FERDINAND II OF BOURBON, King of the Two Sicilies. - Son of Francis I and Maria Isabella of Spain, b. in Palermo on 12 Jan. 1809, d. in Naples on 22 May 1859. Having ascended the throne on 8 Nov. 1830, he married on 21 Nov. 1832 Maria Cristina of Savoy, who died too soon. At first he seemed to indulge in some liberality, then he inclined toward a conservative policy and called to head the police Saverio Del Carretto, who had repressed the revolts of Cilento under Francis I. The liberal revolts began at once, complicated by the separatism of the Sicilians, who, besides reforms, demanded separation from Naples, with the administrative independence of the ancient Kingdom of Sicily. In 1837, on the occasion of the cholera, the first Sicilian revolts broke out to obtain the alter ego for the count of Syracuse, the king's brother. Del Carretto instead, in order to achieve greater fusion between the subjects on the two sides of the Strait, 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 covert protest of the Sicilians against the Bourbons. In 1844 there occurred on the mainland disorders that ended with the shooting of the Bandiera brothers.
In 1847 Luigi Settembrini published the Protesta dei popoli delle Due Sicilie; on 12 Jan. 1848 the revolution began in Palermo, which within a few days separated the island from the mainland. F. on 29 Jan. granted, first among the Italian sovereigns, a constitution modeled on the French one of 1830; he then allowed Neapolitan troops to maneuver against Austria. But the uprising of 15 May 1848 in Naples put F. back on the path of absolutism: he dissolved Parliament, subdued Sicily without foreign intervention and with inexorable trials struck down all those who yearned for institutional innovations that he deemed supremely dangerous. In 1856 Agesilao Milano vainly attempted his life.
Regarding F., the liberal tradition has too easily forgotten the care brought by the King to agriculture, to industry, to the administration of the State, to the army in particular, to the navy, which became one of the most powerful in the Mediterranean, and the attitude of courageous independence assumed toward England in the sulfur question, when he did not yield even before the threat of the bombardment of 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 Pius IX, exiled from Rome, at Gaeta and Portici; however, in his relations with the ecclesiastical authority he could not entirely divest himself of that jurisdictionalism which was traditional in his House, and among other things he forced La Civiltà Cattolica to leave Naples for Rome.
Bibliography6 works
d. Riv., fasc. 2 (1933); R. Moscati, Austria. Napoli e gli Stati conservatori italiani, Naples 1942; id., F. II di Barbone nei documenti diplomatici austriaci, Naples 1947.
Carmelo Trasselli