al of
the feudal power of the nobles, who sheltered banditti, just as a Highland
chief gave refuge to "caterans" in Scotland, and the helplessness of the
peasantry, made brigandage chronic, and the same conditions obtained in
Sicily. The Bourbon dynasty reduced brigandage very much, and secured order
on the main high-roads. But it was not extinguished, and it revived during
the French invasion. This was the flourishing time of the notorious Fra
Diavolo, who began as brigand and blossomed into a patriot. Fra Diavolo was
captured and executed by the French. When Ferdinand was restored on the
fall of Napoleon he employed an English officer, General Sir Richard
Church, to suppress the brigands. General Church, who kept good order among
his soldiers, and who made them pay for everything, gained the confidence
of the peasantry, and restored a fair measure of security. It was he who
finally brought to justice the villainous Don Ciro Anicchiarico--priest and
brigand--who declared at his trial with offhand indifference that he
supposed he had murdered about seventy people first and last. When a
brother priest was sent to give him the consolations of religion, Ciro cut
him short, saying, "Stop that chatter, we are two of a trade: we need not
play the fool to one another" (_Lasciate queste chiacchiere, siamo dell'
istessa professione: non ci burliamo fra noi_). Every successive
revolutionary disturbance in Naples saw a recrudescence of brigandage down
to the unification of 1860-1861, and then it was years before the Italian
government rooted it out. The source of the trouble was the support the
brigands received from various kinds of "_manutengoli_"
(maintainers)--great men, corrupt officials, political parties, and the
peasants who were terrorized, or who profited by selling the brigands food
and clothes. In Sicily brigandage has been endemic. In 1866 two English
travellers, Mr E.J.C. Moens and the Rev. J.C. Murray Aynesley, were
captured and held to ransom. Mr Moens found that the "manutengoli" of the
brigands among the peasants charged famine prices for food, and
extortionate prices for clothes and cartridges. What is true of Naples and
Sicily is true of other parts of Italy _mutatis [v.04 p.0565] mutandis_. In
Tuscany, Piedmont and Lombardy the open country has been orderly, but the
borders infested with brigands. The worst district outside Calabria has
been the papal states. The Austrian general, Frimont, did, however, partly
c