COLLETTA, PIETRO (17 Neapolitan general and historian, served in the Neapolitan artillery against the French in 1798. He adhered to the Parthenopean republic, and on the sur render of Naples was imprisoned, but, more fortunate than many of his comrades, he was pardoned. When Joseph Bonaparte seized the Neapolitan throne in 18o6, Colletta was reinstated in his rank and in 181 2 he was promoted general. On the return of Ferdinand, Colletta not only retained his rank, but was given command of a division. When the revolution broke out in 182o, Colletta put down the separatist movement in Sicily with great severity. On the re-establishment of autocracy (1821) he was exiled to Brunn in Moravia, but two years later he returned to Florence, where he wrote his Storia del reame di Napoli (i st ed. Capolago, This work, which deals with the period 1734-1825, is still the standard history of the subject, despite its manifest bias.
See Gino Capponi's memoir in Storia del reame di Napoli (end ed. Florence, 1848) .