Sir John Acton, 6th Baronet
Sir John Francis Edward Acton, 6th Baronet (* 1736 in Besançon; † August 12, 1811 in Palermo ) was an Italian politician and military English descent. He was prime minister of Naples under Ferdinand IV.
His father Edward Acton was a doctor in Besançon, where he was born in 1736. After the death of his cousin, third degree, Sir Robert Acton of Aldenham Hall, Shropshire, in 1791, he inherited the title. Acton served first in the Tuscan Navy, where he in 1775 during a joint expedition of Spain and Tuscany against Algiers as commander of a frigate by his courage and resourcefulness so distinguished himself that he was given the supreme command.
Queen Maria Carolina of Naples was 1779 her brother Leopold, Grand Duke of Tuscany, to persuade, to permit Acton to contact their service and to organize the Neapolitan navy new. The skills that he put it on the day, allowed him a brilliant career: he was commander in chief of both the Army and the Navy of the Kingdom of Naples, finance minister and finally prime minister.
His policy, which was in accordance with the British Ambassador, Sir William Hamilton, was marked by the attempt to strengthen the British and Austrian influence on Naples, in order to reduce the influence of Spain. This policy brought Naples in opposition to France and the friend to him forces in Italy. His financial policy, in it came to him, Naples in order to upgrade its independence sake, made him extremely unpopular, so he had to flee in 1798, together with the Queen and the King.
In 1804 he had to retreat under the pressure of France for a short period of government affairs, but was soon reinstated in his former position he retained until February 1806 ( when France invaded Naples ). Along with the royal family fled to Sicily, where he died in Palermo in 1811.
A papal dispensation allowed him to marry the eldest daughter of his brother, also standing in Neapolitan services General Joseph Edward Acton, who was born in 1737. With her he had three children, of whom the first son, Richard, the father of the first Lord Acton was, while the second struck the ecclesiastical career and it made a cardinal.