launched an ineffective offensive against Neapolitan radicals, allowing the most dangerous schemers to escape justice. Why the offensive failed can be explained by the fact that her chief of police, Luigi de' Medici, was secretly a radical himself. Concurrently, Maria Carolina arranged a treaty of alliance with Great Britain, on whom France had latterly declared war. By this treaty, Naples was to contribute four men-of-war, four frigates and four smaller ships, along with six thousand soldiers, to protect commerce in the Mediterranean. In August 1793, following the Siege of Toulon, Naples joined the First Coalition, comprising Great Britain, Russia, Austria, Prussia, Spain, Portugal and Savoy-Sardinia, against France. Italian campaign The execution of Marie Antoinette in October 1793 breathed a new lease of life into the queen’s counter-revolution. Maria Carolina was so horrified by that event that she refused to speak French, "that monstrous language", and banned the "inflammatory" philosophical works of Galanti and Filangeri, who had hitherto enjoyed the queen's patronage. In 1794, following the discovery of a Jacobin plot to overthrow the government, Maria Carolina ordered Medici to suppress the Freemasons, of which she was once an adherent, believing they were partaking in treasonable activities with the French. The army was kept perpetually mobilised in case of sudden attack, occasioning a huge increase in taxation. Fearing for the safety of her family, Maria Carolina employed food-testers and switched the royal families' apartments on a daily basis. What compelled Maria Carolina to do this was the general terror reigning throughout the city, in which "nobody was safe". The cessation of Franco-Spanish hostilities in the summer of 1795 gave Napoleon Bonaparte, a Corsican general in the French army, the opportunity to focus on France's Italian Campaign. Bonaparte's successes in Northern Italy compelled Maria Carolina to sue for peace, under which Naples had to pay to France a war indemnity of 8 million francs. However, neither country intended to observe this treaty in the long-term. The marriage of her eldest son, the Duke of Calabria, to Archduchess Maria Clementina of Austria in 1797 offered Maria Carolina a brief respite from the affairs of war, which had taken a toll on her health. Maria Carolina entered a secret defensive alliance with Austria on 20 May 1798, in response to France's occupation of the Papal States, which shared a border with Naples. After the British victory at the Battle of the Nile, the queen