July 25th, 2011
Headsman
On this date* in 1844, the Italian nationalists Attilio and Emilio Bandiera were shot with seven companions at Cosenza, Italy.
The Bandieras (English Wikipedia page | Italian) were Venetian officers in the Austrian navy — sons, indeed, of an admiral in that service.
Having been caught out in a mutinous agitation, the patriotic lads had been obliged to flee to Corfu (then under British administration)
But whispers soon reached them of a nascent rising in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and they took a small party to the toe of the Italian boot looking to get in on the glory.
They didn’t find the rumored revolutionaries — just martyrdom.
Reprieves preserved eight of the seventeen death-sentenced for the escapade; shot along with the renowned national martyrs together crying “Viva l’Italia!” were Nicola Riccioti, Domenico Moro, Anarcharsis Narde, Giovanni Verenui, Giacomo Rocca, Francesco Berti, and Domenico Lapatelli. (London Times, Aug. 12, 1844)
Venice visitors can pay their respects to the two at the Church of San Giovanni e Paolo, where they’re buried.
* There are some citations for July 23 out there, but the numerical bulk of the sources, and those closest to the event itself, clearly prefer July 25. e.g., the London Times of Aug. 12, 1844 cites the Journal of the Two Sicilies in reporting July 25; as noted by Mazzini and Marx, then-exiled Italian risorgimento figure Giuseppe Mazzini, who corresponded ineffectually with the martyrs, published a poem for this anniversary date in the July 25, 1846 edition of the Northern Star:
And in distant years the story
Still shall our children tell
Of those who sleep in glory
At Cosenza where they fell.
On this day..
Entry Filed under: 19th Century,Austria,Capital Punishment,Death Penalty,Execution,Famous,Habsburg Realm,History,Italy,Martyrs,Mass Executions,Occupation and Colonialism,Power,Revolutionaries,Separatists,Shot,Soldiers,Treason
Tags: 1840s, 1844, attilio bandiera, cosenza, emilio bandiera, giuseppe mazzini, july 25, nationalism, risorgimento
March 13th, 2009
Headsman
On this date in 1858, Italian revolutionary Felice Orsini calmly lost his head for the nation.
Something of a celebrity revolutionary, Orsini joined the independence movement of Giuseppe Mazzini and embarked on a generation’s worth of conspiracy, covert operations and prison spells and prison breaks which he himself voluptuously recounted in hot-selling autobiographical tomes.
Orsini became convinced that French ruler Louis Napoleon* was the chief obstacle to Italian unification, and accordingly chucked a bomb at the dictator’s carriage on January 14, 1858.
Ever theatrical, the condemned Orsini addressed a letter to Louis Napoleon while awaiting execution. In it, he urged the emperor to take up the Italian cause.
Whether mindful of the prospect of another Orsini waiting for his carriage, remembering his own youthful plotting with the Italian carbonari, or simply for reasons of French statecraft, Napoleon did just that. His alliance with the Piedmont state in northwest Italy (for which France received Savoy and the French Riviera in exchange) helped it absorb most of what now constitutes the Italian state.
Within three years of Orsini’s death, only a reduced papal enclave around Rome and the Austrian holdings around Venice separated the peninsula from unification.
In life, Orsini had been a prominent advocate of the Italian cause and played to packed houses in England. In death, he was felt further afield than that.
Tacking to a moderate stance on slavery abolition ahead of his presidential campaign, Abraham Lincoln condemned the late radical abolitionist John Brown as another Orsini — “an enthusiast [who] broods over the oppression of a people till he fancies himself commissioned by Heaven to liberate them. He ventures the attempt, which ends in little else than his own execution.”
Among Lincoln’s officers in the coming Civil War would be Charles DeRudio, the anglicized name of Orsini co-conspirator Carlo di Rudio.
Di Rudio had drawn a death sentence himself for the Orsini plot but was spared (pdf) by the clemency of his intended victim. He would go on to fight in the Battle of the Little Bighorn where he once again managed to cheat death.
* aka Napoleon III. He was the grandson of Josephine’s guillotined first husband.
On this day..
- 1979: Gen. Nader Jahanbani and eleven others - 2020
- 1889: Samuel Rylands, the first hanged at Shepton Mallet - 2019
- 1663: Alexander Kennedy, forger of false bonds and writts - 2018
- 1601: Henry Cuffe, mingled interest - 2017
- 1951: Ants Kaljurand, Estonian Forest Brother - 2016
- 1569: Louis de Bourbon, Prince of Conde, at the Battle of Jarnac - 2015
- 1493: Peter Dane, in the Sternberger Hostienschänderprozess - 2014
- 1996: Thomas Reckley, the first in Bahamas in 12 years - 2013
- 1956: Jesus Maria de Galindez - 2012
- 2005: A gay couple in Saudi Arabia - 2011
- 1985: Stephen Morin, serial killer convert - 2010
- D - 2009
- 1998: Bahram Khan, by his victim's brother - 2008
Entry Filed under: 19th Century,Assassins,Beheaded,Capital Punishment,Death Penalty,Execution,Famous,France,Guillotine,History,Italy,Martyrs,Not Executed,Notable for their Victims,Occupation and Colonialism,Pardons and Clemencies,Public Executions,Revolutionaries
Tags: 1850s, 1858, abraham lincoln, american civil war, battle of the little bighorn, carlo di rudio, charles derudio, felice orsini, giuseppe mazzini, indian wars, john brown, louis napoleon, march 13, napoleon iii, nationalism, risorgimento
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