Royal rescript of 1274
charging a certain goldsmith Johannes of Longobucco with researches into
the metal and salt resources of the whole kingdom of Naples.
Writing from Longobucco in 1808 during a brigand-hunt, Duret de Tavel says:
"The high wooded mountains which surround this horrible place spread
over it a sombre and savage tint which saddens the imagination. This
borough contains a hideous population of three thousand souls, composed
of nail-makers, of blacksmiths and charcoal-burners. The former
government employed them in working the silver mines situated in the
neighbourhood which are now abandoned."
He tells a good deal about the brigandage that was then rife here, and
the atrocities which the repression of this pest entailed. Soon after
his arrival, for instance, four hundred soldiers were sent to a village
where the chiefs of the brigand "insurrection" were supposed to be
sheltered. The soldiers, he says, "poured into the streets like a
torrent in flood, and there began a horrible massacre, rendered
inevitable by the obstinacy of the insurgents, who fired from all the
houses. This unhappy village was sacked and burnt, suffering all the
horrors inseparable from a capture by assault." Two hundred dead were
found in the streets. But the brigand chiefs, the sole pretext of this
bloodshed, managed to escape.
