The Brigands

The Untold Story

We open a new path, a path that will lead us to discover our true story, the story survived the story told by the victors. The history of 140 years ago, the history of post-unification South cha has funded the largest firms in North America, the history of industrial southern edge, the story of a culture to be reassessed, or discover, to know our true roots , our identity.

Brigands, criminals or resistant, criminals or patriots ?

If the robbers were criminals then Italy was born legitimately, but if the robbers were patriots and strong then it is a different story. The contemporary history of the South seems to be one with the history of the South. The history of the causes and responsibility rather than the actual historical events. Vae Victis, a story told by the winners and losers of the South must always justify why you are beaten "for the wrong side."

A claim to an autonomous history of Southern Italy is impossible but it is possible to identify the root causes of the upheaval in the lives of millions of people and the economy that have changed the face of the southern population in the last 150 years. The history of relations between North and South, the roots of the history of the South.

The brigands began historically in the aftermath of departure for the exile of King Francis II of Bourbon, which occurred February 13, 1861, two days later we were the first uprisings. That people who rebelled was branded with the word "brigand" from 'brigant French idiom that means criminal, bandit. The repression implemented by the Piedmontese was violent from the outset, but ineffective.

The new Kingdom of Italy 211,500 soldiers lined up well and sent his officers the most important, yet for a long time could not destroy even a band. In 1863, it was established a Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry chaired by Representative Joseph Massari which were indicated the causes of banditry, the misery of the people, of course, due to oppression Bourbon, was poor because it is hungry by the Bourbons. The report Massari had resulted in the promulgation of <Legge Pica> authorizing a state of siege in the countries beaten by robbers.

Result: almost a million deaths, destroyed 54 countries, rapes and unprecedented violence, processes and summary executions. A diary of an officer Savoy: <Entrammo in a village and immediately we began to shoot the priests and many uomini, capitavano>. Pontelandolfo country of Benevento was literally razed to the ground. Even the current historiography has recognized that a crack

the brigands who has killed more people than all other wars of the Risorgimento put together. What's more, unfortunately, ... concentration camps, the most dangerous to Fenestrelle fortress located almost two thousand feet high in the mountains of Piedmont, on the left of the Chisone, was so much fear as the confinement in Siberia. Officers, NCOs and soldiers (all the Bourbon soldiers who did not finish their compulsory military service in the army of Savoy, all those who declared themselves openly loyal to King Francis II, who swore open resistance to the Piedmont) underwent treatment more fierce. The release came only with death and the bodies (they were still in use the crematoria) were dissolved in the lime placed in a large tank at the rear of the church which stood at the entrance of Forte.Una death without honor, without tombs without headstones and without memory, so that no traces remain of misdeeds. Even today, entering Fenestrelle on a wall can still be seen the inscription: "Everyone is not as it is but as it produces." (Very reminiscent of the writing of the Nazi concentration camps). ... As early as 1862 in October, having made untenable the accommodation of prisoners of war and political prisoners, with the deportation of the inhabitants of entire countries, with the "galleys" filled up to capacity, the Piedmontese government he entrusted to his ambassador to Lisbon to explore the availability of the Portuguese Government to give an uninhabited island in the Atlantic Ocean, in order to relegarvi the bulky mass of many thousands of people to permanently delete. The diplomatic effort, however, was unsuccessful, but the news reported Oct. 31 in the French press caused a great revulsion in public opinion.

The most indecent of this portion of the story is that in the background there is a history of war debts (Cavour made it three in ten years!) You added up also the ones to buy those guns rifled allowing for the victory Bourbon army. The piedmont was indebted to England and France and Bourbon kingdom was a veritable gold mine for the bourgeoisie expansionist Piedmont and for international businessmen. The gold reserves of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (500 million against 100 of the Piedmont) would allow you to print paper money for about three billion a boon if we add the new taxes imposed on the 9 million inhabitants, the savings , lands and property taken away from Church authorities for the development of agriculture Valley. All in the name of the unification of Italy.

The South was robbed and subject to harsh taxation "In the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies taxation was, in 1859, of 14 francs each. In 1866, under the new regime, taxes had risen to 28 francs per head, paid twice as much as the "'oppressed" people of Naples before Garibaldi came to free him. " The abolition of protectionism and excessive liberalism of the Savoy state industries exposed to foreign competition, the economy of the Bourbons was not ready internationalization as the Italian one was not until 1960, 100 years later! The European press called the south Bourbon backward and inefficient, a term still used today to refer to something that does not work, but how to justify the proliferation of industrial activities? How ever many factories were dismantled as the famous complex of S. Leucio, whose frames were taken a few years later in Valdagno, where he created the first textile factory in the Veneto and ironworks Mongiana, whose machines were moved to Lombardy.

Towards the end of the terrible decade, brigandage and decimated incattivito, gradually lost the drive ideal that had animated and bands remained gave you, then yes, in acts of mob, incited also by the extreme poverty in which the regions Southern eranocadute and the emergence of large estates, which took away the farmers any possibility of a dignified survival. Only from that moment on, the repression Piedmont took over: the brigands was finally defeated and Southern went to look for a new life in the Americas, starting a phenomenon completely unknown until the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. In 1861, in fact, there were only 220 thousand Italians living abroad in 1914 were 6,000,000. It is disturbing when you consider that the population of the former Kingdom of Naples was composed of 8 million people. - The Sardinian army had its victory, but not that the Kingdom of Italy: the robbers were not destroyed, they had found another form of resistance, emigration.

A new interpretation of the phenomenon of banditry that has made a mark of shame,

metaphorically and that has accompanied the history of the southern to the present day, as well recover its history as a resource, a trace of memory to be recovered, a strong sign that history has left the area, a "cultural "to promote the heritage of a land and an example for a loyalty shown to a local culture to a 'common belonging.

"Land of Brigands" is the land of the South.