The Sun.
London, England, 1862-09-18 00:00:00

THE STATE TRIALS AT NAPLES.

The following letters, from the Count de Christen and
Achille Caracciolo, who were lately tried for conspiracy and
sentenced to 10 years at the galleys, were recently pub-
lished in the Indipendente, M, Dumas' paper:—
Prison of Santa Maria Apparent°, Naples,
August 20, 1862.

My dear Friend,—You ask me for some information re-
specting my trial, and the condemnation with which it con-
cluded, and I will give it to you, from which you will be
edified touching the 'administration of justice in the new
and regenerated kingdom of Italy.
,was arrested during the night of the 0-7th September
1861, #theut knowing,temitbotra4d.while 11E4 tranquilly
in my bed at the Hotel de Rome. hail come to Naples
on business altogether foreign to polities, and with an
English passport, knowing very well that the police of
Naples, if they had known my real name, would have
played me some trick, as is their fashion, for the Pied-
montese Government sought to avenge itself on me on
account of events which had occurred in the Abruzzi be-
tween the month of September, 1860, and the month of
March, 1861—an epoch at which I commanded some vo-
lunteer troops, to whom were joined peasants of the coun-
try, and with some hundreds of those Neapolitans who are
so much despised by the Italianissimi. I had the happiness
to contend continually with. forces ten times superior to
mine, and to keep for seven months, in those countries,
towns and villages in obedience to their legitimate Sove-
reign. I returned with my men into the Roman States, after
the fall of Gaeta, in obedience to the reiterated commands of
his Majesty Francis IL, who, wishing to cause the effusion
of blood to cease, himself gave orders for the citadel of Mes-
sina and Civitella del Tronto to submit. At last a treaty
was concluded between the Piedmontese Government and
France, represented by the Duke de Grammont—a conven-
tion which gave to my officers and soldiers the same advan-
tages with those who capitulated at Gaeta. It is needless to
say that, contrary to all good faith, contrary to every pro-
mise, these unfortunate men were sent to the Isle of Ponza,
in which criminals are usually kept ; and although I had
treated as brothers the Piedmontese officers and soldiers
taken prisoners during the campaign, the enemy shot the
relatives and burnt the property of the peasants who were
under my orders. This was the recompense of my humane
proceeding while carrying on a loyal war against a disloyal
one I . . . . The famous Fria process I Not having
been able to lay hold of me at the time I had my gun in
my hand, and not daring to condemn me for the Abruzzi
affair, in which affair I was under the protection of the
French flag, they found no better way of criminating me
than to complicate me in a supposed conspiracy, and thus
to obtain in an infamous manner a cowardly vengeance.
They acted with the same disloyalty towards a brave and
good officer belonging to the ex-army of Naples, who had
always been under my orders, the,Chevalier Achille Carac-
ciolo.

In July, 1861, two months after my arrest, the police
discovered and seized a so-called Bourbonian committee,
which was afterwards baptised the Frisa committee ; and
the process that was commenced against us was called the
Cenatiempo process. As at the time of my arrest there
was only this political process going on into which, without
too great a display of impudence, I might be thrust, they
implicated me in this one. The same was done with regard
to M. Caracciolo, arrested within a few days of the close of
Sept. 1861, at Cosenza. In the month of Dec. the prelimi-
nary proceedings were concluded, and I hoped that I should
have been brought to trial. Five months passed thus,
notwithstanding continual reclamations on my part—re-
clamations supported by my consul. The agents of the
government every fortnight promised, upon their honour,
that the trial should be begun during the next fifteen days.
It is needless to say that their word of honour was never
kept. At last, the French Government having demanded
a solution of the affair, the pleadings were appointed to be
heard during the last half of the month of April, a term in
which I placed no•faith, as I bad the honour to say to the
ambassador, M. Benedetti, when he visited the prison of
Santa Maria Apparente. I predicted to him that they
would not cause me to be judged by the magistrates, who
would find it impossible to condemn me, for there was
nothing that I could be charged with; but the instruction
of the jury was waited for, as over the jurors [the court]
the police would possess full power, and would insist with
all their might upon my condemnation. The result proved
the correctness of my prediction.

- -
In fine, on the 18th of July, after a year occupied with
the proceedings, I appeared before the court of assize,
composed of Messrs. Jean AndrC d'Andrea, president;
Dominique Lamagua, advocate; Alexander Sterliti, ditto;
Jean Labriola, ditto; Raphael Cerique, ditto ; Raphael
Carteni, ditto : Gennaro Masseolo, professor ; Francis
Laurentei, ditto; Salvatore Colonnese, merchant; Domi-
nique Russo, wine merchant; Bencit Pittocchi, Jean Piro-
mallo, Caprece Fisciolli, Vincent Lombardi, Michael Cara-
vita, and Vincent Clausi, Procuratore del Rt.
After the opening of the pleadings the advocates received
letters containing menaces to the effect that they would be
poignarded if they continued to defend us. They also sent
to the jurors threats of the same kind in case they should
acquit us, which was a very useless proceeding, for they had
been previously bribed. The police sent every day a num-
ber of persons in disguise, who acted under the direction of
several superior employes of the Questure, and those also
who pleaded before the tribune with the consent of the Pro-
curatore Generale, M. Clausi, were under the direction of
the delegate of police, Alexander Avitabile, and who had
also the duty of insulting the accused on arriving and de-
parting from the court.
The result of 18 days' pleadings went to show that I had
no connection with those who composed the Frisa commit-
mittee. There was but one witness, a certain Noli, a spy
of the police,:who accused me of having visited two or three
times the Count de Coatandon and Viscount de Lapo, who
had hired an apartment in the Palace of Frisa, and had
there conspired. During the examination of this witness
I requested to ask Noli if he had received any orders from
me, or if he knew one single person who had received
sesnd aYt
orders from me. Noli did not know what to sat,
speak
. p
last declared that he had heard me through the
hdoor rsons
on politics with my friends, and this although s'ee w- eord of
with whom he said I talked did not know a single But the
Italian, and Noli did not know a word of French.
y caused a
police had another arrow for their bow. Thew
coachman to appear, a certain Pascal Lucotterho naively
eats of fitter°
confessed to following the combined eeliwonl: This indivi-
driver and rendering services to the P°Tee at the beginning
dual pretended to have received fon! Tres
observed to the
to convey some
of July, at the Hotel de Rome, 17 Pplee
reactionaries to the band of IreeriTi lodged at the Hotel
President that in the month of ;V Lumley Woodgar
de Geneve, under the name
eft, Droll pretended that he had
finding that he was caught.oureas
t have been near the cora-
mistaken the date, and that ietdays before my arrest. 1 ob-
mencement of August, onus
this
that at the commencement
kingdom of Italy, and that my
served to the President
tobe
of August I was not in
at
that period, but really in Se
arrest had not taken P t e
h witnesses brought against me.
tember. These we
the spy Noli, of more than 100 denun-
However, to returnby win
nothing was retained except what
perefit :ou net be without its use to make you ac-
concerned us•e of the incidents of
woe on-
boar much the government was embittered
quainted
will show among the witnesses against us was a certain
must us-
a
ag delegate of the police, in the service of GeneralZ
ifare'ra. He uttered a romance so inconsistent and so
oil Doa
impudent that the president himself and the jurors were
indignant against him and ordered him out of the room.
in the course of the day General La Marmora wrote a letter
in which he complained of the want of respect towards us by
that individual, and suggested as a reparation that the chief
messenger hicissier, who brought him forward should be
discharged from his employment, adding that the de-
claration of Cifarello ought not to be taken into
consideration. M. La Cecilia complained of this on
the following day in his defence, in spite of the efforts of
the president to impose silence upon him. During the
campeign in the Abruzzi, and precisely on the 27th of
December, 1860, M. Caricciolo sent me a loiter to Foro
APpio, where I was a prisoner to a detachment of French
soldiers (40th of the line). In that letter M. Caracciolo
gave me information concerning one of my columns which
was under his command. lle told me that he had sent one
of the adjutants to Fiorentino to collect the other troops,
and he expressed a wish that I might be set at liberty. On
the 22d of January, 1861, I was with the entire column at
the Convent of Casamari (on the frontiers of the Pontifical
States), in which I had requested hospitality for some hours,
in order that I might cause my men to dry and rest them-
selves, they having twice during the preceding day crossed
a ford on the River Liri. I believed myself then sheltered
from all surprise, reckoning on the inviolability of the
territory of the iloly Father; but at two o'clock in the s