Francesco Bax's La reazione d’Isernia del 1860, as introduced by de Antonellis, is a scholarly contribution of rare honesty. By assembling forgotten documents and refusing to bow before the dictates of “official history,” Bax reminds us that the past is not a fixed monument but a contested field in which truth demands courage. The volume, as presented here, should be read by anyone seeking to understand not only what happened in 1860, but how nations construct—and enforce—the stories they prefer to tell about themselves.
From the Foreword*:
It is a difficult undertaking to succeed in telling the truth when the regime imposes upon the writer its own version, punishing transgressors. Whether it is the Mancino Law (25 June 1993, no. 205 and subsequent expansions) in Italy, the Gayssot Law (13 July 1990) in France, or the ‘Law for Historical Memory’ (Law 52 of 26 December 2007, later evolved into the ‘Law on Democratic Memory,’ no. 20 of 19 October 2022), all these state impositions not only punish a mere opinion crime, but force historians to conform to what is politically established, even when documentary research may demonstrate the opposite of what the legislator has decreed.
In the nineteenth century, the idea of turning historiographic reconstruction—or, in the case of very recent events, chronicle writing—into a matter of law had not yet occurred to anyone. But since history is written by the victor, and in order for it to become common lore, to be instilled from the earliest age into the minds of children, it must be protected from any contamination—especially when such contamination tells a truth contrary to what must be the official truth.
Thus, during the Risorgimento, the fable of the popular and spontaneous uprising of the inhabitants of the former Kingdom of the Two Sicilies against the Bourbon government (naturally, inherently corrupt and hated by all) must not be altered by even the slightest criticism of the Piedmontese regime, of its stifling bureaucracy (far worse than the Bourbon one!), of its oppressive taxation, of the violence of the Garibaldian troops, and of the brutality of the Bersaglieri corps and the Piedmontese in general (whom Carlo Alianello, not by chance, called ‘the SS of 1860’). [1]
Preceded by an imposing propaganda “war machine” (fueled, it must be admitted, by many Neapolitan exiles from 1848), the Italian invasion crushed every attempt at criticism—however mild—of the new regime. One example is the journal La Tragicommedia, directed by Giacinto de’ Sivo, whose printing press was destroyed by red-shirted squadristi (at least metaphorically), [2] or the newspaper Il Trovatore, whose issues were often seized and whose editor, in February 1869, was subjected to a month of preventive arrest without any charge being filed against him. [3]
In this climate of cultural terrorism (and not only cultural), direct criticism was clearly impossible. One had to resort to irony (as in the case of the two publications mentioned, though with limited success, especially the first), or else adopt a “mask,” like the one apparently used by the clever author of the first of these memoirs […].
Notes[1] Carlo Alianello, La conquista del Sud. Il Risorgimento nell’Italia meridionale, Rusconi, Milan 1972, ch. XIX, Giustizia è fatta, p. 261:
“Let us stop defining ourselves the ‘good guys’ of Europe; and let none of our northern brothers come complaining about Nazi massacres. The SS of 1860 and the years that followed were called, at least by the inhabitants of the former kingdom, the Piedmontese. So let us stop rolling our eyes, opening our mouths to howl, clenching our fists, and straining our necks to denounce the violence of others in this or other continents. Let ours suffice, to feel a single shiver of shame. We were capable of doing more—and worse.”
[2] Cf. Giacinto de’ Sivo, La Tragicommedia. L’unificazione dell’Italia vista dalla parte del Sud, ed. Francesco Maurizio Di Giovine and Gabriele Marzocco, Il Giglio, Naples 1996, second edition.
[3] Cf. Lo Trovatore carcerato, editorial of 16 March 1869.
Those interested can purchase Francesco Bax’s La reazione di Isernia del 1860. Nel racconto di tre testimoni (D’Amico, 2025) at www.damicoeditore.com
~ By Giovanni di Napoli, November 24th, Feast of San Giovanni della Croce
*Translations are my own
