Il brigante Chiavone, di Michele Ferri e Domenico Celestino Il libro, pubblicato nel 1984, si inserisce nel filone delle microstorie che privilegiano le storie locali in un limitato arco di tempo. Vengono presentati gli avvenimenti della guerriglia filoborbonica alla frontiera pontificia negli anni 1860-1862. La figura del brigante Chiavone è tenuta quasi sullo sfondo della corale reazione all'invasione ed annessione piemontese del Regno delle Due Sicilie. Clero e contadini, la stragrande maggioranza del popolo meridionale quindi, oppose bourgeois gentlemen in order to safeguard their privileges have sided with the Piedmont, with the excuse that the implementation of the liberal dream of the unification of Italy came to the South to take possession of desirable goods of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. The robbers are the armed wing of the resistance.
Around the robbers to play a game that saw a considerable movement of capital, managed by the Central Bourbon that had formed in the Papal States, where he found the hospitality last king of Naples, Francesco 2 °, which had as its almost impossible goal the return of the Bourbons in Naples. Together with the robbers fought many legitimate foreign aid courses in 2nd and Francis Queen Maria Sofia. But while the robbers were fighting for their social improvement, not always clear is the purpose of Legitimists.
Theatre of armed bands of guerrillas are Chiavone the southern part of the Papal States and neighboring Abruzzo and Ultra Terra di Lavoro. The robbers were acting in the territory of the former Kingdom of Two Sicilies, with its epicenter at Sora, but to escape took refuge in the papal territory in Piedmont, where the French army showed great acquiescence. The abbeys and Casamari Trisulti and the convent of Scifelli offered hospitality to the robbers.
Louis Alonzo, said Chiavone, Sora was born in June 19, 1825 to a peasant family. For his services in favor of King Francis 2 nd era stato nominato guardaboschi del distretto di Sora e della Valle Roveto. Dopo l'invasione piemontese si diede alla macchia e riuscì a formare una nutrita banda di briganti, che lottò contro gli invasori. Nel periodo di maggiore auge la banda Chiavone, nominato comandante in capo da Francesco 2°, era suddivisa in otto compagnie e comprendeva 20 ufficiali, un chirurgo, 59 sottoufficiali e caporali, 7 trombettieri e 343 soldati, per un totale di 430 uomini.
Il libro è quasi un diario degli avvenimenti succedutesi tra il giugno 1860 ed il giugno 1862. Tanti fatti e tanti uomini si avvicendano in un biennio tragico per il meridione d'Italia. Oltre e più che capi e comandanti lasciano la loro traccia persone comuni e normali. Si sussegue, as in a martyrology, a long line of robbers arrested and shot. To account in a review is very difficult and almost impossible. Thus we have restricted to some general consideration.
We believe that the authors, although in a meritevolissima by extensive documentation, failed to overcome contradictions due to the lack of a clear choice between oppressed and oppressors of the field, including robbers and Piedmont. In the book there are statements such as: " the lowest class came to the sad south banditry ', the reaction was one of the robbers' decomposed mass voluntarism ',' peasants, exploited by reactionary, prepared by ignorance, animated by anti-bourgeois resentment, took up arms to fight again to defend the throne and the altar, "" began to mount, especially among peasants classes, adherence to the cause of raucous Bourbon ',' General English Tristany was puzzled minchioneria especially of King Francis. " But we also wrote: "Louis Alonzo, a dark ranger, became a protagonist in the troubled life of Sora, and the most famous bandit in the history of liberal," "the main character of our story is Chiavone and it seems that his image, according to the events reported, it appears somewhat better than the one handed down by tradition formed what they wrote about the winners, competitors and friends concerned, the accusation of cruelty, incompetent, coward and traitor seems undeserved, "" the true strength of the robbery was that popular, "" Sora to all social classes were held for reaction represented by Montieri and Chiavone ',' the ruling classes strove to erase the memory in the collective historical consciousness of the war of brigandage, but the attempt failed, and that removal in the south was a confused memory became, after World War II, a clear awareness. In recent years, publications on the robbery took nature of real historical analysis and provide the public with an effective tool for the understanding of many aspects of contemporary society. "
seems that the authors walk on roads that are not opposed and even managed to find a parallel convergence, which somehow gives a positive value to their research on banditry.
The book has been given too much space and credit to the authors that the brigands have overlooked and discredited: Jacopo Gelli, Alessandro Bianco Saint Jorioz and somehow also Ludwig Richard Zimmermann. From the latter author, who had fought alongside Chiavone, it is all part of the book, which tells of the last period of life of the bandit sorano. German Zimmermann with the legitimate English Rafael Tristany they tried and shot Chiavone June 28, 1862 in the bush of the Valley of Hell.
Ferri and Celestino reserve ample space in their book to the robber Domenico Coja, Centrillo said, the pro-Bourbon Montieri Joseph Bishop of Sora, the Sub filopiemontese Homodei Francis, legitimate Theodule De Christen.
Franco Molfese, in the preface to the book, wrote that only in recent decades has been possible to reveal the magnitude, duration and violence of the 'robbery', the size of the phenomenon have refuted the opinions of biased and simplistic "manifestation of crime Common, especially in vogue in historiography 'school' of brigandage; aspects of a deep and violent movement that emerged from the class are finding the support given by the real vast peasant masses to fight armed gangs.
Rocco Biondi
Michele Ferri - Domenico Celestino, The robber Chiavone - History of the guerrillas at the border papal pro-Bourbon (1860-1862) , Issue Cominium Research Center, Casalvieri (FR) 1984, pp. 408
