Sergeant Romano of the Two Sicilies Army

On January 6, a wreath was placed on Sergeant Romano's
funerary obelisk, commemorating the 159th anniversary of his death
Photo courtesy of Fiore Marro

January 5 marked the death of Sergeant Pasquale Domenico Romano, Second Sergeant of the 7th Battalion and later 13th Battalion Cacciatori of the Two Sicilies Army in 1863.  Sergeant Romano was born in Gioia del Colle in Puglia on January 24, 1833 to Giuseppe Romano and Anna Concetta Lo Russo, a family of shepherds. He enrolled in the army at the age of 17, joining as Alfiere, or Standard Bearer of the 1st Company of the 5th Regiment of the Infantry.

Sergeant Pasquale Domenico Romano

He served with distinction in the famous Battle of the Volturno. After a brief crossing of the border into the Papal States, Sergeant Romano returned to his native town of Gioia del Colle where he was able to assemble a sizable group of resistance fighters drawn from the Royalist committee of the area, many of whom were ex-Two Sicilies army soldiers.

Having obtained arms and munitions, on July 26, 1861 he attacked the garrison of Alberobello and was able to take the defenders prisoner along with the defenders of the garrison of Cellino. On July 28, 1861 he attacked his beloved Gioia del Colle, weakening the Piedmontese forces but he was unable to capture it. Romano united forces with the famous Lucanian rebel Carmine Crocco, who headed the local Vulture fighters in Lucania and together they carried out assaults on the Piedmontese army in Andria and Corato.

L) Sergeant Romano's funerary obelisk in the Bosco di Vallata.
(R) Participants honor the memory of the fallen hero
Photos courtesy of Fiore Marro

After the terrible murder of his fiancée Lauretta d’Onghia in Alberobello on August 9, 1862, Sergeant Romano attacked the farm of the informer Vito Angelini, whom he held responsible for her death and had him shot. After a defeat on November 4, 1862 near Noci, Romano divided his volunteers into smaller units, according to Carmine Crocco’s guerrilla tactics, and lead attacks on the Piedmontese and their local supporters at Carovigno and Erchie.

He died on January 5, 1863 in a fierce battle against the Cavalleggeri di Saluzzo of the Piedmontese Army in the fields between Gioia del Colle and Santeramo. The circumstances of this latter engagement are to this day in dispute, with various versions having been widely published. According to one, he and twenty companions fought some 200 Piedmontese troops, while others claim they were about evenly matched fifty men to fifty men. Romano supposedly asked to die as a soldier but was ignobly hacked to death with sabers. In any case, Sergeant Romano literally died defending his native town. Even Piedmontese accounts recorded that holy prayers and a copy of the Royalist Oath by which the volunteers swore to fight to defend God, the Pope, and the King and to never join any treacherous group acting against the people were found on his person.

Sergeant Romano's funerary obelisk in the Bosco di Vallata
with the coat of arms of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies
Photos courtesy of Regno delle Dus Sicilie

While Sergeant Romano and his volunteer company have been vilified over the years as mere unruly “brigands”, as were many fighters who resisted the annexation of the Two Sicilies, he figures large in Two Sicilies lore as a courageous and clever resistance leader with a particular Christian devotion. There is a funerary obelisk in his honor in the woods between Gioia del Colle and Santeramo. A street in Villa Castelli (BR) is named in his honor, and he his recalled in various annual commemorations throughout the South of Italy.

~ By Cav. Charles Sant’Elia

Inscriptions on Sergeant Romano's funerary obelisk
Photos courtesy of Regno dell Due Sicilie

Essential Bibliography/Further Reading

• Antonio Lucarelli, Il sergente Romano: notizie e documenti riguardanti la reazione e il brigantaggio pugliese del 1860, Bari, Soc. Tip. Pugliese, 1922

• Antonio Lucarelli, Il brigantaggio politico nelle Puglie dopo il 1860. Il sergente Romano,  Bari, Laterza, 1946

• Mario Guagnano, Il sergente Romano. Pagine di brigantaggio politico in Puglia, Stampasud, Mottola, 1993

• Marco Cardetta, Sergente Romano, Bari, LiberAria 2016

• Marco Monnier, Notizie e documenti sul brigantaggio nelle province napoletane, Florence, Barbero, 1862

• José Mottola, Fanti e briganti nel sud dopo l'Unità, Lecce, Capone Editore, 2012