The Cilento riots of 1828 are among the episodes that have most highlighted the heroism of the inhabitants of this wonderful land.
In fact, although the Cilento Revolts belong to the lesser-known pages of Italian Risorgimento history, they constitute a clear example of how the people can actively design their own future, and include, under this definition, all those insurrectional episodes which saw protagonists, in the summer of 1828, members of the revolutionary secret societies eager to restore the constitution in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.
The origin of the Cilento riots
The insurrectional uprisings of 1828 arose from widespread discontent among the Cilentans and saw the ancient municipality of Borgo among the main protagonists.
Ferdinand I of Bourbon, king of the Two Sicilies, had granted the people a constitution in 1820, aimed at modernizing the political management of his kingdom. After only a few months, however, the king renounced this constitution, asking for the intervention of the forces of the Holy Alliance to restore absolutist control over his lands.
The reaction of the people was not long in coming: a crowd of people, led by exponents of the Carboneria and secret agents of the Philadelphians, led by Antonio Maria De Luca, together with the brigands, rose up to demand the return to the constitution.
The events of 1828
The insurgents were counting on the advantages offered by the harshness of the Cilento territory: the difficult access to sea, the absence of major practicable routes and the and gentle cosmetics mountainous area in the area should have in fact helped the revolt, given that it would have been very difficult for the rulers to get troops to the place to oppose the rebels.
But, as unfortunately often happens in history, the plan turned out to be more effective on paper than in reality: in this case, the perhaps involuntary denunciation of a conspirator, Antonio Galotti, ruined the revolutionary plans of the local population. In fact, he revealed the details of the plan, which involved arriving at Vallo della Lucania of seven hundred armed people who would then march towards the capital of the Kingdom to force the monarch to apply the constitutional reforms so longed for by the population.
In a few days the insurgents managed to occupy the fort Palinuro and to march on neighboring countries, as Camerota and Bosco, but unfortunately the Bourbon reaction was not long in coming: the king commissioned Marshal Francesco Del Carretto to lead the military companies, which landed in Paestum and Policastro, and to suffocate the revolt.
The repression was very harsh: on 7 July 1828, the town of Bosco, guilty of having shown great enthusiasm towards the revolt, was completely destroyed. The soldiers looted and set fire to the houses of the village, shooting on the spot, after a summary trial, twenty patriots, including Canon De Luca, considered one of the leaders of the insurrection, and deporting around fifty rebels. Most of the insurgents surrendered in Vallo della Lucania the same day, while the others went into hiding.
Epilogue (source Wikipedia)
Despite the retreat of the rebels, Del Carretto behaved à la Manhès, with "black harshness": he had the hamlet of Bosco bombed, which had already been evacuated by its inhabitants, carried out twenty-three death sentences and exposed the heads of the insurgents executed in the localities of area. While the majority of the insurgents surrendered in Vallo della Lucania on 7 July 1828, the rest went into hiding.
Having failed to capture Canon De Luca, Del Carretto threatened to raze Celle di Bulgheria to the ground, as he had already done with Bosco. De Luca, to avoid a terrible fate for his hometown, turned himself in together with his nephew Giovanni De Luca, also a priest, and eight other insurgents. After a summary trial they were all sentenced to death: the eight lay people were shot at dawn on 19 July 1828, the two religious people on 24 July, after the archbishop of Salerno Camillo Alleva had them excommunicated.
Galotti, the Capozzolis and a few others managed to escape to Corsica. Returning to Cilento the following year, the Capozzolis were arrested after a firefight on 17 June 1829 and, after a summary trial, shot in Palinuro, in front of a telegraph post set on fire during the revolt, their severed heads were taken to show in the surrounding towns. Galotti, who had been handed over to the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies by Charles
The Bourbon repression momentarily suffocated the popular discontent against the Bourbons, which had triggered the riots in Cilento and Salerno. But after a couple of decades the revolt was rekindled with the uprisings in Cilento in 1848. In fact, two other Capozzoli brothers, Luigi and Gaetano, were subsequently active against the Bourbons, taking part in the Cilento uprisings of 1848: the first died on 26 September 1849 following a firefight, while the second, sentenced to prison, was released from prison only in 1860, receiving an annuity from the Kingdom of Italy of Vittorio Emanuele II.
The legacy of the Cilento Revolts
Cilento and, in particular, the town of Bosco, defined by Marshal Del Carretto as the "land of the sad", were instead celebrated abroad as the "land of heroes".
It is no coincidence, in fact, that, many years later, the exile Josè Garcia Ortega, a pupil of Picasso, settled for a few years in Bosco after having escaped from the Franco regime, giving the town that had welcomed him the famous commemorative panel on the uprisings of 1828 which depicts the Bourbon soldiers on the march, ready to repress the aspirations for freedom of the heroic people of Cilento.
