But what else could we expect? On 7 February Cardinal Ruffo had only 7 men; two months later, tenths of thousands of volunteers had rushed to his help from all across the Kingdom. Of course, there were also disreputable persons among them, but these did not form the "core" of the Army of the Saint Faith! The core was formed by noblemen, peasants, officers, middle-class people, even priests ready to leave their families, churches and wealth to follow a Cardinal and fight against Jacobinism.

Antonio Capece Minutolo, Prince of Canosa

What historiography does not want to acknowledge here (and for this reason it always reports only the violent actions, be them real or invented) is the real motivation that pushed the majority of the population to join - directly or indirectly - Sanfedismo: i.e. their clear and even violent refusal of Jacobinism and its revolutionary ideas and therefore their loyalty to their Catholic faith and the Bourbon family. This is the hearth of the matter, still aching today, after two hundred years. Neapolitan republicans could have even been unselfish (someone) and courageous (someone), many of them then met a tragic death, as we know, and paid their ideas with their own lives; we do not deny this. But why does historiography still denies that all the kingdom was anti-Jacobin? That the population was loyal to a traditional idea of Faith and Monarchy?

Just to make a few examples, I list some amazing data of cruel retaliations perpetrated by the Franco-Jacobin troops against unarmed and defenceless civilians (besides the already mentioned 10,000 Neapolitan casualties in the week of the Lazzaroni uprising): the first ferocious slaughters of civilians occurred in southern Lazio: 1,300 people were massacred at Isola Liri and in the nearby areas; Itri and Castelforte were devastated; 1,200 people were killed at Minturno in January, and other 800 in April; the inhabitants of Castellonorato were all massacred; 1,500 people were put to the sword in Isernia, 700 in the areas around Rieti, 700 at Guardiagrele, 4,000 at Andria, 2,000 in Trani, 3,000 in S. Severo, 800 at Carbonara, the entire population of Ceglie, etc.; still in 1806-10, in the war of Calabria, we recall 2,200 people killed in Amantea, 300 at Longobardi, etc.
As everybody knows, the French General Thiébou gave a total of 60,000 civilians (and civilians only) massacred by the Franco-Jacobin army in the five months of the Republic!
To conclude, these well-known events show that the Italian population, and in particular the southern population, refused the French Revolution in the name of their loyalty to their tradition and lawful governs. This is the real background of the heroic deeds of the Saint Faith: the population was against the Jacobins and loyal to the Bourbon monarchy.