political and administrative unity to small communities that are distant from each other however rivals. After a bitter confrontation with the Greek family, another important noble family of Fossese, the new center was named Fossa first and then Villa San Giovanni (the new name given by the decree of King Ferdinand IV of 6 November 1791). Villa then had a population of about 1,200 inhabitants. The town was then devastated by an earthquake on 5 February 1783. In 1797 the villagers then got to elect their own mayors (three, according to the order of the time) and the birth of the University of Villa San Giovanni, corresponding to the current municipality, can be dated to the following year. On 7 January 7, 1799, Cardinal Fabrizio Ruffo disembarked at Pezzo, and began his reconquest of the Kingdom of Naples; from 8 February many volunteers from the area began to join the army of the Holy Faith at Pezzo. In 1807, Cannitello and Piale broke away from Villa, forming their own municipality, with headquarters in Cannitello, but unable to understand Pezzo, which remained inside Villa. The Napoleonic period and Gioacchino Murat In 1810 Gioacchino Murat, King of Naples and brother-in-law of Napoleon Bonaparte, for four months ruled the southern kingdom from the heights of Piale. He, moving from Naples to the conquest of Sicily (where King Ferdinand IV had taken refuge under the protection of the English, an army which was camped near Punta Faro in Messina), arrived in Scilla on 3 June 1810 and remained there until 5 July, when the great Piale encampment was completed. In the short period of stay, Murat built the three forts of Torre Cavallo, Altafiumara and Piale, the latter with a telegraph tower. On 26 September of the same year, seeing the conquest of Sicily as a difficult undertaking, Murat abandoned the Piale encampment and left for the capital. The French troops were present in the strategic territory of Villa throughout the first fifteen years of the nineteenth century ; this constituted a negative element for the majority of the population and for the local economy. In fact, the Napoleonic government constantly imposed extraordinary expenses on the municipalities of Villa and Cannitello for the maintenance of the troops stationed there, which often harmed the flourishing commercial activities of the city, such as the spinning mill of Rocco Antonio Caracciolo. In addition, the proximity of Villa