Ferdinand (Ferrante) II
Part of The Encyclopedia of Southern Italy.
Ferdinand (Ferrante) II: King of Naples (r.1495-1496).Ferdinand II of the Two Sicilies: (b. Jan. 12, 1810 in Palermo; d. May 22, 1859, at Naples). King of the Two Sicilies (r1830-1859). The son of Francis I and grandson of Ferdinand I, he succeeded his father on the throne in 1830. Ferdinand’s early acts as king seemed to suggest that he would turn the Regno into an enlightened, liberal state. Unfortunately, this proved to be a false hope and it was not long before Ferdinand had adopted the heavy-handed absolutism practiced by his father and grandfather. This would lead to a series of revolts (1833, 1837, 1841, 1844, and 1847) all of which failed to convince Ferdinand to soften his hard line. Even the great uprisings of 1848, which gave the island of Sicily a brief taste of independence, and a liberal constitution to the mainland part of the kingdom, failed in the end. The Sicilian republic fell to the bombardment of its cities by Ferdinand’s troops (for which he earned the international nick-name of King Bomba), while the constitution and the chamber of deputies it spawned lasted only a matter of months. Ferdinand dealt harshly with those who opposed him politically. The British politician William Gladstone, who visited the harsh prisons of Naples during a holiday trip in 1857, estimated that Ferdinand had imprisoned at least 13,000 citizens for political reasons. Gladstone referred to Ferdinand’s regime as the “negation of God.” Ferdinand’s international relations were not warm. One of his few true friends was his neighbor Pope Pius IX, whom he sheltered at Gaeta during a brief period in 1848-49 when Rome rose up and formed a republic. Ferdinand chose to model his style of rule upon the Russian czars, sharing their reactionary policies and autocratic tendencies. His affairs with the more liberal governments in Britain, France, and Piedmont-Sardinia were far cooler. His hostility to political, economic and social reforms would last throughout his reign and ultimately led to the final doom of the Regno during the brief reign of his son and successor, Francis II.