One Country Under Blood

One Country Under Blood

by Antonio Ciano

English translation: Hollis Eugene Forbus

Graphic design and layout: Sara Calmosi

ISBN 978-88-33460-84-0

Ali Ribelli Edizioni

Essay – True History

www.aliribelli.com – redazione@aliribelli.com

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

ANTONIO CIANO

ONE COUNTRY UNDER BLOOD

prefaces by Pino Aprile and Lucio Barone

AliRibelli

Contents

Author’s Note

Preface

Preface

The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies

To Arms! To Arms!

Kick Back City

For the Throne and the Altar

The Infamous Right

For the Throne and the Altar

The North won’t leave the sourtherners even the eyes to cry with

Southernism and christianity

The Massonic Horde

Giuseppe Mazzini (1805-1872)

Camillo Benso Di Cavour

Giuseppe Garibaldi

The Roman Question

North, Thief

San Leucio

Mechanical Engineering Industry in the Kingdom of Two Sicilies

The Raiload in the Kingdom of Two Sicilies

The Merchant Marine in the Kingdom of Two Sicilies

Public Education in the Kingdom of Two Sicilies

Crocodile Tears

State Property

Pontelandolfo and Casalduni

Only One God and Only One King

Sannio

The Massacre of Pontelandolfo and Casalduni

The Fair of San Donato

Casalduni

Pontelandolfo

Turin

Pontelandolfo

Napoli

Pontelandolfo

Pontelandolfo

Liberty

Naples

Pontelandolfo

The Spark

San Lupo

Pontelandolfo

Casalduni

Campolattaro

Naples

Turin

Casalduni

Campolattaro

Pontelandolfo

Campobasso

Campolattaro

Campobasso

Pontelandolfo

Casalduni

The Shooting

12 August 1861

Original Photographs

Forward Savoy!

Pontelandolfo

Casalduni set to Fire and Sword

16 August 1861

16 August 1861

22 August 1861

29 September 1861

The Vision

Returned from the Past

The Savoy, Denial of God

How Many Scenes of Horror

Scorched Earth

Martummé, How Beautiful is the Sea!

The Pyramid

The Butchers go to War

Vittorio Custoza and Lissa

The Cowards

Chronology of Political Events in Southern Italy From 1830 to 1946

Essential Bibliographic References

Bibliography

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Giacinto De’ Sivo, a well-known historian, wrote of six towns that were set to fire on page 447 of his History of the Two Sicilies. Given that many historical researchers, including myself and the good Gigi Di Fiore, have taken for granted that there were six towns that were razed over a period of nine months, but as reported by the historian of Maddalonie established through continuous research that the actual number of countries burned by General Pinelli under the command of General Cialdini were twenty-two, we can assume that this mistake is not the fault of De Sivo, or that of Di Fiore nor of the undersigned if, sometimes, you come across some errors. The state of Italy has not yet organized its archives or has kept them under military control. The same is true for Eleonoro Negri, considered the Butcher of Pontelandolfo, while others believe that it was Gaetano Negri. However, both were executioners of so-called brigands and operated in the same areas. We are still waiting for the government to release with certainty that it was and how many died during the civil war that bloodied the South.

The name of Gaetano Negri has been used by many historical researchers, among which we can mention lofty names such as: Luisa Sangiuolo, Michele Topa, Roberto Martucci, Nicola Nisco, Nicolina Valillo, Vencenzo Mazzacane, Carlo Alianiello, Cesare Cesari, Ferdinando Melchiorre, Marco Monier, Gustavo Rinaldi. In the State archives of Vial Lepanto in Rome the name of Negri never appears, nor does it mention Carlo Melegari, who led the Bersaglieri to Casalduni. The author of this book has identified in Gaetano Negri the Butcher of Pontelandolfo, but perhaps it could be an error. It seems that the author of the massacre was Eleonoro Negri, but no one can prove it with certainty. A researcher from Vicenza, Andrea Kozlocic, in a historical essay entitled Bersaglieri, wrote that Pier Eleonoro Negri, born in Locara in the province of Vicenza, of a noble family, who at the time of the massacre was 44 years old and a lieutenant colonel who had already been decorated for the battle of Garigliano against the army of Francis II. This nobleman, if it is truly him, was decorated, while Matteo Negri, from Palermo, who died defending what was then his homeland, was given no recognition or tombstone from the new fledgling State. In the United States of America, once the civil war was over, a brotherhood was formed between winners and losers. In the southern states the flags of Dixie are affixed on public buildings, always present in official memorial parades; the streets are named after the heroes of both sides, as are the schools and army departments. Republican Italy, born on the ashes of the House of Savoy and fascism, has not been able to remedy this error. In France, the French celebrate the birth of the republic on July 14th of each year. In Israel they do not have streets named after Hitler who massacred six million Jews. In Italy we still have streets and squares named after Vittorio Emanuele III, who promulgated the racist laws of 1938. On 8 September 1943 he escaped from Italy with his court, leaving our homeland in the hands of German anger and the army without orders. On September 10th, north-eastern Italy was merged by Hitler’s decree to the Third Reich. North-western Italy was administered by the Italian Social Republic of Mussolini while the South of Italy was in the hands of the Allies. That territorial rift was healed by the victory of the allies and the armed resistance against Nazi-fascism. 87 thousand partisans and thousands of American, English, French, Polish and Australian soldiers died. The regime historians, and the President of the Republic, have forgotten this passage in history, celebrating the 150th anniversary of a monarchy that brought Italy and the world the death of millions, biblical emigration, hunger and enrichment of just one part of Italy. A king who fled from Italy is called Soldier King, another king who defended his homeland to the death in Gaeta, Francis II of Bourbon, is called, disparagingly Franceschiello (little Francis), or worse, the army of Franceschiello to denigrate those brave soldiers who fought as heroes on the terraces of the Tyrrhenian city massacred by Cavour’s bombardment of over 160 thousand artillery rounds.

THE MONSTER

There is a monster in the modern world - the state - that is devouring society […] This state must be demolished […] The Italian revolution, if it does not want to degenerate into idolizing the state, or a ferocious barbarism, grown on the ruins of the fascist and capitalist state, must revive society, with a federation of associations as free and various as possible. We will also one day need a central administration, a government: never so will one or the other be at the orders of society, not vice versa. Man is the end. Not the state.¹

¹ Carlo Rosselli, Against the State, in Justice and Freedom, 21 September 1934.

THE LIBERATORS

Of these the nuptials are, the gloomy funeral,

These are the inheritance of Our Fathers!

They squeezed blood from rock,

And the honest ones are them, and we are thieves!

Blows on the back and horns on the forehead.

This made us the little Piedmont!

Nicola Marmo

from Roma liberata

PREFACE

by Pino Aprile

This book was published, the first time, fifteen years ago. It is the result of the reflection, dignity and indignation of a man who has rediscovered in his flesh an ancient wound never healed: the martyrdom of his city, Gaeta, to promote the birth of a united Italy, revealed to be the stepmother and even the enemy of those who, paid the highest price in resources and blood for that historical construction.

Antonio Ciano is a respectable man, driven by a civil passion that leads to the search for truth, to the denunciation of distortions, and above all to action, perhaps in total solitude, or in absolute minority; unable to betray the first commandment of the honest: do what you have to do!

Why am I saying this? The reason is because I know him.

I am the author of Terroni, the reexamination of 150 years of Italian history, from the Unification to the present; the story of the invasion, massacres, looting, rapes, torture, reprisals, laws passed to drain money from the South and spend it in the north, then as today (a worthy successor is the delinquent and established practice of Minister Giulio Tremonti that subtracts tens of billions of euro from funds destined for lesser developed areas (for which they were intended by law!) and squander them in the shadow of the Alps, for example to pay European fines for the frauds committed by the farmers of the Po Valley). It has been said that Terroni awoke the pride of the South and led it to seek a political solution in demanding respect and the right to fairness, from the state, that so far has been denied to the Southerners (rather it was thought to replace it with insult …). Otherwise, how can the surprising success of the book be explained, it pulverized the most optimistic editorial predictions, until it became not only a literary phenomenon, but also a social and political one. The truth is otherwise: Terroni met with an unexpected high wave that grew over the years, without anyone noticing how powerful and vast it was; not even I who, also, have dedicated studies and writings on these subjects.

That uprising of so many people is due to others: the reaction of southerners for the quantity and repulsive quality of offenses, discrimination, racist attacks signed off by the Northern League and blessed by most of the conservatives in the North, supported by Southern reactionaries, ignored by progressives of both the North and South: from the unfortunate agreement Pagliarini-Van Miert (the first, a Northern Leaguer, unfortunately for Italy and the South, minister; the second, Italian representative to the European Union), which removed, only from the South, Tax relief granted by the European Union to depressed areas of the continent, costing 100 thousand jobs in the Italian regions already suffering from high unemployment; to the maneuvers by the Northern League to take away from Naples ownership of the pizza and the Mediterranean diet!

But the uprising of so many people is also due to the knowledge spread by many authors, before Terroni (derogatory name for Southern Italians), on the true events of Italian Unification and the disparate, fiercely unequal, distribution of resources: no Northern factory has made as much, as that of the industry of the removal of resources destined for the South (even the ICI tax on luxury homes was abolished throughout Italy, thanks to Tremonti’s sticky fingers, taking 3.5 billion euro that was allocated to recondition the roads and ports in Calabria and Sicily).

One of the earliest and most active of the new breed of southerners that produced the re-emergence of a dormant and resigned sensitivity is Antonio Ciano. It does not come from historical studies and academic archival specializations or is it acquired in the field, as the president of the neo-Bourbon association, Gennaro De Crescenzo (Against Garibaldi), Alessandro Romano (Briganti & Partigiani) or Antonio Pagano (director of the Two Sicilies magazine); the economy (that teaches) as does Vincenzo Gulì (The plundering of the South); or long experience teaching, as has Fulvio Izzo (The lager of the Savoy), from the foundation of editorial initiatives, such as written by Nicola Zitara (Unity of Italy, birth of a colony), from journalistic activities such as Angelo Manna (Those assassins of the Brothers of Italy), Gigi Di Fiore (Counter-story of the Unification of Italy), Lorenzo Del Boca (Damn Savoy) or Lino Patruno (To the rescue, Southerners): Ciano is a former naval officer, who came ashore to manage a tobacco shop in his Gaeta, the city of the last defense of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies bombed by the heroic Cialdini and Persano while signing the surrender (the same leaders who shamed Italy in Custoza and Lissa: good only at massacring the unarmed); the city of historical memory where Father Paolo Capobianco ministered, parish priest, son of the last born dual-Sicilian; where he discussed the story of betrayal and denial with Angelo Manna, eclectic journalist, writer, poet and Neapolitan parliamentarian.

Ciano dives into the dark pages of Unification, retracing the steps in archives and on the field. He told me about the times when others asked him: They really did this to us?, at Pontelandolfo and Casalduni, two of the towns razed to the ground as retaliation by Cialdini’s heroic Bersaglieri, who were given the right to rape and plunder, the extermination of innocents.

By now, it’s been decades since Ciano, ex-communist, passionate Gramsci an (Gramsci’s family was from Gaeta, the father was exiled to Sardinia, because he was a Bourbon official, convinced Unitarian, My country was born on June 2, 1946, it’s called the Italian Republic), dedicates his life to this endless research. But every time he finds new documents, it is as if for the first time: his voice trembled, a few months ago, while he was referring to the evidence gathered on the firing squad execution of a nine year old Sicilian girl (Angelina Romano of Castellammare del Golf), because she was a bandit, at the hands of yet another bloodthirsty Piedmonts’ ethnic cleanser.

His commitment is not only limited to knowledge, but also has prompted him to action. He founded the Southern Party, with which, allied to a civil list, defeated during the municipal elections the parties of the center-left and center-right (Left and right are now only directions, for us, he likes to say), conquering the city’s government. He wanted for himself the Department of State Property, because Gaeta is not the owner of its own territory: Italy still treats it as an enemy and conquered city and the citizens of Gaeta are still forced to pay duty to the State, all in order to be allowed to stroll along the seafront or accompany their children to school. The only part of the old city that has been left town property is Piazza Comestible. An embarrassment, which the citizens finally rebelled against and for the last few years have refused to pay this tax on a defeat of 150 years ago!

As a Council member, Ciano began the streets back to their original names, and above all to recover the state-owned sites that Piedmont had requisitioned from the city. Only in 1961, by order of the state for the 100th anniversary of the Unification of Italy, the streets of Gaeta were named after heroes of the Resurgence (Who for us were war criminals, says Antonio, invaded a country without a declaration of war and put it to iron and fire): these are the streets that lead to the Bourbon cemetery…

Recently, Ciano had a street dedicated to that Sicilian girl who was executed at the age of nine.

This book by Antonio, when it appeared, was an immediate and overwhelming success, but for contorted editorial reasons, it has never been known exactly how many copies were sold, but it is not wrong to estimate that between 100 thousand and 200 thousand copies were sold; even today, now that the book is out of print, the text still circulates in photocopies, perhaps by the author himself, to whom so many have made requests.

For this reason, it was decided to reprint it, updated with the latest events derived from Ciano’s initiative, such as the request to the Savoy’s for compensation, for the damage suffered by Gaeta; while the Southern Party has extended into Sicily and has been entrusted to the care of Pepe De Santi’s, former trade unionist with CGIL, a collaborator of Raffaele Lombardo, governor of the island, in the creation of the Movement for Autonomy, MPA.

Ciano writes choppily; He is not a writer by trade, the narrative force prevails over all: you feel whole, unchanged over time, at his indignation for how much, little by little, he discovered. But it has the merit of being well understood: it is expressed as it would be in some sectional meeting; a direct language, fiery, lucid, to inform and convince, but very, very involved. That same language which makes his transmissions on Telemonteorlando so effective, the first street-TV in Italy, founded by him to spread, in Gaeta and not only, the story of what was done to his city, which was once great and then reduced to so little: «We were many, we Ciano; I am the last one left, of the family, here. All the others, after the martyrdom of which Gaeta was victim, are elsewhere, mostly in the United States, where there live more Gaetani then in Gaeta. This is the gift we were given a hundred and fifty years ago. Through this book at least we will know the truth".

PREFACE

by Lucio Barone

Antonio Ciano was born a farmer, but like most of his fellow citizens he left the land and found honor at sea in the hard and stressful profession of a mariner, far from loved ones, becoming a sailor only after having completed nautical studies. His passion was ignited maybe while reviewing his recollections of those starry nights navigating South American seas, remembering the tales told by his Grandfather Pasquale, of the raids through the cracked and narrow streets of the old city shaken by the Piedmonts cannonades, or his memories of racing along the promenade of Montesecco, where along with other street urchins, he waited in anticipation of the macabre fireworks to celebrate the century since the Unification of Italy, that today is currently under discussion, unaware of the exhumation of more than 1,000 bodies stacked in a mass grave: blue uniforms, boots, torn silver buttons no longer bright, but blackened by time. A chilling vision of massacred men and women from a calculated war of conquest conducted in the name of an ideal shared by few but fought by many. There brothers killed brothers. There, hatred took the upper hand and created the conditions for a social and economic decline which exists still to this day, one that creates divisions; even today the worm of racism and selfishness reappear.

Ciano returned to his land after spending years at, to his Gaeta olives famous throughout the world, to his eternal torment, decided to raise a monument with his pen that would find in current times an attentive acknowledgement of a few illustrious predecessors. Collecting evidence is difficult but not impossible, verifying the fictional figures of many brigands condemned as criminals by the victors and by a large part of Unification history that exalts the few winners, in turn destroying and erasing the many.

Surely Ciano cries real tears of rage and impotence and in this way help one understand and justify those rabid curses, even vulgar, at the barbarians who raped and massacred without mercy the Neapolitans, they were Calabrian, Sicilians, Lucani, Abruzzese, Molisani, Pugliesi, or simply citizens of the capital of a kingdom that no longer exists.

This is why the reader should understand and respect the invective policy that opens this book and which then continues with the description of the massacres up to the screams, the anathemas, to the final vision of the maximum condemnation for those war criminals. Those of us who did not know the events have felt and will feel horrified by the individual stories, by the few text illustrations and the many that will soon circulate and touch our hearts. God, how they were reduced, and thousands of others such as her, the beautiful Michelina De Cesare!

More bitter than defeat was the false story told by the bribed Sabaudi. Stronger is the resentment and the insult when all that was whispered without evidence is verified.

When the rulers of this Republic find the courage to remove the State secret that is still kept locked away in the dusty basements of the Ministries of the Interior and War, the hundred thousand paper documents and photographs of the Unification carnage, the people of the South will finally be able to find themselves and be able to give a decisive and conclusive answer to the anti-state that still winds violently without stopping ever since the horrendous and indiscriminate massacres of women, children and humble farmers; of hate, robbery, the shootings and unjustified violence. The most powerful and violent won, the North which impressed upon men the law of the strongest. That is how in these last one hundred and fifty years all the criminal and violent powers that opposed the State were able to penetrate the government itself, a new theory? No, just an observation which, however, is not mere coincidence.

It is true that over the defeated, for more than a century, a veil has fallen, but it must be removed: to those heroes it is necessary to officially give honor and dignity, to all of our heroes.

This was not done. Indeed according to De Sivo, Gramsci and Alianello everything has been exacerbated by the civil war and the compliant and cowardly flattery of ass kissers and opportunists who while on duty made the tragedy of the losers larger and more sorrowful, so that thousands in order to escape the Piedmont police began to emigrate or take refuge in the mountains and the woods, becoming brigands.

Southern Italy still has not recovered from the general oblivion or regained the true historic memory of a people that were massacred by war criminals who were raised to the altars of Italian honor when instead they should be condemned by history and men, of an Italy that has always remained divided and never compensated for losses, massacres, rapes, bombardments and summary executions committed by those who have no respect nor blood ties or religious beliefs. The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was invaded by adventurers, opportunists’, traitors and the Piedmonts army full of mercenaries, without any declaration of war. Brother killing brother.

Today the world court would condemn the leaders of that massacre and made Franceschiello a hero, the young King Francesco II, hero of Gaeta.

We say that the greatness of the Duke of Calabria was above all the decision to abandon Naples because its treasures belong to future generations and they must not suffer the ruins of the bombings by those who invaded a peaceful and free Kingdom. Today Naples displays the splendor of its monuments and museums that few cities in Europe and the world can equal, thanks to the pride, wisdom and Christian acquiescence of a once peaceful Southern Kingdom which historically coexisted, with