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| Portrait of a Brigand by Charles de Chatillon (1777-1844) |
While doing research for an upcoming piece on Cardinal Fabrizio Ruffo and the Sanfedisti, I stumbled across Sketches of Popular Tumults: Illustrative of the Evils of Social Ignorance (1847) by George Lillie Craik. Replete with interesting anecdotes, I decided to share a few choice passages about Calabria and its people for your careful consideration.
The state of Calabria was very singular. The people of that extensive, wild, and secluded region were not in the beginning altogether averse to a change of government, for they were sensible of the abuses of the old administration, and weary of the feudal exactions and immunities of the barons. But they were decidedly hostile, from old national feelings, to the advance of the French on their territory, and determined to oppose any such attempt. In the towns there was a considerable party inclined to the formation of an independent and representative government; but the commissaries sent by the patriots of the capital disgusted the fiery Calabrians by assuming too commanding a tone. The Calabrians never liked the people of the metropolis, whom they regarded as effeminate and pompous, and whom, besides, they looked upon as strangers. However, most towns appointed their municipal authorities, formed a national guard, and proclaimed the republic. The country people stood apparently passive, but they did not like the name of a republic. They were attached to the forms of their religion, and jealous of the chastity of their women; and they were led to think that the republicans disregarded both. As soon, therefore, as the royal flag was again unfurled among them, the peasantry took the side that best agreed with their customs and prejudices.
The Calabrians are generally, from early practice, good marksmen. At the time we are speaking of almost every man had his musket, and went about armed. They are courageous, persevering, firm friends, and implacable enemies. The reply of the wounded Calabrian to his confessor has become proverbial. Being exhorted to forgive his enemy, as a necessary condition of his own salvation, he answered resolutely, "Se moro lo perdono; se campo l’ allampo''—"If I die I forgive him; if I recover I will shoot him." A melancholy temperament, a concentration of feelings, and a sullen distrust, render them formidable when irritated. Even their women seem endowed with a masculine spirit; their features, harsh though regular, are scowling and wrinkled even in youth, and their uncouth dress leaves them little of that delicacy which is considered elsewhere natural to the sex. The men, with their short jackets, close trowsers, leather gaiters, and sandals of undressed skin, tied by thongs, and a rusty conical hat, with narrow brim and trimmed with ribands, and images of the Virgin, may be seen skulking about behind their olive-trees, or some loose stone wall, as if in wait for some passenger to fall upon. Such, at least, is the inference a stranger would draw from their appearance. Their towns are built on steep conical hills, crowned with houses to the very top, the outer or lower buildings being joined together by walls so as to form a sort of rampart. The central region is occupied by the great Apennine ridge, wild and black, to which, however, whole colonies, with their cattle, migrate in the summer; the flats near the coast are marshy and unhealthy, and inhabited by herds of buffaloes; but the valleys at the foot of the mountains are delightful, and rich with the most luxuriant vegetation. The vine, the orange and lemon trees, the fig, the olive, and all the fruits of southern climes, grow there to perfection. Here and there you see the devastations produced by the terrible earthquakes to which this country has been repeatedly subject. There was no carriage-road through the country, and a journey from Naples to Calabria was considered, and justly too, as both a difficult and a dangerous undertaking. [Reprinted from Sketches of Popular Tumults; Illustrative of the Evils of Social Ignorance, George Lillie Craik, London: C. Cox, 1847, pp. 133-134]
