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THE AUSTRIAN INVASION of NAPLES of 1707 Naples, in 1707 CHAPTER SEVEN THE AUSTRIAN INVASION OF NAPLES OF 1707 Naples, in 1707, became for a brief period a battleground in the War of the Spanish Succession. In consequence, the Bourbons lost Naples to the Austrian Hapsburgs. This kind of transition would re­ quire new legal briefs, official celebrations, histories, memorial inscrip­ tions: the kinds of things early modern intellectuals were eager to provide their rulers. The Allies' grand strategy in their war against France and Spain during 1707 was to capitalize on their victories of the preceeding year and gain control of the western Mediterranean. The English general Marlborough had beaten the French at Ramillies in May of 1706 and taken Brabant and most of Flanders, his task in 1707 was to hold the attention of the main French army to Flanders. Marlborough's colleague Prince Eugene of Savoy who had relieved Turin in September, 1706, and driven the French out of northern Italy was to lead the major thrust into southern France. Eugene's aim was to capture Toulon, France's major naval base in the Medi­ terranean. And the Allies hoped that the successes in Spain of 1706 might be repeated. Madrid had fallen to an Allied Army, though they were only able to hold the city for several months before mak­ ing a strategic retreat. But the plan for 1707 failed. Eugene's army and a British fleet with Dutch support proved insufficient to capture Toulon; at Almansa in Spain on April 25, the Allied army was deci­ sively defeated by the Franco-Spanish forces.1 The Allies' only major success of the year was the Austrian capture of Naples, southern Italy and Sicily. Was this the time to seize the Kingdom of Naples? Perhaps, if Eugene had had the entire Austrian force concentrated in the north the operation against Toulon might have succeeded. But Naples was too attractive a prize to let go, and in that spring Allied optimism had been high. Naples was inadequately defended 1 The battle had the complexities and antitheses Churchill loved to relate: "His­ tory has noted the oddity that in this batde the English commanded by the French­ man, Galway (Ruvigny), were beaten by the French commanded by the Englishman, Berwick." Winston Churchill, Marlborough: His Life & Times (London: Sphere Books, 1967), vol. 3, 219. THE AUSTRIAN INVASION OF I707 133 and the territory seemed to be waiting for an invader bold enough to take it. No one imagined, since the French were on the run, that 8000 Austrian troops could make a decisive difference. The invasion of Naples had been preceeded by a long and drawn out diplomatic exchange in which the first skirmishing had taken place in Rome. From the beginning of the war, both the Spanish and Austrians sought to obtain the Investiture of Naples from the Pope. Rumors and accusations were exchanged. Each side spread stories that their rival ambassador had been caught in the middle of the night trying to smuggle into the Papal Palace the richly caparisoned palfry that should be given to the Pope as part of the investiture ceremony. Whether bewhigged diplomats were really running about in pursuit of a skittish horse is not certain. More serious and certain was the fighting in northern Italy between Austria and France which spilled across the borders of the Papal States. Papal representatives proved unable to graciously drive out the rival armies and to main­ tain the appearance of neutrality. After an incident in 1705 where a Papal general turned a blind eye to the French, the Austrians claimed themselves victims of Papal duplicity. Clement's apologies and at­ tempts at restitution were of no avail, but the death of the Emperor Leopold I in 1705 seemed to offer a chance to make amends with his successor Joseph I. Joseph, however, proved to be an even tougher adversary. To alarm the Papacy Joseph removed his ambassador from Rome, and dis­ missed the Papal nuncio from Vienna. No, Rome shouldn't panic, he said, for he had no interest in breaking relations, he was just suspending them until some other matters got straightened out. The series of Allied victories in 1706 changed the Pope's position in dras­ tic fashion. The defeat of the French in Northern Italy meant that the Pope had only his own few troops to hold the Austrians back. In the spring of 1707, Prince Eugene invaded southern France, and Field Marshall Daun and Martinitz prepared to conquer Naples. To accomplish this, safe passage across Papal territory was demanded; despite Spanish and French protests Clement yielded. To his dismay the Austrians chose not to take the shortest route, instead they marched close to Rome; the only purpose of this must have been to further intimidate or humiliate the Papacy. The invasion of Naples proved an easy success with no major engagements except for two seige opera­ tions which lasted a couple of months; the fortress of Gaeta offered the longest resistance, surrendering on October 23. That winter Joseph .
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