In A Single Year (1809) Thirty-Three Thousand Crimes Were
Recorded Against The Brigands Of The Kingdom Of Naples; In A Single
Month They Are Said To Have Committed 1200 Murders In Calabria Alone.
These Were The Bands Who Were Described By British Officers As "Our
Chivalrous Brigand-Allies."
It is good to bear these facts in mind when judging of the present state
of this province, for the traces of such a reign of terror are not
easily expunged.
Good, also, to remember that this was the period of the
highest spiritual eminence to which South Italy has ever attained. Its
population of four million inhabitants were then consoled by the
presence of no less than 120,000 holy persons - to wit, 22 archbishops,
116 bishops, 65,500 ordained priests, 31,800 monks, and 23,600 nuns.
Some of these ecclesiastics, like the Bishop of Capaccio, were notable
brigand-chiefs.
It must be confessed that the French were sufficiently coldblooded in
their reprisals. Colletta himself saw, at Lagonegro, a man impaled by
order of a French colonel; and some account of their excesses may be
gleaned from Duret de Tavel, from Rivarol (rather a disappointing
author), and from the flamboyant epistles of P. L. Courier, a
soldier-scribe of rare charm, who lost everything in this campaign.
"J'ai perdu huit chevaux, mes habits, mon linge, mon manteau, mes
pistolets, mon argent (12,247 francs). . . . Je ne regrette que mon
Homere (a gift from the Abbe Barthelemy), et pour le ravoir, je
donnerais la seule chemise qui me reste."
But even that did not destroy the plague. The situation called for a
genial and ruthless annihilator, a man like Sixtus V, who asked for
brigands' heads and got them so plentifully that they lay "thick as
melons in the market" under the walls of Rome, while the Castel Sant'
Angelo was tricked out like a Christmas tree with quartered corpses - a
man who told the authorities, when they complained of the insufferable
stench of the dead, that the smell of living iniquity was far worse.
Such a man was wanted. Therefore, in 1810, Murat gave carte blanche
to General Manhes, the greatest brigand-catcher of modern times, to
extirpate the ruffians, root and branch. He had just distinguished
himself during a similar errand in the Abruzzi and, on arriving in
Calabria, issued proclamations of such inhuman severity that the
inhabitants looked upon them as a joke. They were quickly undeceived.
The general seems to have considered that the end justified the means,
and that the peace and happiness of a province was not to be disturbed
year after year by the malignity of a few thousand rascals; his threats
were carried out to the letter, and, whatever may be said against his
methods, he certainly succeeded. At the end of a few months' campaign,
every single brigand, and all their friends and relations, were wiped
off the face of the earth - together with a very considerable number of
innocent persons. The high roads were lined with decapitated bandits,
the town walls decked with their heads; some villages had to be
abandoned, on account of the stench; the Crati river was swollen with
corpses, and its banks whitened with bones. God alone knows the
cruelties which were enacted; Colletta confesses that he "lacks courage
to relate them." Here is his account of the fate of the brigand chief
Benincasa:
"Betrayed and bound by his followers as he slept in the forest of
Cassano, Benincasa was brought to Cosenza, and General Manhes ordered
that both his hands be lopped off and that he be led, thus mutilated, to
his home in San Giovanni, and there hanged; a cruel sentence, which the
wretch received with a bitter smile. His right hand was first cut off
and the stump bound, not out of compassion or regard for his life, but
in order that all his blood might not flow out of the opened veins,
seeing that he was reserved for a more miserable death. Not a cry
escaped him, and when he saw that the first operation was over, he
voluntarily laid his left hand upon the block and coldly watched the
second mutilation, and saw his two amputated hands lying on the ground,
which were then tied together by the thumbs and hung round his neck; an
awful and piteous spectacle. This happened at Cosenza. On the same day
he began his march to San Giovanni in Fiore, the escort resting at
intervals; one of them offered the man food, which he accepted;
he ate and drank what was placed in his mouth, and not so much in order
to sustain life, as with real pleasure. He arrived at his home, and
slept through the following night; on the next day, as the hour of
execution approached, he refused the comforts of religion, ascended the
gallows neither swiftly nor slowly, and died admired for his brutal
intrepidity." [Footnote: This particular incident was flatly denied by
Manhes in a letter dated 1835, which is quoted in the "Notizia storica
del Conte C. A. Manhes" (Naples, 1846) - one of a considerable number of
pro-Bourbon books that cropped up about this time. One is apt to have
quite a wrong impression of Manhes, that inexorable but incorruptible
scourge of evildoers. One pictures him a grey-haired veteran, scarred
and gloomy; and learns, on the contrary, that he was only thirty-two
years old at this time, gracious in manner and of surprising personal
beauty.]
For the first time since long Calabria was purged. Ever since the
Bruttians, irreclaimable plunderers, had established themselves at
Cosenza, disquieting their old Hellenic neighbours, the recesses of this
country had been a favourite retreat of political malcontents. Here
Spartacus drew recruits for his band of rebels; here "King Marcene"
defied the oppressive Spanish Viceroys, and I blame neither him nor his
imitators, since the career of bandit was one of the very few that still
commended itself to decent folks, under that regime.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 85 of 129
Words from 85629 to 86631
of 131203
