Just because I haven’t mentioned it since the first post, these chapter recaps are my personal notes taken from reading the book by John Julius Norwich.
Carbonari
With the French defeated, King Ferdinand returned to Naples in 1816 and reestablished the “Two Sicilies”, which once again, relegated the actual Sicily to a secondary province. Things were prospering and going well overall in the new combined kingdom, but there was a rebel group, called the carbonari, or coal-carriers, that had been forming. They started out apparently as a collection of mutually discontented souls- but discontented over different issues. But they had gradually grown, and their objective coalesced into an aim to force the King to grant a constitution. Inspired by events in Spain, they arrived in Naples and demanded the adoption of the Spanish constitution.
This pissed off the Sicilian portion of the two Sicilies kingdom, who already had a perfectly good constitution from the English. They decided they didn’t want anything to do with Naples anymore, and riots broke out, with the Sicilians demanding full independence.
In 1821, a congress was called to discuss the carbonari revolt and Austria decided to send an army to put them down. Austria sent the Neapolitans an ultimatum: return the former monarchical regime or face war. The carbonari, feeling a bit overconfident, foolishly chose war and at the first encounter were overwhelmed by the superior Austrian force and dispersed.
Ferdinand was back in Naples by 1823, and died in bed in 1825.
Then there was a Francis I of the two Sicilies… then a Francis II.
Francis II started off well. He had been born in Palermo and attempted to rule the island well. But Sicily and the Sicilians were too entrenched. Crime continued, brigandage ran rampant, and protection rackets, the precursor to the mafia, were everywhere. He introduced honest Neapolitan judges, but they couldn’t understand the Sicilian dialect, and the Sicilians couldn’t understand the Neapolitan either. Then there was the endemic bribery.
Sicily was a backwater with no prospects for anyone with ambition. Starvation was close by for the regular people and the governors were unable to do anything about it.
By 1835, revolution was in the air and Francis, apparently thought: screw reform, maybe a good, ole’ fashioned beat-down of the ornery Sicilians would work since they wouldn’t voluntarily change their ways. When a cholera outbreak hit in 1837, the government, already unpopular for its heavy hand, and probably just because it was a government….. was blamed and riots ensued. Soon enough that was put down and Sicily settled back into its old ways.
It was felt that something needed to be done to eliminate the corruption and nepotism that were the bane of Sicilian life. Reforms were proposed, but the land reform would have meant estates being reduced, and thus the influence of the feudal aristocracy.
Meanwhile, there were political ideas arriving from all over Europe. The trend was towards uniting smaller, similar territories into larger ones; unification, to meet the larger states on equal footing. One of those ideas was Italian unification. Italy had not been united since the days of Rome. But among some intellectuals of Italy, this became the goal: uniting all of the Italian peninsula so it could stand on equal footing with Spain and France and England. The question was: should Sicily be a part of a unified Italy?
Quarantotto
Quarantotto means “48”, and refers to the year 1848.
In January of 1848, a revolution started. It began in Palermo and quickly spread all over Italy, and even north from there. Some student riots in Palermo had caused the authorities to close the University there. Several liberal citizens were arrested and a manifesto called for demonstrations on the King’s birthday. When the day arrived, the streets emptied, shops closed and houses were barricaded. The government was probably wary of the Sicilians and they’re propensity to revolt, and the response was a bombardment of the city. When a shell destroyed a local pawnbroker’s shop that many people relied on, all hell broke loose. The infuriated mob sacked the palace and set fire to the state records and archives. A committee declared a new government and called Ruggiero Settimo, an old Sicilian patriot, president. The revolt spread to all the main cities except Messina, which held back mainly just because it hated Palermo. By February, the island was clear of Bourbon troops and Settimo declared the uprising over and a new era of happiness for Sicily. Sure.
Meanwhile, King Louis-Phillipe had been toppled in Paris and a new republic declared. Liberal constitutions were no longer enough. The landslide had begun. When the king reached out to the rebels, he was informed that Sicily wasn’t demanding new institutions, but the restoration of historic rights.
Sicily had declared itself independent. But it lacked any machinery for self-government. The chaos returned worse than ever. Trade plummeted, unemployment soared, the legal system collapsed. Ferdinand sent an army to restore order. Messina suffered a heavy 8-hour bombardment AFTER it had surrendered…apparently the bombers hadn’t gotten the word… or else they just wanted to air out some pent up frustrations. The rebels fought back and the old hatred between Sicilian and Neapolitan brought atrocities on both sides. The British and French were appalled at the bloodshed and persuaded Ferdinand to offer an armistice. But the Sicilians refused every offer out of hand. Even their supporters abandoned them and turned back to the Bourbons out of sheer self-preservation.
Through their inefficiency, lack of unity, and refusal to compromise, the Sicilians had demonstrated perfectly how NOT to enact a revolution.
Ferdinand, now known as “King Bomba” clamped down hard on the island in an effort to restore order, making Sicily a police state. Freedom was severely restricted, and observers were horrified at the state of things.
Ferdinand died in 1859. His son, Ferdinand II succeeded him at 23, but his reign would be dramatically cut short, with the Risorgimento at hand.