FERDINANDO II of Bourbon, king of the Two Sicilies. — Son of Francesco I and Maria Isabella of Spain, born in Palermo on 12 January 1809, died in Naples on 22 May 1859. Having ascended the throne on 8 November 1830, he married, on 21 November 1832, Maria Cristina di Savoia, who died all too soon. At first he seemed inclined to indulgence and a certain generosity, but later adopted a conservative policy and appointed Saverio Del Carretto, who had suppressed the disturbances in Cilento under Francesco I, to direct the police. Liberal uprisings began immediately, complicated by the separatism of the Sicilians, who, in addition to reforms, demanded separation from Naples, with administrative independence for the former Kingdom of Sicily. In 1837, on the occasion of the cholera epidemic, the first Sicilian uprisings broke out to obtain an alter ego for the count of Siracusa, the king’s brother. Del Carretto, instead, in order to achieve greater integration among the subjects on the two sides of the Faro, increased the transfers of Sicilian officials to Naples and of Neapolitans to Sicily. It was then that Michele Amari, one of those transferred to Naples, published (1842) the first edition of the Storia del Vespro, a veiled protest by the Sicilians against the Bourbons. In 1844 disturbances occurred on the mainland, ending with the execution by firing squad of the Bandiera brothers.
In 1847 Luigi Settembrini published the Protesta dei popoli delle Due Sicilie; on 12 January 1848 the revolution began in Palermo, and within a few days it separated the island from the mainland. On 29 January F., the first among the Italian sovereigns, granted a constitution modeled on that of France in 1830; he then allowed Neapolitan troops to maneuver against Austria. But the uprising of 15 May 1848 in Naples set F. back on the path of absolutism: he dissolved Parliament, subdued Sicily without foreign intervention, and, through inexorable trials, struck down all those who longed for institutional innovations that he considered extremely dangerous. In 1856 Agesilao Milano made a vain attempt on his life.
With regard to F., the liberal tradition has too readily forgotten the attention the King devoted to agriculture, industry, the administration of the State, and especially the army, as well as to the navy, which became one of the most powerful in the Mediterranean, and the attitude of courageous independence he assumed toward England in the sulfur question, when he did not yield even before the threat to bombard Naples. English politicians never forgave him such firmness. He had the first Italian railway built (1839) and expanded telegraphic communications. He hosted the Congress of Italian Scientists in 1845. From the end of 1848 to 1850 he welcomed Pio IX, exiled from Rome, at Gaeta and Portici; in his dealings with ecclesiastical authority, however, he was unable entirely to free himself from the jurisdictionalism traditional in his House, and, among other things, forced La Civiltà Cattolica to leave Naples for Rome.