THE KING WAVERS

The BOURBON PALACE of naples

Sitting in a pizzeria called Brandi or a name like that right next to the Bourbon palace of the Kings of the two Cities is something you should try notwithstanding the pathetic service of the waiters at this Pizzeria which was where they say the Pizza was invented.
Above is the palace you can nearly touch. By the way try another Pizzeria (Pizza is very good though if you can wait an hour to get serve while the sundry cretins who are supposed to be waiters eye girls and ignore you) .the waiters suck like most of Italian eateries.But back to basics.........
The Neapolitans had got their liberties, but they soon found themselves face to face with perplexities which would have taxed the powers of men both wiser and more experienced in free government than they were.
 In the first place, although a revolution may be made by a sect, a government cannot be carried on by one. The Carbonari who had  won the day were blind to this self-evident truth; and, to make matters worse, there was a split in their party, some of them being disposed to throw off the Bourbon yoke altogether; a natural desire, but as it was only felt by a minority, it added to the general confusion. Then came, as it was sure to come, the cry for separation from Sicily.

Naples troops in sicily 1859

 The Sicilians wanted back the violated constitution obtained for them by the English in 1812, and would have nothing to do with that offered them from Naples.
 In every one of the struggles between Sicily and Naples, it is impossible to refuse sympathy to the islanders, who, in the pride of their splendid independent history, deemed themselves the victims of an inferior race; but it is equally impossible to ignore that, politically, they were in the wrong.
 In union, and in union alone, lay the only chance of resisting the international plot to keep the South Italian populations in perpetual bondage.

 The Sicilian revolt was put down at first mildly, and finally, as mildness had no effect, with the usual violence by the Neapolitan Constitutional Government, which could not avoid losing credit and popularity in the operation.
 Meanwhile, the three persons who traded under the name of Europe met at Troppau, and came readily to the conclusion that 'the sovereigns of the Holy Alliance exercised an incontestable right in taking common measures of security against states which the overthrow of authority by revolt placed in a hostile attitude towards every legitimate government.' The assumption was too broadly stated, even for Lord Castlereagh's acceptance; but he was contented to make a gentle protest, which he further nullified by allowing that, in the present case, intervention was very likely justified.
 France expressed no disapproval. Only the Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden and Spain gave the Constitutional régime tacit  support by recognising it.
The Emperor of Russia was very anxious to take part in the business, and would have sent off an army instantly had not his royal brother of Prussia hesitated to consent to the inconvenience of a Cossack march through his territory. The work was left, therefore, to the Emperor of Austria.
Before entering upon it, it occurred to these three to invite the King of Naples to meet them at Laybach. They knew his character.

laybach

Ferdinand assured his Parliament that he was going to Laybach solely to induce the Holy Alliance to think better of its opposition, and to agree, at least, to all the principal features of the new state of things. Most foolishly the Parliament, which, according to the Constitution, might have vetoed his leaving the country, let him go. Before starting he wrote an open letter to his dear son, the Duke of Calabria, who was appointed Regent, in which he said: 'I shall defend the events of the past July before the Congress. I firmly desire the Spanish Constitution for my kingdom; and although I rely on the justice of the assembled sovereigns, and on their old friendship, still it is well to tell you that, in whatever circumstance it may please God to place me, my course will be what I have manifested on this sheet, strong and unchangeable either by force or by the flattery of others.'

The metal Bersaglieri officer is UK made from the 70's.Maybe one of the greatest 54mm pieces ever.I bought it mail order but forget from where. I'd love to recast it if its not in copyright.I remade the sword into the right Bersaglieri one
The Bersaglieri plastic infantryman is one of mine own conversions but under macro needs to be more refined.

the ten days of brescia by an anonymous painter

LIKEMINDED IMBECILES

Sub Lt Carabinieri-Regno di Napoli (1815-1820)Romeo Models

The movement on which such great hopes were set was to begin in the kingdom of Naples in the spring of 1820.
The concession of the hard-won Spanish Constitution in the month of March encouraged the Neapolitans to believe that they might get a like boon from their own King if they directed all the forces at their command to this single end.

Marshal of the general staff- Regno di Napoli (1815-1820) Romeo models

To avoid being compromised, they sought rather to dissociate themselves from the patriots of other parts of Italy than to co-operate with them in an united effort.below the italians of the pro austrian regiment estense
 The Carbonari of the Neapolitan kingdom, who were the entire authors of the revolution, which, after many unfortunate delays, broke out on the 1st of July, had good cause for thinking that they were in a position to dictate terms; the mistake they made was to suppose that a charter conceded by a Bourbon of Naples could ever be worth the paper on which it was written.

neapoilitan troops 1859

 Not only among the people, but in the army the Carbonari had thousands of followers on whom they could rely, and several whole regiments were only waiting their orders to rise in open revolt.
The scheme was to take possession of the persons of the King and the royal family, and retain them as hostages till the Constitution was granted. Such extreme measures were not necessary.
 The standard of rebellion was raised at Monteforte by two officers named Morelli and Silvati, who had brought over a troop of cavalry from Nola, and by the priest Menechini.

naples army about 1845

 In all Neapolitan insurrections there was sure to be a priest; the Neapolitan Church, much though there is to be laid to its account, must be admitted to have frequently shown sympathy with the  popular side.
 Menechini enjoyed an immense, if brief, popularity which he used to allay the anger of the mob and to procure the safety of obnoxious persons. The King sent two generals and a body of troops against the Chartists, but when the Carbonari symbols were recognised on the insurgent flags, the troops showed such clear signs of wishing to go over to the enemy that they were quietly taken back to Naples.

about 1848 assaut troops napoli

 The cry of 'God, the King, and the Constitution,' was taken up through the land; General Pepe, who had long been a Carbonaro in secret, was enthusiastically hailed as commander of the Chartist forces, which practically comprised the whole army.

around 1840 naples

The King was powerless; besides which, when pushed up into any corner people who do not mind breaking their word have a facility for hard swearing. On the 13th of July, Ferdinand standing at the altar of the royal chapel, with his hand on the Bible, swore to defend and maintain the Constitution which he had just granted.
 If he failed to do so, he called upon his subjects to disobey him, and God to call him to account. These words he read from a written form; as if they were not enough, he added, with his eyes on the cross, and his face turned towards heaven: 'Omnipotent God, who with Thine infinite power canst read the soul of man and the future, do Thou, if I speak falsely, or intend to break my oath, at this moment direct the thunder of Thy vengeance on my head.'

A brilliant Bersaglieri model here by an Italian company depicting him at the first battle of Custoza. Below are some views and the local wine. If you want to go to the area most fought over as regards the Italian Wars of Independence then go to Custoza.Here is a good place to eat Trattoria del Colli. I'll be continuing this with some remarks about the battle but in a different post.

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.

SECRET WAYS AND SOCIETIES

Considering what the state of the country was after 1815 has its problems
 and how apparently inexhaustible were the resources of the Empire of which the petty princes of the peninsula were but puppets, it is remarkable that political agitation, with a view to reversing the decisions of Vienna, should have begun so soon, and on so large a scale.
 Not that the nation, as a whole, was yet prepared to move; every revolution, till 1848, was partial in the sense that the mass of the people stood aloof, because unconvinced of the possibility of loosening their chains.
 But, during that long succession of years, the number of Italians ready to embark on enterprises of the most desperate character seems enormous when the risks they ran and the difficulties they faced are fully recognised.

In Taverns like this by Romeo models did secert men meet

Among the means which were effective in first rousing Italy from her lethargy, and in fostering the will to acquire her independence at all costs, the secret society of the Carbonari undoubtedly occupies the front rank.
 The Carbonari acted in two ways; by what they did and by what they caused to be done by others who were outside their society, and perhaps unfavourable to it, but who were none the less sensible of the pressure it exercised.
 The origin of Carbonarism has been sought in vain; as a specimen of the childish fables that once passed for its history may be noticed the legend that Francis I. of France once stumbled on a charcoal burner's hut when hunting 'on the frontiers of his kingdom next to Scotland,' and was initiated into the rites similar to those in use among the sectaries of the nineteenth century.
 Those rites referred to vengeance which was to be taken on the wolf that slew the lamb; the wolf standing for tyrants and oppressors, and the lamb for Jesus Christ, the sinless victim, by whom all the oppressed were represented.
The Carbonari themselves generally believed that they were heirs to an organisation started in Germany before the eleventh century, under the name of the Faith of the Kohlen-Brenners, of which Theobald de Brie, who was afterwards canonised, was a member.
 Theobald was adopted as patron saint of the modern society, and his fancied portrait figured in all the lodges. That any weight should have been attached to these pretensions to antiquity may appear strange to us, as it certainly did not matter whether an association bent on the liberation of Italy had or had not existed in German forests eight hundred years before; age and mystery, however, have a great popular attraction, the first as an object of reverence, the second as food for curiosity with the profane, and a bond of union among the initiated.
 The religious symbolism of the Carbonari, their oaths and ceremonies, and the axes, blocks and other furniture of the initiatory chamber, were well calculated to impress the poorer and more ignorant and excitable of the brethren.
 The Vatican affected to believe that Carbonarism was an offshoot of Freemasonry, but, in spite of sundry points of resemblance, such as the engagements of mutual help assumed by members, there seems to have been no real connection between the two.
As far as can be ascertained, it gave a general support to Napoleon, while Carbonarism rejected every foreign yoke.
 The practical aims of the Carbonari may be summed up in two words: freedom and independence.
From the first they had the penetration to grasp the fact that independence, even if obtained, could not be preserved without freedom. Nor were they agreed in a definite advocacy of the unity of Italy.

heres a plastic figure I converted into a bersaglieri in battle. I used Pattex tile putty that is like plastic. Its unfinished as needs to be done better as regards the paint job plus I intend to fix metal bayonet.

THE WAR BEGINS IN MUSIC AND POETRY 25mm by Platageneto

In an age when T.V newspapers and computer news  have taken the place of books, it may seem strange to ascribe any serious effect to the works of poets and romancists; but in the Italy of that date there were no newspapers to speak of; the ordinary channels of opinion were blocked up.
 Books were still not only read, but discussed and thought over, and every slight  allusion to the times was instantly applied.
 In the prevailing listlessness, the mere fact of increased mental activity was of importance.
 A spark of genius does much to raise a nation.
If we take the U.S.A today we may understand that its moral bankruptsy is merely that of having very few intellectuals, real ones, in the public view and hence meaningless interventions in the middle east such is the idiocy abroad and around.
 It is in itself the incontrovertible proof that the race lives: a dead people does not produce men of genius.And you may be dead without knowing it. One might point that accusing finger not just at the dead rhetoric of the USA but also at Europe where the artists have more or less become that fey group where intelligence has given way to mental and physical charity.
 Whatever awakes one part of the intelligence reacts on all its parts. You cannot lift, any more than you can degrade, the heart of man piecemeal. In this sense not literature only but also music helped, who can say how effectually, to bring Italy back to life.
 The land was refreshed by a flood of purely national song, full of the then laughter and the tears of Italian character, of the sunshine and the storms of Italian nature. Music, the only art uncageable as the human soul, descended as a gift from heaven upon the people whose articulate utterance was stifled. And








... No speech may evince


Feeling like music.

The war had its protagonists and in 54mm here are 1)The King and 2)Garibaldi. After we can see the troops in 25mm of the Sardian Grenadiers, the Bersaglieri and the Garibaldini. These are superb wargames pieces.They are available from Il Plantegeneto

Hope from nothing. Part 3

Black, however, was the present outlook.
 Total commercial stagnation and famine increased the sentiment of unmitigated hopelessness which spread through the land.

foscolo

The poet Monti, who, alas! sang for bread the festival songs of the Austrians as he had sung those of Napoleon, said  in private to an Englishman who asked him why he did not give his voice to the liberties of 
his country which he desired, though he did not expect to see them: 'It would be vox clamantis in deserto; besides, how can the grievances of Italy be made known? No one dares to write—scarcely to think—
politics; if truth is to be told, it must be told by the English; England is the only tribunal yet open to the complaints of Europe.'
A greater poet and nobler man, Ugo Foscolo, had but lately uttered a wail still more despondent: 'Italy will soon be nothing but a lifeless carcass, and her generous sons should only weep in silence without the impotent complaints and mutual recriminations of slaves.' 
That as patriotic a heart as ever beat should have been afflicted to this point by the canker of despair tells of the quagmire—not only political but spiritual—into which Italy was sunk.
 The first thing needful was to restore the people to consciousness, to animation of some sort, it did not matter what, so it were a sign of life. Foscolo himself, who impressed on what he wrote his own proud and scornful temperament, almost savage in its independence, fired his countrymen to better things than the despairing inertia which he preached.
natale
 Few works have had more effect than his Letters of Jacobo Ortis.
 As often happens with books which strongly move contemporaries, the reader may wonder now what was the secret of its power, but if the form and sentiment of the Italian Werther strike us as antiquated, the intense, though melancholy patriotism that pervades it explains the excitement it caused when patriotism was a statutory offence. 
Such mutilated copies as were allowed to pass by the censor were eagerly sought; the young read it, women read it—who so rarely read—the mothers of the fighters of  to-morrow.
 Foscolo's life gave force to his words: when all were flattering Napoleon, he had reminded him that no man can be rightly praised till he is dead, and that his one sure way of winning the praise of posterity was to establish the independence of Italy. The warning was contained in a 'discourse' which Foscolo afterwards printed with the motto from Sophocles: 'My soul groans for my country, for myself and for thee.' 
above natale
Sooner than live under the Austrians, he went into voluntary exile, and finally took refuge in England, where he was the fêted lion of a season, and then forgotten, and left almost without the necessaries of life.
 No one was much to blame; Foscolo was born to misunderstand and to be misunderstood; he hid himself to hide his poverty, which, had it been known, might have been alleviated. His individual tragedy seemed a part of the universal tragedy.

When Garibaldi the greatest general of Italian and maybe world history put an end to the arrogance of the Pope's Vatican states he came up against these fanatical Catholics who dressed in Zouave uniforms. These are by Strategy and Military.This company is Italian and you can find them on the internet.If you have trouble contact me on the email.

THE POLITICAL MAP BEFORE THE STORM PART 2

The political map of Italy in the summer of 1814 showed the Pope (Pius VII.) reinstated in Rome, Victor Emmanuel I. at Turin, Ferdinand III. of Hapsburg-Lorraine in Tuscany, the Genoese Republic for the moment restored by the English, Parma and Piacenza assigned to the Empress Marie-Louise, and Modena to the Austrian Archduke Francis, who was heir through the female line to the last of the Estes.

Guard Corps Naples Kingdom 1815romeo

 Murat was still  at Naples, Ferdinand IV. in Sicily, Austria acknowledged supreme in Lombardy and Venetia, and the island of Elba ironically handed over to Napoleon.

Murat by Romeo

 These were the chief features, so far as Italy was concerned, of the Treaty of Paris, signed on the 30th of May 1814. Next year the Congress of Vienna modified the arrangement by providing that the Spanish Infanta Maria Louisa, on whom had been bestowed the ex-republic of Lucca, should have the reversion of Parma and Piacenza, while Lucca was to go in the end to Tuscany. Murat having been destroyed, the Neapolitan Bourbons recovered all their old possessions.
 San Marino and Monaco were graciously recognised as independent, which brought the number of Italian states up to ten. The Sardinian monarchy received back the part of Savoy which by the Treaty of Paris had been reserved to France. It was also offered a splendid and unexpected gift—Genoa.


Lord William Bentinck entered Genoa by a convention concluded with the authorities on the 18th of April 1814.

 A naval demonstration following an ably-conducted operation, by which Bentinck's hybrid force of Greeks and Calabrese, with a handful of English, became master of the two principal forts, hastened this conclusion, but the Genoese had no reluctance to open their gates to the English commander, who inspired them with the fullest confidence.

Greek Napoleonics by Treefrog

flat greeks

 He came invested with the halo of a constitution-maker-under-difficulties; it was known that he had stopped at nothing in carrying out his mission in Sicily; not even at getting rid of the Queen, who found in Bentinck the Nemesis for having led a greater Englishman to stain his fame in the roads of Naples. Driven rather than persuaded to leave Sicily, Marie Antoinette's sister encountered so frightful a sea voyage that she died soon after  joining her relations at Vienna.

semi flat greeks

 Lord William had acquired the art of writing the finest appeals to the love of freedom; a collection of his manifestoes would serve as handy-book to anyone instructed to stir up an oppressed nationality. He immediately gave the Genoese some specimens of his skill as a writer, and by granting them at once a provisional constitution, he dispelled all doubts about the future recognition of their republic.

greek Greek  a

 Italians had not ceased yet from reserving their best aversion for their nearest neighbours.
Bentinck did not mean to deceive; perhaps he thought that by going beyond the letter of his instructions he should draw his government after him. That he did, in effect, deceive, cannot be denied; even Lord Castlereagh, while necessarily refusing to and calabrian troops

 What was not, therefore, their dismaandy, when they were suddenly informed of the decision of the Holy Alliance to make a present of them to the people whom, of all others, they probably disliked the most.dmit that definite promises had been made, yet allowed that, 'Of course he would have been glad if the proclamation issued to the Genoese had been more precisely worded.'

Calabrian napoleonic troops

 The motive of the determination to sacrifice the republic was, he said, 'a sincere conviction of the necessity of a barrier between France and Italy, which ought to be made effectual on the side of Piedmont.
 The object was to commit the defence of the Alps and of the great road leading round them by the Gulf of Genoa, between France and Italy, to the same power to which it had formerly been entrusted.
 On that principle, the question relating to Genoa had been entertained and decided upon by the allied sovereigns. It was not resolved upon because any particular state had unworthy or sordid views, or from any interest or feeling in favour of the King of  Sardinia, but solely to make him, as far as was necessary, the instrument of the general policy of Europe.'A better defence might have been made.
Piedmont was destined to serve as a bulwark, not so much against France, which for the time was not to be feared, as against Austria, absolute except for the subalpine kingdom in all Italy.
 The ends then looked very rough-hewn.Piedmont was a hotbed of reaction and bigotry.
True, she had a history differing vastly from that of the other Italian states, but the facts of the hour presented her in a most unattractive light.
 The Genoese felt the keenest heart-burnings in submitting to a decision in which they had no voice, and which came to them as a mandate of political extinction from the same powers that confirmed the sentence of death on Genoa's ancient and glorious rival.
 .

After the Congress of Vienna finished its labours, there were, as has been remarked, ten states in Italy, but out of Sardinia (whose subjugation Prince Metternich esteemed a mere matter of time) there was one master. The authority of the Emperor Francis was practically as undisputed from Venice to the Bay of Naples as it was in the Grand Duchy of Austria.
 The Austrians garrisoned Piacenza, Ferrara and Commacchio; Austrian princes reigned in Tuscany, Parma, Modena and Lucca; the King of Naples, who paid Austria twenty-six million francs for getting back his throne, thankfully agreed to support a German army to protect him against his subjects.

austrian cavalry 1859

 In the secret treaty concluded between himself and the Emperor of Austria, it was stipulated that the King of the Two Sicilies should not introduce into his government any principles irreconcilable with those adopted by His Imperial Majesty in the government of his Italian provinces.
As for the Roman States, Austria reckoned on her influence in always securing the election of a Pope who would give her no trouble. Seeing herself without rivals and all-powerful, she deemed her position unassailable. She forgot that, by giving Italy an unity of misery, she was preparing the way for another unity. Common hatred engendered common love; common sufferings led on to a common effort.
 If some prejudices passed away under the Napoleonic rule, many more still remained, and possibly, to eradicate so old an evil, no cure less drastic than universal servitude would have sufficed.
Italians felt for the first time what before only the greatest among them had felt—that they were brothers in one household, children of one mother whom they were bound to redeem.
 Jealousies and millennial feuds died out; the intense municipal spirit which, imperfect as it was, had yet in it precious political germs, widened into patriotism. Italy was re-born.

general of naples

These are kits and soldiers avaible from Italian companies representing a multitude of regiments from the Italian wars of independence . The top photo is by Castel.The kepi is a vatican army one of the Zouaves.I will try to keep you informed on this blog of new soldiers that become available.