TELL ME A SECRET AND I'LL GIVE YOU A LIE. Zoauves and Bersaglieri

A Genoese of the name of Malghella, who was Murat's Minister of Police, was the first person to give a powerful impetus to Carbonarism, of which he has even been called the inventor, but the inference goes too far.
 Malghella ended miserably; after the fall of Murat he was arrested by the Austrians, who consigned him as a new subject to the Sardinian Government, which immediately put him in prison.
His name is hardly known, but no Italian of his time worked more assiduously, or in some respects more intelligently, for the emancipation of Italy.
Whatever was truly Italian in Murat's policy must be mainly attributed to him.
As early as 1813 he urged the King to declare himself frankly for independence, and to grant a constitution to his Neapolitan subjects.

prince of canosa

But Malghella did not find the destined saviour of Italy in Murat; his one lasting work was to establish Carbonarism on so strong a basis that, when the Bourbons returned, there were thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of Carbonari in all parts of the realm.

Cardinal ruffo of the sandefesti who in the late 1700's had raped nuns and killed the innocent he was seen as the hitler of the calderai

 The discovery was not a pleasant one to the restored rulers, and the Prince of Canosa, the new Minister  of Police, thought to counteract the evil done by his predecessor by setting up an abominable secret society called the Calderai del Contrapeso (Braziers of the Counterpoise), principally recruited from the refuse of the people, lazzaroni, bandits and let-out convicts, who were provided by Government with 20,000 muskets, and were sworn to exterminate all enemies of the Church of Rome, whether Jansenists, Freemasons or Carbonari.
 This association committed some horrible excesses, but otherwise it had no results. The Carbonari closed in their ranks, and learnt to observe more strictly their rules of secrecy.
 From the kingdom of Naples, Carbonarism spread to the Roman states, and found a congenial soil in Romagna, which became the focus whence it spread over the rest of Italy.
 It was natural that it should take the colour, more or less, of the places where it grew. In Romagna, where political assassination is in the blood of the people, a dagger was substituted for the symbolical woodman's axe in the initiatory rites.
 It was probably only in Romagna that the conventional threat against informers was often carried out. The Romagnols invested Carbonarism with the wild intensity of their own temperament, resolute even to crime, but capable of supreme impersonal enthusiasm.

 The ferment of expectancy that prevailed in Romagna is reflected in the Letters and Journals of Lord Byron, whom young Count Pietro Gamba made a Carbonaro, and who looked forward to seeing the Italians send the barbarians of all nations back to their own dens, as to the most interesting spectacle and moment in existence.
 His lower apartments, he writes, were full of the bayonets, fusils and cartridges of his Carbonari cronies; 'I suppose that they consider me  as a dépôt, to be sacrificed in case of accidents. It is no great matter, supposing that Italy could be liberated, who or what is sacrificed. It is a grand object—the very poetry of politics. Only think—free Italy!!! Why, there has been nothing like it since the days of Augustus.'

Some Dulcop Bersaglieri.Then a Bersaglieri officer of Almirall and after a Carabinieri of the times (I think)

The fourth piece is a Zouave I made ; it's kind of universal , note the metal bayonet I fitted to it.Its plastic made from Pattex tile putty. The second piece is a Garibaldi stamp recently recieved by mine own through the post. Then we have a Bersaglieri officers uniform.