Kingdom of Naples

The Kingdom of Naples was a French client state in southern Italy created in 1806 when the Bourbon Ferdinand IV & III of Naples and Sicily sided with the Third Coalition against Napoleon and was in return ousted from his kingdom by a French invasion. Joseph Bonaparte, elder brother of Napoleon I, was installed in his stead: Joseph conferred the title "Prince of Naples" to be hereditary to his children and grandchildren. When Joseph became King of Spain in 1808, Napoleon appointed his brother-in-law Joachim Murat to take his place. Murat was later deposed by the Congress of Vienna in 1815 after striking at Austria in the Neapolitan War, in which he was decisively defeated at the Battle of Tolentino. History Although the Napoleonic kings were officially styled King of Naples and Sicily, British domination of the Mediterranean made it impossible for the French to gain control of Sicily, where Ferdinand had fled, and French power was confined to the mainland Kingdom of Naples alone while Ferdinand continued to reside in and rule the Kingdom of Sicily. In the modernising spirit of the French Revolution, the regimes of Joseph and Murat implemented a programme of sweeping reforms to the organisation and structure of the ancient feudal kingdom. On 2 August 1806, feudalism was abolished, and all the rights and privileges of the nobility suppressed. The practice of tax farming was also ended. The collection of all taxes slowly brought under direct central control as the government brought out the contractors and compensated those who had lost their feudal tax-collecting privileges with bonds. The first public street-lighting system, modelled on that of Paris, was also installed in the city of Naples during Joseph's reign. Continuing the anti-clerical sentiment of the Revolution, church property was confiscated en masse and auctioned off as biens nationaux (in compensation for the loss of feudal privileges, the nobles received a certificate which could be exchanged for such properties). However, not all church land was sold immediately, with some retained to support charitable and educational foundations. Most monastic orders were also suppressed and their funds transferred to the royal treasury; the Benedictines and Jesuits were dissolved, but Joseph preserved the Franciscans.