Under the volcano : empire and revolution in a Sicilian town

Abstract

Nelson was created Duke of Bronte and received the vast estate in 1799 as a gift from Ferdinand IV, King of the Two Sicilies. It was a standard, if especially ostentatious, form of military reward and reflected both the ‘Nelson-mania’ prevailing in Naples and the King's personal gratitude to the British for having saved his kingdom from the French Revolutionary armies. But the gift also brought disgrace on Nelson, in that it pointed to his dubious role in the brutal suppression of the Jacobin Republic in Naples (not to mention his love affair with the British ambassador's wife). All was not what it appeared to be in Bronte either. The first British men to arrive there found nothing but trouble and bad luck, and at the time of his death of 1805, Nelson was complaining that the place was a drain on his finances. After Nelson's death, his brother William inherited the estate and the title and, through William's daughter, Charlotte, Lady Bridport, the estate passed to the Bridport family.