The Civil War
[FONT="]A King goes South[/FONT]
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[FONT="]The main body of the Neapolitan army, under the direct command of King Joachim Murat advanced swiftly through Apulia without meeting any form of organized resistance (i) and, even when it crossed into the more unruly Basilicata, the only real obstacle that it encountered was the almost total lack of roads and infrastructure of any kind along the Ionian coast. Its march thus proceeded, although now at a much slower pace, in southern direction and soon it entered Calabria.[/FONT]
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[FONT="] The first real engagement happened in the plain of Sibari, where, before the ancient Hellenic colony, the avant-garde of the Neapolitan forces were met by the stiff resistance of several irregular bands. When caught in the open, these where easy prey to Murat’s cavalry, but the story was very different in the villages, that had been fortified with improvised barricades and even some old pieces of artillery.
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[FONT="]The advanced forces took severe losses in storming these prepared positions, and the advance stalled until the main bodies of infantry and artillery could catch up with the avant-garde and proceed to methodically encircle, bombard and reduce those “village redoubts” and Murat could finally enter Sibari on the 26th of September.[/FONT]
[FONT="]La tela del ragno[/FONT][FONT="] (ii)[/FONT]
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[FONT="]Meanwhile the light forces under Mahnés’ command, tasked with containing the threat of don Ciccio and his big insurgent band, had established their bases in Potenza and Matera, and from then started to secure villages and ways of communications in an always widening circle around these two towns. The problem of limited manpower was alleviated by the use of the provincial legions of the Guardia Civica that, once the surprise and chaos of the first days of the insurrection had waned, and with the support of the mobile and well trained light infantry and light cavalry forces of the regular army, proved capable enough to garrison the population centers.[/FONT]
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[FONT="]The briganti found themselves more and more isolated in pockets centered around hill or forested areas, cut off from the towns and villages and from the support of the local population.
For the moment however they still controlled most of the land area of Basilicata, had many armed and determined men and fought back viciously in uncountable ambushes and raids against the royal forces, inflicting losses almost each day. However they also took heavy losses, and their ability to resupply and recruit from the local population was being rapidly degraded by Mahnés’ “spiderweb” strategy. Soon don don Ciccio would have to attack in force and severe some of those threads, or his forces would be defeated piecemeal or forced to surrender because of lack of food.[/FONT]
[FONT="]
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[FONT="] The food situation was indeed becoming worrying, as Mahnés had reinstated the draconian decrees of some years ago, that prohibited bringing food in the fields on pain of death, and those decrees had been brutally enforced both upon briganti sympathizers and upon women and children bringing some bread and cheese to their male relatives working in the fields (iii).[/FONT]
[FONT="]At the same time the Neapolitan officers kept law and order fairly, if harshly in the villages, and managed efficiently the movement of foodstuff and other supplies, and even started some basic sanitation works, thus actually improving the material living conditions for most peasants, who had rarely experienced the government doing anything at all that affected in a positive way their everyday lives.[/FONT]
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[FONT="]Therefore the resentment against the occupying forces was actually less than what was expected and the actual number of executions of civilians was relatively low (iv). Many peasants also saw the enrollment in the Guardia Civica as an attractive way to improve their families’ income and their social standing in the village communities.[/FONT]
[FONT="]A loyalist proclamation[/FONT]
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[FONT="]The slowdown in military operations caused by the Austrian ultimatum and by the resistance in the plain of Sibari enabled the Calabrese Sanfedisti enough time to organize their forces in a more regular way (v) and to finally overpower the garrison of Cotrone (vi). On the 26th of September they controlled all of Calabria, apart from Sibari, where Murat had entered that very morning, and Reggio, defended by an increasingly desperate and undersupplied 10th Line Infantry regiment.[/FONT]
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[FONT="] The improvements in the Sanfedisti organization were also of political nature, and leaders emerged, mostly aristocrats who hadn’t wanted to leave their lands to follow their King in Sicily but also despised Murat and hated the French for their administration of the process of liquidation of feudality.[/FONT]
[FONT="]These barons had made the city of Cosenza the center of their activities, and it was there, on the 27th of September, that seeing how they could not hope to stop alone Murat’s advance, they issued a “Plea from the loyal peoples of Calabria and Basilicata to their legitimate Catholic King Ferdinand”, calling for an intervention from the Bourbon King to reclaim possession of his lands, oust the French usurper and protect his loyal subjects from Jacobin oppression. (vii)[/FONT]
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[FONT="]King Joachim couldn’t do much to answer to the proclamation, beside ordering his small fleet to depart from Napoli and move to the Strait of Messina. He had thought of marching with his cavalry to Cosenza and capturing the rebels before Ferdinand decided to act, but his forces were to limited to afford dividing them, and the rebels’ village redoubts had proved formidable against unsupported cavalry. Thus he decided to keep going south, skirting the briganti infested Sila mountains, and destroy the main rebel forces that were acting between Crotone and Catanzaro.[/FONT]
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[FONT="]In Palermo, King Ferdinand had already been pondering for a while the possibility of crossing the straits and reclaim his legitimate Kingdom, now that, with a little help from retired Bourbon officers and English weapons, it had risen against the French usurper and there were rumors of possible Austrian intervention.
Now this plead gave him the justification that he needed, and the English ambassador ensured him that Britain would not directly intervene in the war, but would support his efforts, now that it had become obvious that Murat was not able to keep law and order in its own country. Moreover a British squadron would be placed at the strait of Messina, to discourage the Neapolitan navy from acting against the crossing.[/FONT]
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[FONT="]The Sicilian army consisted of eight Line Infantry regiments, three made up of Sicilian recruits and five of foreign mercenaries (viii). To avoid insurrections in Sicily it was judged necessary to leave two foreign (ix) regiments in Palermo, the others were swiftly moved to Messina, where enough transports were being massed. To this a force of cavalry numbering 900 men was to be added, and some cannons.[/FONT]
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[FONT="]The 8th of October the Sicilian army crossed the Strait of Messina (x), landing at Scilla, and occupying Reggio after three days. The garrison of Reggio surrendered after giving only symbolic resistance because it was decisively outnumbered, almost out of munitions and it didn’t see any possibility of relief from the still far Muratian forces.
Most officers were actually glad of the possibility of an honorable surrender to a “civilized enemy”, as till few days before they feared being eventually overran by the Sanfedisti militias, and the news of the atrocities that followed the capture of that city some weeks before were enough to make the most grizzled veteran blanch.[/FONT]
[FONT="]A King goes North[/FONT]
[FONT="]
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[FONT="]However this lack of resistance in the most important city of Calabria would contribute to a severe judgment error in Ferdinand, who convinced himself that the Murat regime was crumbling, and, against the council of his court, crossed the Strait to take command of the army, convinced of leading it to a triumphal and mostly bloodless march onto Napoli against a demoralized and already beaten enemy.
This confidence was only enhanced by the very warm welcome that the local population gave him in Reggio and in all the villages and towns he liberated in the first days of his northerly march.[/FONT]
[FONT="]NOTES[/FONT]
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[FONT="]i)In Apulia the insurrection hadn’t been so generalized as further south, and the chief threat was that of small briganti groups assaulting and robbing travelers, but not enough to hamper the advance of Murat’s corps.
ii) Italian for “the spiderweb” as Mahnès’ anti insurgency campaign would become popularly known.
iii) this happened some years before in OTL
iv) but still too many. Mahnés’ actions against the briganti will become a very controversial in TTL’s historiography.
v) with the alleged help of English officers.
vi) the ancient Kroton, in OTL renamed Crotone in 1928.
vii) their confidence of a favorable response of Ferdinand had been reinforced in them by Bourbon agents in direct contact with the Crown.
viii) as in OTL.
ix) Swiss.
x) under the noses of the small Neapolitan squadron, that didn’t dare to intervene as the English had declared that they would act to prevent any hostilities from interrupting the free navigation in the Strait of Messina.[/FONT]
[FONT="]A King goes South[/FONT]
[FONT="]
[/FONT]
[FONT="]The main body of the Neapolitan army, under the direct command of King Joachim Murat advanced swiftly through Apulia without meeting any form of organized resistance (i) and, even when it crossed into the more unruly Basilicata, the only real obstacle that it encountered was the almost total lack of roads and infrastructure of any kind along the Ionian coast. Its march thus proceeded, although now at a much slower pace, in southern direction and soon it entered Calabria.[/FONT]
[FONT="]
[/FONT]
[FONT="] The first real engagement happened in the plain of Sibari, where, before the ancient Hellenic colony, the avant-garde of the Neapolitan forces were met by the stiff resistance of several irregular bands. When caught in the open, these where easy prey to Murat’s cavalry, but the story was very different in the villages, that had been fortified with improvised barricades and even some old pieces of artillery.
[/FONT]
[FONT="]The advanced forces took severe losses in storming these prepared positions, and the advance stalled until the main bodies of infantry and artillery could catch up with the avant-garde and proceed to methodically encircle, bombard and reduce those “village redoubts” and Murat could finally enter Sibari on the 26th of September.[/FONT]
[FONT="]La tela del ragno[/FONT][FONT="] (ii)[/FONT]
[FONT="]
[/FONT]
[FONT="]Meanwhile the light forces under Mahnés’ command, tasked with containing the threat of don Ciccio and his big insurgent band, had established their bases in Potenza and Matera, and from then started to secure villages and ways of communications in an always widening circle around these two towns. The problem of limited manpower was alleviated by the use of the provincial legions of the Guardia Civica that, once the surprise and chaos of the first days of the insurrection had waned, and with the support of the mobile and well trained light infantry and light cavalry forces of the regular army, proved capable enough to garrison the population centers.[/FONT]
[FONT="]
[/FONT]
[FONT="]The briganti found themselves more and more isolated in pockets centered around hill or forested areas, cut off from the towns and villages and from the support of the local population.
For the moment however they still controlled most of the land area of Basilicata, had many armed and determined men and fought back viciously in uncountable ambushes and raids against the royal forces, inflicting losses almost each day. However they also took heavy losses, and their ability to resupply and recruit from the local population was being rapidly degraded by Mahnés’ “spiderweb” strategy. Soon don don Ciccio would have to attack in force and severe some of those threads, or his forces would be defeated piecemeal or forced to surrender because of lack of food.[/FONT]
[FONT="]
[/FONT]
[FONT="] The food situation was indeed becoming worrying, as Mahnés had reinstated the draconian decrees of some years ago, that prohibited bringing food in the fields on pain of death, and those decrees had been brutally enforced both upon briganti sympathizers and upon women and children bringing some bread and cheese to their male relatives working in the fields (iii).[/FONT]
[FONT="]At the same time the Neapolitan officers kept law and order fairly, if harshly in the villages, and managed efficiently the movement of foodstuff and other supplies, and even started some basic sanitation works, thus actually improving the material living conditions for most peasants, who had rarely experienced the government doing anything at all that affected in a positive way their everyday lives.[/FONT]
[FONT="]
[/FONT]
[FONT="]Therefore the resentment against the occupying forces was actually less than what was expected and the actual number of executions of civilians was relatively low (iv). Many peasants also saw the enrollment in the Guardia Civica as an attractive way to improve their families’ income and their social standing in the village communities.[/FONT]
[FONT="]A loyalist proclamation[/FONT]
[FONT="]
[/FONT]
[FONT="]The slowdown in military operations caused by the Austrian ultimatum and by the resistance in the plain of Sibari enabled the Calabrese Sanfedisti enough time to organize their forces in a more regular way (v) and to finally overpower the garrison of Cotrone (vi). On the 26th of September they controlled all of Calabria, apart from Sibari, where Murat had entered that very morning, and Reggio, defended by an increasingly desperate and undersupplied 10th Line Infantry regiment.[/FONT]
[FONT="]
[/FONT]
[FONT="] The improvements in the Sanfedisti organization were also of political nature, and leaders emerged, mostly aristocrats who hadn’t wanted to leave their lands to follow their King in Sicily but also despised Murat and hated the French for their administration of the process of liquidation of feudality.[/FONT]
[FONT="]These barons had made the city of Cosenza the center of their activities, and it was there, on the 27th of September, that seeing how they could not hope to stop alone Murat’s advance, they issued a “Plea from the loyal peoples of Calabria and Basilicata to their legitimate Catholic King Ferdinand”, calling for an intervention from the Bourbon King to reclaim possession of his lands, oust the French usurper and protect his loyal subjects from Jacobin oppression. (vii)[/FONT]
[FONT="]
[/FONT]
[FONT="]King Joachim couldn’t do much to answer to the proclamation, beside ordering his small fleet to depart from Napoli and move to the Strait of Messina. He had thought of marching with his cavalry to Cosenza and capturing the rebels before Ferdinand decided to act, but his forces were to limited to afford dividing them, and the rebels’ village redoubts had proved formidable against unsupported cavalry. Thus he decided to keep going south, skirting the briganti infested Sila mountains, and destroy the main rebel forces that were acting between Crotone and Catanzaro.[/FONT]
[FONT="]
[/FONT]
[FONT="]In Palermo, King Ferdinand had already been pondering for a while the possibility of crossing the straits and reclaim his legitimate Kingdom, now that, with a little help from retired Bourbon officers and English weapons, it had risen against the French usurper and there were rumors of possible Austrian intervention.
Now this plead gave him the justification that he needed, and the English ambassador ensured him that Britain would not directly intervene in the war, but would support his efforts, now that it had become obvious that Murat was not able to keep law and order in its own country. Moreover a British squadron would be placed at the strait of Messina, to discourage the Neapolitan navy from acting against the crossing.[/FONT]
[FONT="]
[/FONT]
[FONT="]The Sicilian army consisted of eight Line Infantry regiments, three made up of Sicilian recruits and five of foreign mercenaries (viii). To avoid insurrections in Sicily it was judged necessary to leave two foreign (ix) regiments in Palermo, the others were swiftly moved to Messina, where enough transports were being massed. To this a force of cavalry numbering 900 men was to be added, and some cannons.[/FONT]
[FONT="]
[/FONT]
[FONT="]The 8th of October the Sicilian army crossed the Strait of Messina (x), landing at Scilla, and occupying Reggio after three days. The garrison of Reggio surrendered after giving only symbolic resistance because it was decisively outnumbered, almost out of munitions and it didn’t see any possibility of relief from the still far Muratian forces.
Most officers were actually glad of the possibility of an honorable surrender to a “civilized enemy”, as till few days before they feared being eventually overran by the Sanfedisti militias, and the news of the atrocities that followed the capture of that city some weeks before were enough to make the most grizzled veteran blanch.[/FONT]
[FONT="]A King goes North[/FONT]
[FONT="]
[/FONT]
[FONT="]However this lack of resistance in the most important city of Calabria would contribute to a severe judgment error in Ferdinand, who convinced himself that the Murat regime was crumbling, and, against the council of his court, crossed the Strait to take command of the army, convinced of leading it to a triumphal and mostly bloodless march onto Napoli against a demoralized and already beaten enemy.
This confidence was only enhanced by the very warm welcome that the local population gave him in Reggio and in all the villages and towns he liberated in the first days of his northerly march.[/FONT]
[FONT="]NOTES[/FONT]
[FONT="]
[/FONT]
[FONT="]i)In Apulia the insurrection hadn’t been so generalized as further south, and the chief threat was that of small briganti groups assaulting and robbing travelers, but not enough to hamper the advance of Murat’s corps.
ii) Italian for “the spiderweb” as Mahnès’ anti insurgency campaign would become popularly known.
iii) this happened some years before in OTL
iv) but still too many. Mahnés’ actions against the briganti will become a very controversial in TTL’s historiography.
v) with the alleged help of English officers.
vi) the ancient Kroton, in OTL renamed Crotone in 1928.
vii) their confidence of a favorable response of Ferdinand had been reinforced in them by Bourbon agents in direct contact with the Crown.
viii) as in OTL.
ix) Swiss.
x) under the noses of the small Neapolitan squadron, that didn’t dare to intervene as the English had declared that they would act to prevent any hostilities from interrupting the free navigation in the Strait of Messina.[/FONT]