Abstract
In the years following the unification of Italy, no phenomenon evoked the South more powerfully in the imaginary of the middle and upper classes than brigandage. This was a stereotype that owed its force in large measure to the war fought by the Italian army against southern brigandage after the annexation of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. This chapter aims to analyze that campaign through the stereotypes, both of brigandage and of the South, that were an essential moment of the army’s activities. Without having a declared beginning or end, the war continued for almost a decade, cost more lives than all the other battles of unification put together, and at its peak in 1863 necessitated the deployment of about two-fifths of the effective strength of the Italian army.1 In the period from 1861 to 1864 large bands, which often comprised hundreds of members and had varying degrees of legitimist support and motivation, attempted to spark popular uprisings.2 In 1861 particularly, some towns were briefly taken over and troops and national guard units directly confronted. As the brutally repressive military campaign to combat banditry was stepped up, the size of the bands began to shrink, and their political affiliation became less marked. The more spectacular activities of the bands took place “against a wider background of food and tax riots, land occupations, attacks on public offices and officers, cattle rustling, reprisals against property and stock, selective murder and kidnapping.”3
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Notes
The figure is from Franco Molfese, “La repressione del brigantaggio postunitario nel mezzogiorno continentale (1860–70),” in Archivio Storico per le Province Napoletane, CI (1983), 33–64 (p. 52). Giorgio Rochat and Giulio Massobrio estimate the proportion at two-thirds, Breve storia dell’esercito italiano dal 1861 al 1943 (Turin, Einaudi, 1978), p. 49.
The most plausible typology and chronology of banditry at this time is in Franco Molfese, “Il brigantaggio nel Mezzogiorno dopo l’Unità d’Italia,” in Archivio Storico per la Calabria e la Lucania, XLII (1975), 99–136.
J. A. Davis, Conflict and Control: Law and Order in Nineteenth-Century Italy (London, Macmillan, 1988), p. 175.
F. Molfese, Storia del brigantaggio dopo l’Unità (Milan, Feltrinelli, 1964), p. 342.
E. Hobsbawm, Bandits (London, Pelican, 1972), pp. 68 and 63. Sergio Romagnoli sees the brigandage of 1860–1870 in a similar way: “that form of social delirium which brigandage was, in so many respects: a delirium that alienated the people from historical reality. Although it aimed to subvert existing power relations, in the instant it was translated into action it destroyed any chance that it might become an instrument of decision-making power and participation in progress because of its uncontrolled, irrational violence” (“Il brigante nel romanzo storico italiano,” in Archivio Storico per la Calabria e la Lucania, XLII [1975], 176–212 [p. 212]).
G. Candeloro, Storia dell’Italia moderna. Vol. 5. La costruzione dello stato unitario, 1860–71 (Milan, Feltrinelli, 1968), p. 168.
See for example the article by Niccolò De Ruggieri on a study of the bandit Ninco Nanco (N. De Ruggieri, “Indagine antropologica sulla personalità del brigante Giuseppe Nicola Summa, detto Ninco-Nanco,” in Archivio storico per la Calabria e la Lucania, XLII [1975, 231–233). Lombroso worked as a doctor in Calabria during the war.
Both quotations are from G. Doria, Per la storia del brigantaggio nelle province meridionali (Naples, extract from Archivio Storico per le Province Napoletane, 1931), p. 5.
A. Guarnieri, Otto anni di storia militare in Italia (Florence, Galletti, 1868), p. 462.
See Davis, Conflict and Control, pp. 66–90. For more specific studies, see for example: P. Ginsborg, “After the Revolution: Bandits on the plains of the Po 1848–54” (pp. 128–151), and G. Fiume, “Bandits, violence and the organization of power in Sicily in the early nineteenth century” (pp. 70–91), both in J. A Davis and P. Ginsborg (eds.), Society and Politics in the Age of the Risorgimento. Essays in honour of Denis Mack Smith (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991);
P. Brunello, Ribelli, questuanti e banditi. Proteste contadine in Veneto e Friuli1814–1866 (Venice, Marsilio, 1981);
S. C. Hughes, Crime, Disorder and the Risorgimento. The Politics of Policing in Bologna (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994).
On brigandage in the preunification South, see Davis, Conflict and Control, loc. cit., and the following essays, all contained in Angelo Massafra (ed.), Il Mezzogiorno preunitario. Economia, società e istituzioni (Bari, Dedalo, 1988): M. Themelly, “Trasgressione, criminalità, comportamenti collettivi nelle province meridionali” (pp. 1039–1054); A. Albanese, “Crimini e criminalità in Terra di Bari nell’età della Restaurazione (1818–1835). Le comitive armate” (pp. 1055–1068); M. Platania, “Instabilità sociale e delinquenza” (pp. 1069–1085); R. Marino, “Nuova borghesia e amministrazione locale nelle cronache giudiziarie del principato Citra” (pp. 1087–1101); M. Autuori, “Storia sociale della banda Capozzoli (1817–1827): lotte municipali e brigantaggio” (pp. 1127–1141); M. P. Vozzi, “La comitiva armata dei fratelli Capozzoli e la rivoluzione cilentana del 1828. Lotta politica e brigantaggio” (pp. 1143–1157).
See, for example, the assessment of the state of the South contained in the report by Diomede Pantaleoni to Minister of the Interior Bettino Ricasoli in October 1861, which is reproduced in P. Alatri, “Le condizioni dell’Italia meridionale in un rapporto di Diomede Pantaleoni a Marco Minghetti (1861),” Movimento Operaio, 5–6 (1953), 750–92.
On the relations between clergy and state in the South, see B. Pellegrino, Vescovi “borbonici” e stato “liberale” (1860–61) (Rome and Bari, Laterza, 1992).
A. Scirocco, Governo e paese nel Mezzogiorno nella crisi dell’unificazione (1860–61) (Milan, Giuffrè, 1963), and Il mezzogiorno nell’Italia unita (1861–5) (Naples, Società Editrice Napoletana, 1979).
G. Massari, “Relazione della commissione d’inchiesta del deputato Massari letta alla camera nella tornata segreta del 3 maggio 1863,” in T. Pedìo, Inchiesta sul brigantaggio (Manduria, Lacaita, 1983), pp. 105–229 (p. 208).
A. Bianco di Saint Jorioz, Il brigantaggio alla frontiera pontificia, 1860–63 (Milan, Daelli, 1864), p. 36. Ironically Alessandro was the son of Carlo, the man who proposed the use of guerrilla tactics in patriotic warfare during the Risorginento.
From a letter reproduced in M. Scherillo “Gaetano Negri alla caccia dei briganti” in Gaetano Negri, Opere di Gaetano Negri I—Nel presente e nel passato (Milan, Hoepli, 1905), pp. 3–65 (p. 30).
The photos from the antibrigand campaign have been widely reproduced: see, for example, photos 80, 81, and 84–88 in C. Bertelli and G. Bollati, Storia d’Italia, Annali 2, “L’immagine fotografica,” Vol. 1 (Turin, Einaudi, 1979). The quotation is from M. Milani, La repressione dell’ultimo brigantaggio nelle Calabrie, 1868–9 (Pavia, Biblioteca pavese di storia patria, 1952), p. 39.
On the sociology of nineteenth-century warfare, see also M. D. Feld, The Structure of Violence: Armed Forces as Social Systems (Beverly Hills/London, Sage, 1977).
On the “professionalization” of the military before and after unification, see Giorgio Rochat, “La professione militare in Italia dall’Ottocento alla seconda guerra mondiale,” in L’esercito italiano in pace e in guerra. Studi di storia militare (Milan, RARA, 1991), pp. 29–40.
For an account of the reforms implemented by La Marmora in 1854 and of the construction of the Italian army by Fanti, see: P. Pieri, Storia militare del Risorgimento (Turin, Einaudi, 1962) and Le forze armate nell’età della destra (Milan, Giuffrè, 1962);
J. Whittam, The Politics of the Italian Army1861–1918 (London, Croom Helm, 1977);
Rochat and Massobrio, Breve storia dell’esercito italiano; and J. Gooch, Army, State and Society in Italy, 1870–1915 (Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1989). According to Rochat and Massobrio, two out of three of the officers of the Italian army in 1860 were from the Piedmontese army or had been trained in Piedmont (Rochat and Massobrio Breve storia dell’esercito italiano, p. 26).
General Cialdini quoted in Count A. Maffei, Brigand Life in Italy: A History of Bourbonist Reaction (London, Hurst and Blackett, 1865), Vol. II, pp. 289–290.
Bianco di Saint Jorioz, Il brigantaggio, p. 27. See also ibid., p. 27.: “There was only one moralizing agent in these provinces … and it was the Army.” Guarnieri refers to the army as “a select part of the new generation” (Otto anni di storia militare, p. ix). Colonel Mazé de la Roche, in command of the Campobasso area in 1861, lists his powers: “In this district I am mayor, judge, commander of the carabinieri … and I exercise an almost sovereign authority over some fifteen communities,” quoted in C. Buffa di Perrero, Biografia del Conte Gustavo Mazé de la Roche (Turin, Bocca, 1888), p. 80.
C. Cesari, Il brigantaggio e l’opera dell’esercito italiano dal 1860 al 1870 (Rome, Ausonia, 1920), p. 83. According to Cesari, the government, more than generous in the honors given to the combatants of the wars of unification, “did not judge it appropriate to be similarly generous in handing out rewards for a war which was a harsh necessity but was unfortunately at the same time an internal wound for the Nation” (ibid., p. 167). The long-term effects of the campaign on the ability of the army to fight are impossible to gauge accurately. Molfese refers to the relative solidity of the new army (“Il brigantaggio nel Mezzogiorno,” p. 136), while Battaglia asserts that the disorientating experience of the war in the South contributed in large measure to the defeat at Custoza (Risorgimento e Resistenza, p. 55).
In C. Cavour, Carteggi: la liberazione del Mezzogiorno e la formazione del Regno d’Italia, Vol. III (October–November 1860) (Bologna, Zanichelli, 1952), letter from Farini dated October 27, 1860, p. 208.
N. Bixio, Epistolario, Vol. II (1861–1865) (Rome, Vittoriano, 1942), letter dated February 18, 1863, p. 143.
G. Govone, “Memoria sulle cause del brigantaggio,” in U. Govone, Il generale Giuseppe Govone. Frammenti di memorie (Turin, Casanova, 1902), pp. 393–408 (p. 393).
A. Dumas (père), Cento anni di brigantaggio nelle province meridionali d’Italia, translated by E. Torelli (Naples, De Marco, 1863), p. 8.
G. Bourelly, Brigantaggio nelle zone militari di Melfi e Lacedonia dal 1860 al 1865 (Naples, Mea, 1865), pp. 52, 69.
L. Gargiulo, Relazione sulla vera sorgente del brigantaggio (Naples, De Angelis, 1863), p. 24. The army seemed itself to be prepared to try out unconventional methods of producing a satisfactory knowledge of brigandage: Gaetano Negri describes the arrest of a priest “with a very brigand-like physiognomy” (Scherillo, “Gaetano Negri alla caccia dei briganti,” p. 30).
The most comprehensive analysis of the legal aspects of the antibrigand war is in R. Martucci, Emergenza e tutela dell’ordine pubblico nell’Italia liberale (Bologna, Il Mulino, 1980). For a cogent short account of the state’s response to the situation in the South, see also Davis, Conflict and Control, pp. 168–182.
In a written order of February 3, 1861, quoted in G. Buttà, Un viaggio da Boccadifalco a Gaeta. Memorie della rivoluzione del 1860 al 1861 (Naples, Benso, 1966 [1875]), p. 427. The rest of Pinelli’s order is interesting for the language used to describe banditry, which Pinelli blames on priestly plotting: “A pack of that race of thieves is still lurking in the mountains, flush them out; be as inexorable as destiny. Against such enemies pity is a crime; they are the hired cut-throats of the Vicar not of Christ, but of Satan. We will annihilate, we will crush the priestly vampire which has for centuries been sucking the blood of our mother with his foul lips. With iron and fire we will purify the areas infested with his unclean slaver, and liberty will arise fresher and healthier from the ashes.”
F. Carcani, Sul brigantaggio—osservazioni (Trani, Cannone, 1863), p. 34.
The officer was Borjès. There are many accounts of his execution including that in M. Monnier, Notizie storiche sul brigantaggio nelle provincie napoletane dai tempi di Frà Diavolo sino ai giorni nostri (Florence, Barbèra, 1862), p. 162. The principal aim of Monnier’s text is to show that the problems in the South were largely due to a papal and legitimist conspiracy.
There is also a French version of his book: M. Monnier, Histoire du brigandage dans l’Italie méridionale (Paris, Lévy, 1862). It was also translated into English as Vol. I of Maffei, Brigand Life in Italy.
A. Blok, “The Peasant and the Brigand: Social Banditry Reconsidered,” in Comparative Studies in Society and History, 14, 4 (1972), 494–503 (p. 502).
C. Lévi-Strauss, Le totémisme aujourd’hui (Paris, Presses Universitaires, 1962), p. 132.
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© 1999 John Dickie
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Dickie, J. (1999). A Word at War: The Italian Army and Brigandage . In: Darkest Italy. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780312299521_2
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