Ferdinand II.

Ferdinand II., king of the Two Sicilies, grandson of the preceding, son of Francis I. by his second wife, Isabella Maria of Spain, was born at Palermo, 12th January 1810. He succeeded his father in 1830, and after a brief period of promise soon showed himself as corrupt and worthless a king as his predecessors. His first wife, a daughter of Victor Emmanuel I., dying in 1836, he married Maria Theresa, daughter of the Archduke Charles of Austria, and consequently gave himself more and more up to Austrian counsels, which saw danger for the whole peninsula in liberal measures. Henceforward Naples became the scene of incessant conspiracy, insurrection, bloodshed, and political prosecutions. Ferdinand yielded to the storm of 1848, and granted a constitution to both parts of his dominions, but the Sicilians mistrusted, and with reason, the king's pledges, and declared that he and his family had forfeited the Sicilian crown. Ferdinand followed the constitution so far as to call the promised national parlia- ment together, but quickly dismissed it, impatient of any interference with his authority. He subdued the revolt in Sicily by the inhuman bombardment of its chief cities that earned him the epithet of 'Bomba,' which will live in history to his eternal dishonour. He now completely set aside the new constitution, while all who had taken any part in state reforms were subjected to those cruel persecutions which the Letters of Mr Gladstone in 1851 held up to the execration of the world. Bomba died 22d May 1859, and was succeeded by his son Francis II. (1836-94), the weak and cowardly 'Bombino,' whose reign of cruelty quickly fell before the victorious enthusiasm of Garibaldi and the triumphant progress of Italian unity. See Nisco, Ferdinando II. (Naples 1884).