Even in Naples and in his kingdom, if the rioters of the province followed the Neapolitan people and obeyed them, the barons obeyed the orders of the viceroy and sent and led armed people to block the city, followed by many local nobles who silenced the their anti-baronial resentments, and from gangs of marauders recruited anyway. The reaction and repression began, in Naples and in the provinces, which also the “civilians”, that is elements of the bourgeoisie, the “nobly living” etc., frightened of what was happening, gave a hand. In October, the Spanish fleet arrived, with Don Giovanni of Austria, and set about reoccupying Naples, after four days of desperate resistance from the people who halted or slowed down the Spanish progress. At this point, most of the nobility for Spain having been explained, Toraldo, suspected, he was killed and replaced with Gennaro Annese, “master rifleman of scoppette”. Partisans of Tommaso di Savoia, an old candidate, who immediately after July had offered Mazarin to lead an army to Naples; partisans of the Duke of Guise who boasted Angevin descent; partisans of a direct government of the Church, they make some propaganda among the people. Guise prevailed. Ambitious of the royal crown, not being able to have that of France, he turned to Naples. And at the end of ’47, he arrived with some ships, made himself captain general of the royal republic of Naples and stripped the Annese who then went to the Spaniards. But the fleet did little: the fortresses were always of Spain and it was not possible to proceed to landings. From the rioters, little friends of French, we did not get the support we hoped for. Mazarin and Guise proceeded with little or no unity. He worked for France, first of all he wanted to drive the Spaniards out of there and take away from them “the most beautiful joy of that crown”, as he wrote; he courted barons and nobility who were with weapons in hand and seemed the decisive element, considering “the main point is to earn the nobility” and making broad promises of special distinctions to each, “after the establishment of this kingdom”. And yet, he was soon to be disillusioned with the nobility as well. He then began to cultivate the people and the men he accepted, like Cardinal Filomarino archbishop of Naples: and on the one hand, he flattered the nobles with the hope of honors and pensions, on the other he paid homage of words to the republic.
In short, things were not going well in Naples. The popular offensive in February against the Spanish positions failed. Card. Mazarin, then, seemed to want to enter the enterprise more on purpose: that is, to direct it, to take the place of the people. He promised weapons, money, grain: but, he wrote to card. Grimaldi who worked for him in Rome and Naples, give them only if he could “pull the people from that chimera of a republic to a stable and secure domain”. Everything went bankrupt, because in April the Spaniards took the popular neighborhoods, arrested Guise. But the cardinal did not flinch. He turned again to Tommaso di Savoia who had already held practices in the Kingdom and had partisans there. He addressed all the Neapolitan exiles, promoted the desertion of those southerners who militated in Flanders for Spain, now attracted by the news of the revolution that came from there, he embarked them in Toulon on the fleet of Thomas. But in the meantime, the new and skilled viceroy, the Oñate, had managed to build some bridges towards the people. Tommaso di Savoia’s fleet occupied Procida, landed 2000 men near Salerno and occupied Vietri. But the enterprise soon proved in vain. And in August Tommaso went back to sea for Portolongone. The Neapolitan people were tired and calmed down. But for a few months it had been the protagonist of the Neapolitan drama. And he had shown energy, fighting spirit. Spain regained the upper hand with the help of the barony and nobility and, almost everywhere, also of the bourgeois. But nevertheless, he had to realize that the people had more vigor than the nobility, on which moreover even Mazarin had changed his mind: “full of vanity and haughtiness”.
According to THEMEPARKTOUR.COM, Spain once again referred to the old policy of the viceroys of the Ossuna type, that is, to caress the people, especially the low people, to set them up against the nobility, to satisfy them, except inasmuch as they demanded privileges and exemptions, inasmuch as they demanded that the nobles be subjected to the burden of taxes, and these taxes were not all to their advantage, to the detriment of the court, and the people were not extorted by them as before. The royal ministers almost always proceeded with a spirit of vengeance against the nobles, considered to be the cause of past riots, for their pride and their bad governance: with great indignation and grumbling of the nobles who saw civilians dominate. A shift in wealth had taken place and was taking place: people of small and medium-sized origins who did not count politically, had risen in wealth, culture, functions in civil society. And they want to go up again, they ask themselves why others should be on the top, why they have to pay taxes which then go mostly to the pockets of others, why they have to take off their caps in front of the others, why they have to stay apart from the others in church. others. Vice versa, further disintegration of baronial and city nobility, even if now victorious; internal disagreements between the two bodies of the nobility and within each of them; elements of the nobility that approach the middle classes between nobility and bourgeoisie, between nobility and people, where the intellectual element prevails.
