 |
Francis
II |
Since
the very first days of Garibaldi’s dictatorship
and for the subsequent years, the rapid conquest
of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies by the Piedmont
army - occurred, as we said above, with the
indirect but concrete support of France and
Great Britain - incited a general rising of
the populations of the Kingdom in favour of
Francis II. Tenths of thousands of people rose
up in arms all over the continental regions
(just as sixty years before, at the time of
anti-Jacobin risings and the Sanfedist epic
deeds of Cardinal Ruffo), and caused an insurrection
that raised difficulties for the Garibaldian
troops first and then for the Piedmont army
and government in the first years after the
unification. |
Books
of history and the Risorgimento "Vulgate"
that shaped the collective historical opinion of the
Italians on those events, have always presented this
popular rising in a reductive way from the point of
view of both quality and chronology and they have
always branded it with the wrong and deceptive name
of Bourbon "Brigandage".
Today, many scholars have demonstrated that this phenomenon
must receive a completely different interpretation
(the first historian who carried out a serious study
on this matter was the Marxist historian Franco Molfese,
followed by other historians such as Alianello, Zitara,
Albonico, Leoni, Del Boca, Martucci and many others),
and they have done it by relating the terrible massacres
and violence, the terror and poverty that struck the
people of southern Italy. It was a great lawful and
religious popular rising against the unification,
and the Turin government repressed it with methods
that were in no way inferior to those that would be
used in the XX century… (and had been already
experimented in the Vandee by Robespierre and other
Jacobin leaders). The social motive played a role
in it, as well as real brigands, but this cannot become
the explanation of a civil war that lasted for five
years (even ten years, if we consider its aftermaths)
and saw the involvement of tenths of thousands of
men and women in arms against an army and a government
that they considered as "invaders". The
real deep cause of this violent, undaunted and spontaneous
popular counterrevolution must be found in the loyalty
of the southern people to the dynasty who had been
dethroned in a violent and sneaky way, against the
very will of these southern people, as they showed
with their resistance against Piedmont and Garibaldian
invaders.
We list here below the main historical and conceptual
elements that mark the anti-unification rising:
-
The word "brigandage" is just an ideological
confusion of the social and the political aspects
of this phenomenon, confusion started by Robespierre
in France during the Vandean counterrevolution (he
called "brigands" the aristocrats, the clergy,
middle-class people and farmers who rebelled against
his Terror), and continued over time during these
risings and mainly during the anti-unification risings
in southern Italy;
- the
rebellion, in reality, had an extraordinary size and
started in August 1860, immediately after the landing
of Garibaldi’s troops: in total, at the apex
of the war, there were 350 brigand groups and involved
tenths of thousands of people, of which 20,000 to
70,000 died; the Kingdom of Italy had to send up to
120,000 soldiers to southern Italy to put down the
guerrilla;
-
in spring 1861 the uprising spread like wildfire all
over the former Bourbon Kingdom; in August General
Enrico Cialdini was sent to Naples with full powers:
one of the most merciless military repressions recorded
by history started at that moment: massacres, destructions
of towns and rebel villages, executions and fires,
pillages and instigation to delation, forced residence
(for the first time in the history of Italy), destruction
of farm-houses end elimination of livestock to ruin
completely rebel farmers;
-
special attention was paid to psychological war, and
the proclamations issued contained terrible threats
(regularly implemented) and the photos of rebels slaughtered
with their families, etc., to frighten the "accomplices",
i.e. those who helped the rebels;
-
then there was the proclamation of the martial law
in 1862: the whole Kingdom (including Sicily for no
clear reason) was put under martial law;
-
in 1863 a Parliamentary Investigating Committee on
Brigandage was established (Massari), upon request
of left-wing parties – that reported the horrible
massacres perpetrated with the authorisation of the
Government. However, the left-wing parties requested
the establishment of this Committee only to discredit
the right-wing parties and deliver southern Italy
to Garibaldi; at first, right-wing parties opposed
this Committee, then they manipulated it and put the
blame for the "Brigandage" upon Francis
II and Pious IX;
-
the Pica Law was a consequence of the Committee and
the highest expression of a bloodthirsty repression;
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