Naples remained in the hands of Vicar Pignatelli Strongoli, who later was deprived of power by the Corp of the Elected, an ancient aristocratic body in which towered young Antonio Capece Minutolo prince of Canosa, tireless upholder (for all his life) of the Bourbon legitimacy; but in reality, in January anarchy ruled the capital, especially when the French were gradually approaching it. To the news that also the stronghold of Capua surrendered to the Napoleonic forces without fighting, the "Lazzari" (Lazzaroni) - tenths of thousands of Neapolitan members of the lower classes - took over the control of the city, ready to fight to death against local French and Jacobin allied to defend their Throne and their religion.

The Lazzaroni assault Castelnuovo

The Lazzari revolt began on 13 January 1799 and forced the Neapolitan democrats to take refuge in the strongholds of the capital. When Championnet decided to attack Naples, the Lazzaroni began a heroic and impossible resistance that lasted until 23 January and caused 10,000 casualties among the Neapolitans and 1,000 among the French. On 21 January, while the entire city was fighting, and dying, against the French, a few Jacobins shut in Castel S.Elmo proclaimed the official birth of the Neapolitan Republic.

At the end Championnet conquered the city (it took him three French armies to defeat the popular resistance and he had to make recourse to the atrocity of setting fire to the houses to force the people to come out and then he shot them) .
In the days that followed the taking of Naples and the establishment of the Jacobin Republic, a Catholic Cardinal, prince and member of one of the most ancient families of the Kingdom, Fabrizio Ruffo of the Dukes of Baranello and Bagnara, at that time director of S. Leucio Colony, took the initiative of going to Palermo to ask the King men and vessels to reconquer the Kingdom.
We will never know what pushed Ruffo to do this and what exactly he had in mind. He wasn’t a general, but only a noble priest, as there were many in those days. What is sure is that, once he arrived in Palermo and spoke to the sovereigns, he got the title of plenipotentiary Vicar of the King, a vessel and seven men.
Whoever else would have probably given up this foolish idea, but not Ruffo. He really set off with what he had and on 7 February 1799 he landed in Calabria at Pizzo, near the fiefs of his family. There was just the eight of them. Four months later, the army formed by volunteers of the Holy Faith (Ruffo called his army "The Army of the Holy Faith" or "Catholic and Royal Army"), or Sanfedists, counted tenths of thousands of people, entered Naples in triumph and restored the Bourbon monarchy. This is undoubtedly the most heroic page of all the history of the Italian Counterrevolution and most probably among the most moving ones. For these reasons, facing these events no one could remain unmoved: either they had to be celebrated as they deserved or defamed and reappraised. In the past two centuries, and especially in the last one, Italian historiography chose the latter. Of course, it is not possible to relate the historical events of that expedition. Here we would just mention that, while in the northern provinces of the Kingdom thousands of peoples had already risen up spontaneously as soon as Ferdinand issued the proclamation of general defence of the Kingdom on 8 December 1798, Cardinal Ruffo began his reconquest of Calabria in April, and only in May did he move north, touching Matera and then Altamura and afterwards reaching Manfredonia and Ariano, where he arrived on 5 June and got ready to march on the capital. As everybody know, he took the capital after a tragic battle that saw the Neapolitan Lazzari again in action on 13 June, the very day dedicated to Saint Anthony, official Patron Saint of the "Catholic and Royal Army".

Ferdinand and Maria Carolina

In those days, during the siege of Naples, he tried to save the Jacobins shut in Castel S. Elmo, and therefore he offered them a way to escape via land; but they preferred to trust in Nelson, who was besieging Naples from the sea; Nelson had 99 of them hanged, and from this ruthless action the myth of the "Martyrs of the Neapolitan Republic" stemmed out and the fault has always been wrongly given to the Bourbon. However, as we explained above when we talked of Ferdinand IV, although the King could have perhaps been more merciful and spared some of them, very unlikely could he had saved from capital punishment those who were guilty of high treason, who had conspired with a revolutionary invader and caused the fall of the Monarchy and the Kingdom in the hands of the enemy, and, moreover, who had done this without the least support of the people, even against the people’s will (not only the citizens of Naples), as the previous months had shown unequivocally.