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Military
Measures:
- he established many military colleges and an academy
for arms, and reorganised the army;
- he reorganised the navy and when in 1790 the Ruggiero
vessel caught fire while being build in Castellammare,
the subjects spontaneously offered the King one million
ducats to rebuild it;
- he published the military Criminal Code.
Economic Measures:
- he established a Stock Exchange and opened many
new trades, such as the fishing of coral;
- he made many good laws for the Tavoliere area in
the Apulia region, and many colonies could be established
since he exempted from taxation for 40 years the farmers
that would live, farm and improve those wasted lands;
to this end, he also established a wheat exchange;
- he greatly diminished direct and indirect taxes
to be paid by the citizens (especially those to be
paid to the barons), such as the tax on tobacco, tolls
and silk in some provinces.
Civil, Social and Charity Measures:
Royal silk factory in San Leucio |
-
he populated the islands of Ustica and Lampedusa,
chasing out the Barbaresques and building fortresses;
- Established a Bank for military orphans and
gave it an annuity of 30,000 ducats, to educate
the sons of military people who had died and
to provide for the dowry of their daughters;
- Albanians and Greeks present in the Kingdom
were gathered in colonies and he established
schools and seminars for them and a place for
trade in Brindisi; moreover, he established
a Catholic Greek Rite Episcopate;
- when a popular collection was made in Naples
for the wedding of the Crown Prince, he accepted
only a small part of the money collected (70,000
ducats) which he entirely assigned to charity
for the poor of the city;
- he built the San Leucio silk factory according
to Rousseau’s criteria of equality;
- before the French Revolution, he steadily
defended the State prerogatives against the
Church; after 1815 he was more generous, although
by the Concordat of 1818 he always maintained
his prerogative to choose the bishops;
- in 1818 the first Italian steamer set sail
from Naples and crossed the Mediterranean;
- he introduced the duty of the magistrates
to justify their decree.
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This
is the King that the national historiographic "vulgata"
has always presented as an ignorant, unrefined, fanatic
and reactionary person. A "Rascal", "popular"
King; and in fact the people always took his side.
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