[12] Memoirs of General Pépé. Written by himself. London, 1846.
Upon the fifth day of February, 1783, the province of Calabria was visited with a terrific earthquake. "The sway of earth _shook_ like a thing unfirm," thousands of houses crumbled to their base, tens of thousands of human beings were buried beneath ruins, or engulfed by the gaping ground. In the small and ancient town of Squillace, the devastation was frightful; amongst others, the spacious mansion of the noble family of PÉPÉ was overthrown and utterly destroyed. At the time of this calamity, Irene Assanti, the wife of Gregorio Pépé, was in daily expectation of being brought to bed. In vain was it attempted to find a fitting refuge for the suffering and feeble woman. The ruin that had overtaken her dwelling extended for leagues around; not a roof-tree stood in the doomed district; misery and desolation reigned throughout the land. A tent was hastily erected; and, under its scanty shelter, in a season of extreme rigour, the lady gave birth to a son, who was baptised by the name of William.
Soothsayers would have augured a stormy existence to the child who thus first saw light when "the frame and huge foundation of the earth shak'd like a coward." Such omens might have attended the birth of an Alexander, a Cæsar, or a Napoleon, marking the advent of one of those human meteors sent at long intervals to astonish and dazzle the world. In this instance, if the man born during Nature's most terrible convulsion, was not destined to exercise a material or lasting influence on the fate of nations, at least his lot was cast in troublous and agitated times; he took share in great events, came in contact with extraordinary men, passed through perils and adventures such as few encounter, and fewer still survive. The last sixty years, comprising the most interesting and important chapter in the history of Europe, perhaps of the world, have been prolific in sudden transformations and startling reverses of fortune. During that period of revolution and restless activity, we have seen peasants become princes, private soldiers occupying the thrones of great and civilized countries, obscure individuals in every walk of life raised by opportunity, genius, and the caprice of fate, to the most exalted positions. Some of these have maintained themselves on the giddy pinnacle on which fortune placed them. They are the few. Reverses, even more sudden and extraordinary than their upward progress, have cast down the majority from their high estate. The transitions have been rapid, from the palace to the prison, from the sway of kingdoms to the sufferings of emigration, from the command of mighty armies to the weariness and obscurity of a forced inactivity. Fortunes built up in a year, have been knocked down in a month; again reconstructed, they have been yet more rapidly destroyed. Such changes have been as numerous, often as strikingly contrasted, as the shifting visions of a magic lantern, or the fitful corruscations of a firework. Within a short half century, how often has the regal purple been bartered for the fugitive's disguise, the dictator's robe for a prison garb, the fortunate soldier's baton of command for the pilgrim's staff and the bitter bread of exile. Notable instances of such disastrous fluctuations are to be found in the memoirs of the Neapolitan general Guglielmo Pépé.