets of Naples on the 15th of May; so the king, making these an excuse for withdrawing his promise, dissolved the national parliament on the 13th of March 1849. He retired to Gaeta to confer with various deposed despots, and when the news of the Austrian victory at Novara (March 1849) reached him, he determined to return to a reactionary policy. Sicily, whence the Royalists had been expelled, was subjugated by General Filangieri (q.v.), and the chief cities were bombarded, an expedient which won for Ferdinand the epithet of "King Bomba." During the last years of his reign espionage and arbitrary arrests prevented all serious manifestations of discontent among his subjects. In 1851 the political prisoners of Naples were calculated by Mr Gladstone in his letters to Lord Aberdeen (1851) to number 15,000 (probably the real figure was nearer 40,000), and so great was the scandal created by the prevailing reign of terror, and the abominable treatment to which the prisoners were subjected, that in 1856 France and England made diplomatic representations to induce the king to mitigate his rigour and proclaim a general amnesty, but without success. An attempt was made by a soldier to assassinate Ferdinand in 1856. He died on the 22nd of May 1856, just after the declaration of war by France and Piedmont against Austria, which was to result in the collapse of his kingdom and his dynasty. He was bigoted, cruel, mean, treacherous, though not without a certain bonhomie; the only excuse that can be made for him is that with his heredity and education a different result could scarcely be expected.

See _Correspondence respecting the Affairs of Naples and Sicily,
1848-1849, presented to both Houses of Parliament by Command of Her
Majesty_, 4th May 1849; _Two Letters to the Earl of Aberdeen_, by the
Right Hon. W.E. Gladstone, 1st ed., 1851 (an edition published in 1852
and the subsequent editions contain an _Examination of the Official
Reply of the Neapolitan Government_); N. Nisco, _Ferdinando II. il suo
regno_ (Naples, 1884); H. Remsen Whitehouse, _The Collapse of the
Kingdom of Naples_ (New York, 1899); R. de Cesare, _La Caduta d' un
Regno_, vol. i. (Citta di Castello, 1900), which contains a great deal
of fresh information, but is badly arranged and not always reliable.
(L. V.*)

FERDINAND III. (1769-1824), grand duke of Tuscany, and archduke of Austria, second son of the emperor Leopold II., was born on the 6th of May 1769. On his father becoming emperor in 1790, he succeeded him as grand duke of Tuscany. Ferdinand was one of the first sovereigns to enter into diplomatic relations with the French republic (1793); and although, a few months later, he was compelled by England and Russia to join the coalition against France, he concluded peace with that power in 1795, and by observing a strict neutrality saved his dominions from invasion by the French, except for a temporary occupation of Livorno, till 1799, when he was compelled to vacate his throne, and a provisional Republican government was established at Florence. Shortly afterwards the French arms suffered severe reverses in Italy, and Ferdinand was restored to his territories; but in 1801, by the peace of Luneville, Tuscany was converted into the kingdom of Etruria, and he was again compelled to return to Vienna. In lieu of the sovereignty of Tuscany, he obtained in 1802 the electorship of Salzburg, which he exchanged by the peace of Pressburg in 1805 for that of Wurzburg. In 1806 he was admitted as grand duke of Wurzburg to the confederation of the Rhine. He was restored to the throne of Tuscany after the abdication of Napoleon in 1814 and was received with enthusiasm by the people, but had again to vacate his capital for a short time in 1815, when Murat proclaimed war against Austria. The final overthrow of the French supremacy at the battle of Waterloo secured him, however, in the undisturbed possession of his grand duchy during the remainder of his life. The restoration in Tuscany was not accompanied by the reactionary excesses which characterized it elsewhere, and a large part of the French legislation was retained. His prime minister was Count V. Fossombroni (q.v.). The mild rule of Ferdinand, his solicitude for the welfare of his subjects, his enlightened patronage of art and science, his encouragement of commerce, and his toleration render him an honourable exception to the generality of Italian princes. At the same time his paternal despotism tended to emasculate the Tuscan character. He died in June 1824, and was succeeded by his son Leopold II. (q.v.).

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--A. von Reumont, _Geschichte Toscanas_ (Gotha, 1877);
and "Federico Manfredini e la politica Toscana nei primi anni di
Ferdinando III." (in the _Archivio Storico Italiano_, 1877); Emmer,
_Erzherzog Ferdinand III._, _Grossherzog von Toskana_ (Salzburg,
1871); C. Tivaroni, _L' Italia durante il dominio francese_, ii. 1-44
(Turin, 1889), and _L' Italia durante il dominio austriaco_, ii. 1-18
(Turin, 1893). See also under FOSSOMBRONI; VITTORIO; and CAPPONI,
GINO.

FERDINAND, MAXIMILIAN KARL LEOPOLD MARIA, king of Bulgaria (1861- ), fifth and youngest son of Prince Augustus of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, was born on the 26th of February 1861. Great care was exercised in his education, and every encouragement given to the taste for natural history which he exhibited at an early age. In 1879 he travelled with his brother Augustus to Brazil, and the results of their botanical observations were published at Vienna, 1883-1888, under the title of _Itinera Principum S. Coburgi_. Having been appointed to a lieutenancy in the 2nd regiment of Austrian hussars, he was holding this rank when, by unanimous vote of the National Assembly, he was elected prince of Bulgaria, on the 7th of July 1887, in succession to Prince Alexander, who had abdicated on the 7th of September preceding. He assumed the government on the 14th of August 1887, for Russia for a long time refused to acknowledge the election, and he was accordingly exposed to frequent military conspiracies, due to the influence or attitude of that power. The firmness and vigour with which he met all attempts at revolution were at length rewarded, and his election was confirmed in March 1896 by the Porte and the great powers. On the 20th of April 1893 he married Marie Louise de Bourbon (d. 1899), eldest daughter of Duke Robert of Parma, and in May following the Grand Sobranye confirmed the title of Royal Highness to the prince and his heir. The prince adhered to the Roman Catholic faith, but his son and heir, the young Prince Boris, was received into the Orthodox Greek Church on the 14th of February 1896. Prince Boris, to whom the tsar Nicholas III. became godfather, accompanied his father to Russia in 1898, when Prince Ferdinand visited St Petersburg and Moscow, and still further strengthened the bond already existing between Russia and Bulgaria. In 1908 Ferdinand married Eleanor (b. 1860), a princess of the house of Reuss. Later in the year, in connexion with the Austrian annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina and the crisis with Turkey, he proclaimed the independence of Bulgaria, and took the title of king or tsar. (See BULGARIA, and EUROPE: _History_.)

FERDINAND, duke of Brunswick (1721-1792), Prussian general field marshal, was the fourth son of Ferdinand Albert, duke of Brunswick, and was born at Wolfenbuttel on the 12th of January 1721. He was carefully educated with a view to a military career, and in his twentieth year he was made chief of a newly-raised Brunswick regiment in the Prussian service. He was present in the battles of Mollwitz and Chotusitz. In succession to Margrave Wilhelm of Brandenburg, killed at Prague (1744), Ferdinand received the command of Frederick the Great's _Leibgarde_ battalion, and at Sohr (1745) he distinguished himself so greatly at the head of his brigade that Frederick wrote of him, "le Prince Ferdinand s'est surpasse." The height which he captured was defended by his brother Ludwig as an officer of the Austrian service, and another brother of Duke Ferdinand was killed by his side in the charge. During the ten years' peace he was in the closest touch with the military work of Frederick the Great, who supervised the instruction of the guard battalion, and sought to make it a model of the whole Prussian army. Ferdinand was, moreover, one of the most intimate friends of the king, and thus he was peculiarly fitted for the tasks which afterwards fell to his lot. In this time he became successively major-general and lieutenant-general. In the first campaign of the Seven Years' War Ferdinand commanded one of the Prussian columns which converged upon Dresden, and in the operations which led up to the surrender of the Saxon army at Pirna (1756), and at the battle of Lobositz, he led the right wing of the Prussian infantry. In 1757 he was present, and distinguished himself, at Prague, and he served also in the campaign of Rossbach. Shortly after this he was appointed to command the allied forces which were being organized for the war in western Germany. He found this army dejected by a reverse and a capitulation, yet within a week of his taking up the command he assumed the offensive, and thus began the career of victory which made his European reputation as a soldier. His conduct of the five campaigns which followed (see SEVEN YEARS' WAR) was naturally influenced by the teachings of Frederick, whose pupil the duke had been for so many years. Ferdinand, indeed, approximated more closely to Frederick in his method of making war than any other general of the time. Yet his task was in many respects far more difficult than that of the king. Frederick was the absolute master of his own homogeneous army, Ferdinand merely the commander of a group of contingents, and answerable to several princes for the troops placed under his control. The French were by no means despicable opponents in the field, and their leaders, if not of the first grade, were cool and experienced veterans. In 1758 he fought and won the battle of Crefeld, several marches beyond the Rhine, but so advanced a position he could not well maintain, and he fell back to the Lippe. He resumed a bold offensive in 1759, only to be repulsed at Bergen (near Frankfort-on-Main). On the 1st of August of this year Ferdinand won the brilliant victory of Minden (q.v.). Vellinghausen, Wilhelmsthal, Warburg and other victories attested the increasing power of Ferdinand in the following campaigns, and Frederick, hard pressed in the eastern theatre of war, owed much of his success in an almost hopeless task to the continued pressure exerted by Ferdinand in the west. In promoting him to be a field marshal (November 1758) Frederick acknowledged his debt in the words, "Je n'ai fait que ce que je dois, mon cher Ferdinand." After Minden, King George II. gave the duke the order of the Garter, and the thanks of the British parliament were voted on the same occasion to the "Victor of Minden." After the war he was honoured by other sovereigns, and he received the rank of field marshal and a regiment from the Austrians. During the War of American Independence there was a suggestion, which came to nothing, of offering him the command of the British forces. He exerted himself to compensate those who had suffered by the Seven Years' War, devoting to this purpose most of the small income he received from his various offices and the rewards given to him by the allied princes. The estrangement of Frederick and Ferdinand in 1766 led to the duke's retirement from Prussian service, but there was no open breach between the old friends, and Ferdinand visited the king in 1772, 1777, 1779 and 1782. After 1766 he passed the remainder of his life at his castle of Veschelde, where he occupied himself in building and other improvements, and became a patron of learning and art, and a great benefactor of the poor. He died on the 3rd of July 1792. The merits, civil and military, of the prince were recognized by memorials not only in Prussia and Hanover, but also in Denmark, the states of western Germany and England. The Prussian memorials include an equestrian statue at Berlin (1863).

See E. v. L. Knesebeck, _Ferdinand, Herzog von Braunschweig und
Luneburg, wahrend des Siebenjahrigen Kriegs_ (2 vols., Hanover,
1857-1858); Von Westphalen, _Geschichte der Feldzuge des Herzogs
Ferdinands von Braunschweig-Luneburg_ (5 vols., Berlin, 1859-1872); v.
d. Osten, _Tagebuch des Herzogl. Gen. Adjutanten v. Reden_ (Hamburg,
1805); v. Schafer, _Vie militaire du marechal Prince Ferdinand_
(Magdeburg, 1796; Nuremberg, 1798); also the _Oeuvres_ of Frederick
the Great, _passim_, and authorities for the SEVEN YEARS' WAR.

FERDINAND (1577-1650), elector and archbishop of Cologne, son of William V., duke of Bavaria, was born on the 7th of October 1577. Intended for the church, he was educated by the Jesuits at the university of Ingolstadt, and in 1595 became coadjutor archbishop of Cologne. He became elector and archbishop in 1612 on the death of his uncle Ernest, whom he also succeeded as bishop of Liege, Munster and Hildesheim. He endeavoured resolutely to root out heresy in the lands under his rule, and favoured the teaching of the Jesuits in every possible way. He supported the league founded by his brother Maximilian I., duke of Bavaria, and wished to involve the leaguers in a general attack on the Protestants of north Germany. The cool political sagacity of the duke formed a sharp contrast to the impetuosity of the archbishop, and he refused to accede to his brother's wish; but, in spite of these temporary differences, Ferdinand sent troops and money to the assistance of the league when the Thirty Years' War broke out in 1619. The elector's alliance with the Spaniards secured his territories to a great extent from the depredations of the war until the arrival of the Swedes in Germany in 1630, when the extension of the area of the struggle to the neighbourhood of Cologne induced him to enter into negotiations for peace. Nothing came of these attempts until 1647, when he joined his brother Maximilian in concluding an armistice with France and Sweden at Ulm. The elector's later years were marked by a conflict with the citizens of Liege; and when the peace of Westphalia freed him from his enemies, he was able to crush the citizens and deprive them of many privileges. Ferdinand, who had held the bishopric of Paderborn since 1618, died at Arnsberg on the 13th of September 1650, and was buried in the cathedral at Cologne.

See L. Ennen, _Frankreich und der Niederrhein oder Geschichte von
Stadt und Kurstadt Koln seit dem 30 jahrigen Kriege_, Band i.
(Cologne, 1855-1856).

FERENTINO (anc. _Ferentinum_, to be distinguished from Ferentum or Ferentinum in Etruria), a town and episcopal see of Italy, in the province of Rome, from which it is 48 m. E.S.E. by rail. Pop. (1901) 7957 (town), 12,279 (commune). It is picturesquely situated on a hill 1290 ft. above sea-level, and still possesses considerable remains of ancient fortifications. The lower portion of the outer walls, which probably did not stand free, is built of roughly hewn blocks of a limestone which naturally splits into horizontal layers; above this in places is walling of rectangular blocks of tufa. Two gates, the Porta Sanguinaria (with an arch with tufa voussoirs), and the Porta S. Maria, a double gate constructed entirely of rectangular blocks of tufa, are preserved. Outside this gate is the tomb of A. Quinctilius Priscus, a citizen of Ferentinum, with a long inscription cut in the rock. See Th. Mommsen in _Corp. Inscrip. Lat._ x. (Berlin, 1883), No. 5853.

The highest part of the town, the acropolis, is fortified also; it has massive retaining walls similar to those of the lower town. At the eastern corner, under the present episcopal palace, the construction is somewhat more careful. A projecting rectangular terrace has been erected, supported by walls of quadrilateral blocks of limestone arranged almost horizontally; while upon the level thus formed a building of rectangular blocks of local travertine was raised. The projecting cornice of this building bears two inscriptions of the period of Sulla, recording its construction by two censors (local officials); and in the interior, which contains several chambers, there is an inscription of the same censors over one of the doors, and another over a smaller external side door. The windows lighting these chambers come immediately above the cornice, and the wall continues above them again. The whole of this construction probably belongs to one period (Mommsen, _op. cit._ No. 5837 seq.). The cathedral occupies a part of the level top of the ancient acropolis; it was reconstructed on the site of an older church in 1099-1118; the interior was modernized in 1693, but was restored to its original form in 1902. It contains a fine canopy in the "Cosmatesque" style (see _Relazione dei lavori eseguiti dall' ufficio tecnico per la conservazione dei monumenti di Rome a provincia_, Rome, 1903, 175 seq.). The Gothic church of S. Maria Maggiore, in the lower town (13th-14th century), has a very fine exterior; the interior, the plan of which is a perfect rectangle, has been spoilt by restoration. There are several other Gothic churches in the town.

Ferentinum was the chief town of the Hernici; it was captured from them by the Romans in 364 B.C. and took no part in the rising of 306 B.C. The inhabitants became Roman citizens after 195 B.C., and the place later became a _municipium_. It lay just above the Via Latina and, being a strong place, served for the detention of hostages. Horace praises its quietness, and it does not appear much in later history. (T. As.)

See further Ashby, _Rom. Mittell._ xxiv. (1909).

FERENTUM, or FERENTINUM, an ancient town of Etruria, about 6 m. N. of Viterbo (the ancient name of which is unknown) and 3-1/2 m. E. of the Via Cassia. It was the birthplace (32 A.D.) of the emperor Otho, was destroyed in the 11th century, and is now entirely deserted, though it retains its ancient name. It occupied a ridge running from east to west, with deep ravines on three sides. There are some remains of the city walls, and of various Roman structures, but the most important ruin is that of the theatre. The stage front is still standing; it is pierced by seven openings with flat arches, and shows traces of reconstruction. The acropolis was on the hill called Talone on the north-east.

See G. Dennis, _Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria_ (London, 1883), i.
156; _Notizie degli scavi_, 1900, 401; 1902, 84; 1905, 31.

FERETORY (from Lat. _feretrum_, a bier, from _ferre_, to bear), in architecture, the enclosure or chapel within which the "fereter" shrine, or tomb (as in Henry VII.'s chapel), was placed.

FERGHANA, or FERGANA, a province of Russian Turkestan, formed in 1876 out of the former khanate of Khokand. It is bounded by the provinces of Syr-darya on the N. and N.W., Samarkand on the W., and Semiryechensk on the N.E., by Chinese Turkestan (Kashgaria) on the E., and by Bokhara and Afghanistan on the S. Its southern limits, on the Pamirs, were fixed by an Anglo-Russian commission in 1885, from Zor-kul (Victoria Lake) to the Chinese frontier; and Shignan, Roshan and Wakhan were assigned to Bokhara in exchange for part of Darvaz (on the left bank of the Panj), which was given to Afghanistan. The area amounts to some 53,000 sq. m., of which 17,600 sq. m. are on the Pamirs. The most important part of the province is a rich and fertile valley (1200-1500 ft.), opening towards the S.W. Thence the province stretches northwards across the mountains of the Tian-shan system and southwards across the Alai and Trans-Alai Mts., which reach their highest point in Peak Kaufmann (23,000 ft.), in the latter range. The valley owes its fertility to two rivers, the Naryn and the Karadarya, which unite within its confines, near Namangan, to form the Syr-darya or Jaxartes. These streams, and their numerous mountain affluents, not only supply water for irrigation, but also bring down vast quantities of sand, which is deposited alongside their courses, more especially alongside the Syr-darya where it cuts its way through the Khojent-Ajar ridge, forming there the Karakchikum. This expanse of moving sands, covering an area of 750 sq. m., under the influence of south-west winds, encroaches upon the agricultural districts. The climate of this valley is dry and warm. In March the temperature reaches 68 deg. F., and then rapidly rises to 95 deg. in June, July and August. During the five months following April no rain falls, but it begins again in October. Snow and frost (down to -4 deg. F.) occur in December and January.