From Iron, Blood: A Bismark Assassinated TL

How shall the Spainish issue be covered?

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Chapter VIII: Trinity of Trinities (Part D)
The Priest Part II: The Eruption of the Battle of Bologana.


After failing to contest the Austrian seizure of Ferra or their restoration of the church administration, Italian public opinion turned hard against General Giacamo. Subject to what were now becoming the usual charges of incompetence, cowardness, and passive acceptance of treasonous sentiments in his ranks, calls to replace him with a commander who would march towards rather than away from the enemy were rising from prominent PM’s. Giacamo, fully occupied by the tedious task of trying to turn his barely fortified rail junction and shanty-town into a defensible strongpoint, had no time to reply to politics, leaving his reputation to bleed out from a thousand paper cuts from hostile papers and correspondences. While such criticism were not entirely without merit: rightfully pointing out that withdrawal from the coast was allowing the Austrian army to ease the burden on its baggage train by shipping in supplies via the Adriatic and opened the rivers to uncontested traffic by enemy gunboats, but the strategic reality was such that the defense of Boglogna was essential for the security of the southern two thirds of the nation. This broader view, however, didn’t resonate with follower of Mamora’s school of thought: asserting that the war would be won or lost by who was in possession of Veneto when the terms were negotiated, which required putting constant pressure on Albrecht’s army to compel the cautious marshal to withdraw into his fortress zones where he could be crushed between the two converging advances. Far too ambitious for professional soldiers with an accurate view of the situation to believe possible, this plan of counter-invasion never the less captured the imagination of a population still eager for a victory. Unswayed by calm by depressing realism, they demanded the Po Army be placed under the control of the classical “hero on a white horse”, who would boldly and romantically ride in to redeem the sullied honor of Italia. And everybody had the same hero in mind.

Unlike the rest of the field forces, who were either forcefully imprisoned behind in Austrian camps or self-imprisoned behind their own, Garibaldi retained his usual bold stance. Holding the metaphorical and physical center of the far front, his Legion refused to call off their attack on Borgoforte despite news of the humiliations at Mantua and Rivogina and thus the exposure of his flanks. Continuing to invest the fortress despite the shifting fortunes elsewhere along the front had been something of a gamble, pitting assumptions of Italian bravery against those of the Archduke’s caution, but in this case that risked paid off. While it was true the Austrians were now between him and his nominal source of supply and command, the unofficial status and slapdash nature of the expanded Legion gave it a unique freedom to adapt in the face of shortages. The veteran legionaries, having plenty of experience at improvisation and rationing from their many campaigns fighting for underfunded revolutionary causes throughout Europe and South America, taught their amateur volunteers techniques for maintaining their weapons and avoiding wasting ammunition or powder, while bread was begged, borrowed, and bought via informal networks built up on Garibaldi’s personal reputation. Supplimented with the large stockpiles they’d carried off on their initial march and slow trickle of arrivals from the north, the siege lines diden’t have any looming deficiencies I anything except artillery munitions: Cardonia insisting his men keep a tight lock on the aresenals to retain them for his own forces. Unfortunately for the prospects of the siege, this meant they unable to effectively force a breach and storm the Austrian walls, while the garrision could be resupplied effectively indefinately with ammunition, rations, replacements, and supplies to repair the fortifications so long as the other Italian forces couldn’t wrestle away control of the Miacio.

Taking the fortress ceased to be their priority though as word of the Po Army’s retreat and Sudarmee’s advance arrived at the position via their line with the northern HQ. Always a man of energy and vision, Garibaldi quickly spotted the opportunity opened up by his new position behind the enemy lines. From his perspective, Albrechet haden’t cut them off from any vital source of support but rather made a fatal error by leaving an unmolested enemy in his rear. It would be all too simply to lift the siege, sweep away the Catholic gendarmes that were being used to maintain order in the rear, and send the invaders scattering with a surprise attack to the rear. With their field army in disarray, the Austrians would never be able to assemble a response in time to respond to Cadorna’s offensive to redeem Venice, and Italy would see it was the patriotic nationalists, not the legacy officers of the court of King Emmanual, who were the true fathers of the Italian nation.


Without tolerance for the kind of delay that had doomed the former expeditions, on the afternoon of August 7th the men were set for march to relieve the main body of the Po Army with all due haste. While the orders themselves were simple and suited for his enthusiastic followers, the impromptu nature of his logistics system and unbalanced mixed of staff officers that had served them so well in self-sufficency turned the advance into a untrackable nightmare. With no formal quartermaster’s record, organization table creating uniform dispersal of supply, or even a fully briefed signal corps, the men when packing up the line simply took possession of whatever wagons and artillery hey happened to get their hands on. Driven by the rousing speeches of their “officers”; usually informally elected “good old boys” rather than disciplinarians, the road were a soon littered with divisions trying to pass and maneuver around one another as the march lost a uniform pace: this spirit only encouraged by a population which cheered them on as they went by in their charming, personable way and mingled with the local ladies. Though professional Legionaries, veterans of many campaigns, were dismissive of this carefree display of confidence by green troops who’d yet to see proper field battle, they couldn’t complain about the pace of advance despite the cost of organization. The festive parade atmosphere, alongside the draw of sob stories of martial atrocities and clerical abuse, kept the men motivated to continue their full day’s marches, receiving fresh fortifications and provisions in most of the settlements they passed by. Within four days, they reached Bologana; Garibaldi riding at the front and through personally dispatching riders trying to organize the men into something resembling battle lines

What they found was the city already under siege. Albhrecht, confident in the security of his position and believing the forces hunkered down in front of him were the last major body in the south, was practicing a policy of offensive entrenchment to slowly work his men towards the main wall. A three lines of fortified positions, covered by a dense network of picket posts and frequent patrols set to watch for any Italian forreys, stretched out in arcs about a mile long to the north of the city. Unlike the self-confidence that had come to define his Italian counterparts in the war, Albrecht retained the overly cautious tempermemnt of a drill-based Fredrickian officer that had only been vindicated by seeing the failures of his opponent’s overambitions during their invasion. Despite already having an extensive line, he had not yet brought forward his heavy guns, insisting that the earthwork bastions meant to hold them were built up enough to the point an Italian bombardment woulden’t surpress the crew before he placed the valuable pieces within their range. This overestimating of the enemy, while hardly playing well with political officers who wanted to bring about a decisive victory as soon as possible to help bolster the war effort in the north, was much appreciate by the infantry who were happy to not have their lives thrown away in an attempted breakthourgh and get a chance to rest and recover on food and wine brought forward from communities that had been placed under Church governance; having been guranteeded that the prayers of every pious Catholic were being sent up for their success by locals who had been spared the expected privations of a military occupation. Safe behind their defensive lines and with a safe path for supplies too and from both the coast and Ventia, they were more than prepared to hold their posts until the Italian palasades and blockhouses had been reduced to splinters.

What they had not prepared for was reports of massive Italian activity being brought in from riders sent to the west, mentioning tens of thousands of fresh, singing troops flowing over the countryside. Keeping his cool and courage, however, Albrecht took the threat to heart and ordered the digging of an additional line facing in that direction, making use of the irrigation ditches as a base. This move to cover his flank would be decisive when, the next mourning, the low-tier Austrian rearguard had a secured position to bolster their moral when the Italians came screaming down the hill in a textbook cavalry charge… one American observers would compared to nothing more than General Picket’s fateful advance. The Habsburg infantry, having been well stocked with ammunition and with the camp’s artillery preaimed at the main route of enemy advance, showed the Italians not the unfinished opening they’d expected but a strongpoint in the defense network. While they did have some initial successes; the sheer weight of the Italian charge breaking the formations and briefing turning the affair into a melee struggle in the center of the new line where the enemy had the advantage, the tide quickly turned when, aware what needed to be done, Albrecht ordered his batteries to fire into the thick of the line. The Austrian stragglers, managing to hold fast in their pits, suffered staggering loses under the friendly fire alongside their enemies, but in the chaos a lucky shell managed to strike just at the feet of one prime white charger, blowing the legs out from under its rider and blasting a hole in the center of the mob for the Austrian reserves to push into: falling on the shocked Italians with their own, fresh sabers.

Weather or not he’d died from blood lose by the shell, trampling, or being cut down is unknown, but inspection after the battle revealed this one stark fact: Garibaldi, savior of Italy, had died, shirt stained red with the blood of a martyer.

*The question of ownership of Garibaldi's lost limbs is one of intense debate between the Church, Habsburgs, and Italian government. The only recovered part who's validity is fully agreed upon; a left thighbone, is displayed in the Cathedral in Venesia on permanent grant to the Church, Italian nationalists claim the remains are the property of the Italian state by virtue of Garibaldi's position in the Italian Army at the time of the conflict and the terms of the Treaty of Avignon as the repatriation of the dead soldiers. As the man's offical position in military at the time was dubious, however, there is no internationally agreed upon legal opinion, meaning the bone remains the technical legal property of the House of Habsburg.
 
Chapter VIII: Trinity of Trinities (Part E)

Help your neighbor, and Heaven will help you
-Motto of the Fish and Loaf Society


The Prince, Part II: The Struggle for (Sacred) Hearts and Minds



Despite the dedication the clerical lobby and sensational coverage of events by the conservative propaganda mill, it was clear from almost the very beginning that efforts to get an official denunciation of the Italians and direct invention were a lost cause. Though there were no shortage of atrocities to provoke popular outrage, especially with the proper embellishments, any move in the Assembly provoked immediate resistance from liberal, pacifist, and Italophile deputies. Their parliamentary opponents proved more than capable of maneuvering through the minefield of public opinion: using their positions in government to delay debates and fact-finding missions while fanning the flames of more mundane, uninteresting policy disputes such as the continued issuing of contracts for the reconstruction of Paris and efforts to stabilize currency and credit availability in the face of the British banking crisis and flood of securities on the market until any individual event receded into the general haze of negative stories coming out of the violence engulfing central Europe. With the tact backing of the firmly Bonaparist civil service and Senate majorities, these efforts denied the Conservatives the stable, emotionally powerful point they needed to organize the full might of their only recently politically-awakened base for any action more specific than producing a general climate of hostility that chilled the few suggestions of pro-Italian action. Denied access to the levers of civil authority, the battle was increasingly shifted to the field of culture with the moralists encouraging private individuals to partake in private group actions that supported their co-religionists.

This brand of Catholic activism, however, would bare little resemblance to the traditionally localized focus of the Church’s leadership. At its head was a new generation of clergy; men who’d served their careers under the reformed doctrines of Pope Pius IX and the dangerously excessive focus on the individualism and growing inequality between the financial and the ever-widening moral and economic gulf between the middle and working class embodied in the Revolutions of 1848. Seeking to reconcile the growing popularity of socialist ideas and the desire for a larger group identity that emerged for the technological and social develops of the first half of the 19th century with offical church doctrines of strict hierarchy and refusal to submit to the authority of the state, these young priests ended up pushing an interpretation of Catholic values that that placed a focus on salvation through works and encouraging the formation of “parallel institutions” to avoid the imposition of confessional laws. Deploying rhetoric that focused on the charitable actions and non-confrontational language of Jesus (“Render onto Ceaser what belongs to Ceaser, and render onto God what belongs to God” and “Whatever you to do the least among them, you do to me” being their mainstay) this populist revivalism asserted that those who were blessed with good fortune had a responsibility to provide for the poor and meek of “The Family of the Faithful” both material and moral terms. By neglecting those obligations, this paternialistic model asserted, the nobility had allowed the liberals to exploit the masses as a tool of godless revolution by promising to provide them with their daily bread by forcefully extracting what had previously been given in the spirit of charity. Since than , these professionals had fallen victim to the same temptations of the pre-French Revolution church and nobility: possibly by having their hearts hardened like Pharaoh, providing the servants of God a chance to redeem themselves and return society to the righteous path. This transformation, however, would require extra penance and sacrifice by the rich and a willingness to accept tutelage in the poor via private mutual aid societies in order to isolate the influence of the secularists in offical institutions, where at a later date it could be purged after the power of the ballot box allowed Catholic parties to gain control of the government.


This school of thought proved far more capable of making inroads will the layity than the ultramonatism that had previously been on track to dominate Catholic theology. Instead of focusing on maximizing the benefit of particular elite individuals and the uncaring application of pure principals: which according to it's proponents bent any system that adopted it to the benefit of one class at the expense of everybody else, they sought to harness the traditional values of Property, Family, and Religion to provide at least some benefit to as many groups with society as possible. For the working class it offered some basic security from annincreasingly globalized market, where prices and wages were subject to unknowable forces and events possibly thousands of miles away, through noblus obligesse on the part of those who profited from those systems far behyond their personal needs through the morally responsible organ of the Church. Those pious philanthropists could feel secure not only in the fate of their immortal souls, but would have to be given authority over the laws and means of production in order to gurantee their ability to provide and protect the flock as well as propagate those values that encouraged their success and sense of social responsibilty: a prospect that was highly appealing to those who valued ideals and influence over the diminishing returns of an ever-growing bank account. Community leaders and State employees celebrated the promotion of values that encouraged lawful behavior and social harmony that would reduce the amount of tensions and ills they'd have to deal with, while further benefiting their juristictions through neighborhood level productive Iniatives.

To those from a Protestant, Anglo-Saxon tradition, this system smelled suspiciously like the "Machine politics" utalized by the politicans in American cities: ignorant and lazy men unloading both their rights and responsibilities in exchange for a perpetual mediocre life rather than engaging in the "pursuit of happiness". While it was true the public kitchens and free flophouses popping up attached to churches throughout the provincial towns and slums often doubled as vechiles for the political ambitions of the men who raised funds for them; the priests expected to serve public prayers for their patrons alongside their warm soup, such accusations don't tell the whole story. Besides downplaying the genuinely pious motivations of the majority of the these instiutions; most of these prospective politicians seeing no sin in pursuing power or wealth with the intention of putting it in service of Christ and the Nation, they ignore the vastly different conditions between Northwestern and Southern Europe that made appeals to "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" ring hollow. In a climate of much more restricted access to credit, concentrated landownership, poor quality and access to education, little in the way of urbanization and mechanization, and the continued economic compedativeness and political privlages of the petty nobility over the peasent and merchant classes meant oppritunities for social advancement were fewer and further between in the rural expanses of Catholic Europe. Lacking the traditional routes of self-government and self-improvement, their experiences with political reform restricted to bloodshed and confiscations that resulted in little more than a few thousand more professionals getting the right to vote, removing restrictions on publications they couldn't read to begin with, and a change in who would ultimately receive their rents without any actual change in what they paid. In a world where "liberty" only had a use to a narrow segment of society, with the rest having little time or access to resources on which to shape an educated political view, it was hardly surprising most people preferred to entrust their vote to an educated authority who's teachings and principals they found agreeable.

This policy of creating a "divison of labor" within society; where the general interest was best served by having different matters of local, provencial, and national policy into the hands of groups most interested in and suited for the task under the absolute primacy of a single,sacrosanct leader who could serve as a living, evolving alternative to a paper Constiution for protecting, would be known as Etatism . Derived from the term for the old divisions of French society, this romaticized "neo-Fedualism" would characterize the Right wing of Continental politics for decades to come, combining authoritarianism with a pecular French perception of "popular will" and the principaled over the purely pragmatic. "Reactionary" in the sense that it was responding to the excesses of modernism and liberalization on the immense section of the body politic being left behind, its sentiment is ironically perhaps best represented by its greatest critic,Karl Marx, in his The Lumpen Reactions thusly...

It is vital to remember that, just as the Communist Revolution will produce a counterevolutionary response from the bourgeois it is deposing,when the bourgeois stage their revolution against the feudal mode of production it will find the forces of tradition arrayed against it. Etatism represents not the spirit of the true Proletariat merely because it opposes the bourgeois. It is the cause of the the conservative peasent who, contrary to the desire of the class-conscious industrial worker who wishes to step into the light of a new order, wishes to retreat into the catacombs and resurrect the ghosts of the old order. It is the philosophy of the greaving and superstitious who, when faced with the death of their way of life brought about by the imposition of capitalist modes of production, place their faith in superstition and charletans who promise the dead indeed live again in a place of great honor if only they surrender their wills. It is, I a way,the highest stage of oppression; as it turns the masses into their own Cossaks, preventing the evolution of the conditions for the final triumph of the people by never allowing the bourgeois to become an exploiting class by the constant application of the bayonet.
 
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Chapter VIII: Trinity of Trinities (Part F)
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Let us eat cake!
-Speaker Unknown, August 28th Bread Riot


The Paupers Part II: The Eve of the Palermo Revolution.




What was it about the conditions of August and September of 1866 that caused the sporadic rural violence to evolve into a proper uprisings? If one were to listen to the narrative pushed by the prominent voices on both sides in the decades following the conflict, this is a malformed question: the preceding years had already been one of a brutal military occupation under the Pica Laws brought on by virtual unanimous support for the brigandage by a rural population of deified them for their attacks on the servants of the Italian state. Most modern historians reject this moralizing narrative though, believing it to be an over-simplified fantasy pushed both by the Mezzogiorini in order to build a national mythos and Savoyard Apologists who sought both to explain the failure and justify the brutal repressive measures of their administration by lumping all their southern cousins together in a lawless, bloodthirsty mass. Less biased testimonies from peasants and soldiers who were eyewitnesses to events, however, do provide some insights as to what convinced the population to take the fateful step from passive resistance to armed revolution.

This move towards separatism was by no means guaranteed. Prior to the news of the failure of the July Campaigns, the radicals had in fact been contained and steadily being reduced. Referred to as “Mosquitos” in later literature, the criminal bands did indeed act like the insects of the tidal swamps they used as a hideout. As summer set in, they swarmed into the countryside to attack isolated military positions and merchant caravans which, while annoying and near-constant, where only harmful in truly massive numbers and as often as not resulted in many wounded if the Italian authorities swatted back. Independent bands cracked under the twin pressures to their already miserable conditions, with fewer and less profitable raids combing with a peasant population that, no matter how much praise they heaped on them and silent outrage they held towards their overlords, were warier about openly providing bread and shelter as they came under the tight surveillance of the increasingly violent Italian garrisons. Instead of risking death at the hands of either the seasonal cholera epidemic, a through military sweep, or malnutrition, these gangs decamped from the marshes to seek some paid work that would allow them to feed themselves while maintaining their arms and organization in case prospects improved. Luckily for them, the war-driven steady drop in the local availability of young men and rise in grain prices created by the months of mobilization and bulk and speculative purchases by wiley merchants and pragmatic institutions in case the conflict disrupted the fall harvests left not shortage of opportunities for just such kind of men.

Those landowners who’d sought to maintain their lucrative contracts to the crackdown on the “companies at arms” practice by either dissolving or officially registering their employees into the Italian military administration, found themselves under increasingly lopsided pressure as the remaining, ideological outlaw bands laser focused on their shipments and their protectors either dragged off to the north or assigned to politically motivated punitive measures by the Inspector-Generals. Seeing this opportunity for profit, their less scrupulous rivals sponsored these roving bands by promising safe harbor, a steady supply of food and ammunition, and legal cover in exchange for their peasants and exports being off-limits and share of any prizes. No less valuable than the increase in revenues was the goodwill this earned them from the population, who now stood as the thin line between them from extortion and abuse at the hands of a violent and frightening world. Feeding into this disruption of the distribution system was a sharp increase in the practice of hording: bakers bought up as much wheat and rye as they could store and afford to insure they had a supply into the winter, wholesalers sweeping up as much as they could to refill their warehouses on the assumption they could sell it at a huge profit once prices ballooned ever still further, and small farmers without the protection of an escort dared not risk the roads lest they be misidentifed as collaborators or smugglers and have their produce taken from them. Out in the countryside, where the grain was within arm's reach and people bought it commercially anyways, this had little effect on the quality of life. Shops in the coastal towns, in contrast, had to compete both with the military and merchant oligarchs who bid up wheat and rye to the higher prices on the mainland and could provide cash up front, forcing them to as much as triple their rates just so they could afford to restock their shelves. For wage-earners and artisans who already spent a third of their household income on food, the collapse in what little local consumer demand existed as they were separated from the rural inlands meant they could no longer afford to both stave off starvation and keep a roof over their head. As the end of August looked and the advance on the next month's rent was coming due, desperate wives and children swarming around warves and stores to beg for food as the streets were clogged with men seeking odd jobs that might allow them to scrape together the payment.

Several factors heightened the appeal of the call for a violent response being shouted by ideological briganda, Austrian agents, and some radical voices among the clergy and petty nobility in areas outside Royalist control. One of these was the growing realization that many of Piedmontese veterans had left for northern battlefields or wild goose chase in the hedgerows, replaced with former "companies at arms" of dubious displine and mercenary loyalties. Another was the arrival of the failures on those same battlefields and arrest of the Duke of Gaeta, tearing away the protective shroud of dread that man had earned the occupation through his hard fought and through pacification. The third and most immediate cause, however, was the arrival of a small fleet of cargo ships with holds full of foodstuffs on August 28th in Palermo harbor. Bought and paid for by donations by an anonymous group of "Good Christian Brothers of The Fish and Loaf Society" as alms to be distributed under the public face of Antoine de Orlean. As grandson of the last King of Sicily as and independent entity via his recently late mother and youngest son of the "Citzen-King" Louis-Phillipe, Antoine's name carried at least a small whiff of nostalgia and hope among the traditionalist population, the rumors of something relating to him coming in that day drawing a larger crowd of onlookers to the dockside than usual. When porters from the local Catholic poorhouse arrived to unload the cargo they weren't surprised to see a crowd of over 5,000 , mostly made up of young women, already assembled in hopes of getting a choice pick of the food. What they diden't expect, however, was the line of 200 armed soldiers between them and their patron's property, refusing to allow them to board the ship. Under orders to be especially wary of potential forgein meddling following the Austrian invasion and a deafening silence by Rome to her demonstrated intent to restore Papal government in the lands they occupied, the prospect of just allowing so many tons of unknown cargo into the hands of the Church to be spread through an already agitated city was unthinkable to the Inspector-General. Citing normal custom's procedure, the commander of the troops informed the mob that the contents of the ship woulden't be freed until they'd been subject to a through inspection... a process that given the shortage of manpower might take up to several days. The sight of men in a Piedmontese uniform holding back servents of the Church from feeding a starving vity from provisions that rightfully belonged to them and were right there, right now, was the final unacceptable straw for somebody

There was a threat shouted, a cobblestone thrown, a shout of pain, and blood dripping down the commander's forehead. Than a shot was fired from the civic guard...
 
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Chapter VIII: Trinity of Trinities (Part G)
We have created Italy,
It remains for us to create Italians
-Massimo d'Azeglio


Things Fall Apart: Prelude

Discussions of the history of Italian Nationalism will often divide it into three distinct ideological stages; emerging from different motivations and segments of the population who came to see the ideology as a way to unite resistance in the face of a rising threat to their class. Initially this came in the form of political oppression by first Napoleonic and later Habsburg rulers replacing the old disposed nobility. To throw off these imposed autocrats, Liberal intellectuals and dispossessed peasents were obliged to strike a devil's bargin will the remnants of the native power brokers in the form of the Piedmontese Royalists; promising them authority in exchange for their military's protection from Habsburg retaliation. This created the background for the First Italian War of Independence where Charles Albert intervened under the pretext of a benevolent father-protector, seizing the mantle of patriotism from their domestic rivals in the form of Liberal Catholics under the reformist Papacy of Pius IX and establishing the dominant narrative of replacing bad Austrian management with "responsible government" in a way that would leave the fundimental nature of the state in tact.

This vision of an aristocratic future died on the fields of Novara, however, as Royal armies failed to uphold their end of the bargin and the entrenchment of Constiutional robbed them of their monopoly on politics. Iniative thus passed into the hands of the newly empowered professional and financial classes,who thanks to increased access to education, government positions, and widely distributed print media rapidly narrowing the ideological and wealth gap between them and the "old money". These closer social and business relationships, taking place in the standardized Florence dialect widely used in commerce and scholarship, folstered a frame of reference and identity that increasingly transcended borders. Seeing they held many interests in common now that their political demands had been met and the social barriers continued to break down the bourgeoise formed an alliance with the Royalists to reform society from the center out; pushing down on the simmering unrest from the Church, Republicans,and poor masses below them them while tearing down the remnants of Austrian authority from above. This compromise between conservative temperment and liberal principals; a kind of Machiavellian pragmatism that valued maximizing profit and power for the elite above all else, was no better epitomized than by the terms of the alliance with France, selling out the Italians of Nice and Savoy against the protests of Romantic Nationalist like Garibaldi for French assistance in driving the Austrians out of the richer province of Lombardy. The following years saw them sweeping rapidly from success to success, each more dramatic than the last as they swept away all resistance on the penninsula not directly propped up by a Great Power and Victor Emmamual taking on the crown of King of Italy to thunderious applause.

Like the Five Days of Milan that had marked the high tide of the last round of temporary triumph for the Pan-Italians, however, the ectasy of "The Five Years of Turin" would be short lived and end in a storm just as rapid and chaotic as had birthed it. Having ridden into power more by outside assistance, explotation of major resentments against the reactionary policies of their enemies, and no small amount of luck than any good planning or proactive support, the powers in the new united monarchy had shown little interest or respect for the still unanswered greivences of the downtrodden masses or the deep cultural and linguistic differences between the people's of her newly self-styled nation state. The Italian ethnic identity that was so deep among the wealthy and urbanites, who could expose themselves to the liturature and plays romaticizing the past and see the benefits of modern society, in reality existed only among that narrow strand of society, with the vast majority of the population sharing even less in common with the propertied class than they had in the fedual era: then, at least, the local Lord would have spoken the dialect, paid proper respect to the common faith, and attended the local festivities. In the narrow worldview of "respectable" Italian politics, the duty of the working class in society was to toil diligently and rise of fall on their own merits by trying to emulate their betters: not as Plato warned falling to the siren's song of demegoges and turn the State back into a tool of oppression and extortion from the generators of wealth. If the South was poor, it was clearly because they had no respect for the sanctity of property and were more interest in robbery than bettering themselves hard honest work, and if a man refused to or could not learn proper Italian than it wasn't their job to accommodate his laziness.

For a time they managed to get away with this policy by employing a combination of misdirection, inflated prosperity, and coming down swiftly and ferociously on any agitation from below. With the liberalpress casting the spectere of "socialism" over any questioning of the material conditions of society in the streets and "treason" on it's counterpart on the country lanes, they were able to obtain the passive support of the lower middle class who stood on the front lines of any mob activity; just wealthy enough to be a target but unable to absorb the cost of damages without sinking out of their position,and the population of the regions already predisposed to think poorly of the enemies of the State (Such as Lombardy, who resented Austria,and those parts of the old Papal States who hadent seen the benefits of Pius's reform attempts). These entrepreneurs; merchants, agents of shipping firms, white collar clerks, and the larger traditional tradesmen, who also most benefited from the climate of self-help created by the loosening of economic regulations,and so during the Five Years had thrown more active support behind the regeime as the bubble created by confidence in the young kingdom and flood of investment capital made possible by new agreements with and structural reforms to French and Italian banks and their integration into the wider national market had allowed them to start getting involved in the stock market and set aside money for their children's education. As long as the economy continued to expand and they could aspire to join the propertied class they proved to be some of the feircist defenders of the concepts or order and free markets: filling out the state's armies with proffesional soldiers and petty officers and its war chest with patriotic investment of their personal savings in high interest bonds under their faith in the nation's triumph.

The "rags to riches" stories trumpited by those trying to assimilate the self-sufficient laborer into the values system of market capitalism, however, proved too convincing for their own good. Not only did build up expectations of universal social advancement the second-rate Italian economy could never fufill,but the financial elite fell victim to their own propaganda about the fundimental values of the population. If the papers covered peasent protests at all, it was always assumed that it was the work of some politican's attempt to fool the ignorant masses into undermining their rivals: only giving ammunition to those forces who insisted that expanding the franchise would only bring on corruption. When every problem was cast as having the same cause; lack of proper information and scheming by reactionary (Read: not Pure Centeralist-Capitalist enough) elements in the provinces, the solutions proposed were also limited to more strict enforcement of state education and mandiotry civic invoinvolvement and purging the administration of politically unreliable men no matter their knowledge or compitence. The resulting climate of suspicion and spoilage lead, in many cases,to local governments being even more corrupt and inefficent than they'd been under the simple passive neglect of the Bourbons and Vatican,with partisans being rewarded with cushy jobs out in the sticks for their campaigning efforts and the civil service being closed off to those without connections in the administrative centers. Any good will the Eastern and Southern populace had towards "their" new masters was,by the time of the Ten Weeks War, dangeriously low, though as long as the police,garrison, courts, and other organized and armed elements of society remained loyal this was easy enough to keep down.

However, all of that changed when the day of Cialdini's trail arrived
 
Quick question: do you guys have any feedback to give on the length/number of updates in the sections? I'm worried I might be rambling on and overly segmenting things, and while it might be too late to save he coverage of Italy's organization I'd like to know if there's anything I could do to increase readability once we get to the German front and beyond
 
Quick question: do you guys have any feedback to give on the length/number of updates in the sections? I'm worried I might be rambling on and overly segmenting things, and while it might be too late to save he coverage of Italy's organization I'd like to know if there's anything I could do to increase readability once we get to the German front and beyond

The updates as they are now are nicely sized in my opinion. Very good timeline so far. It has a wonderful sense of plausibly to it.

(Your spelling/spell checking seems to have improved as well!)
 
Quick question: do you guys have any feedback to give on the length/number of updates in the sections? I'm worried I might be rambling on and overly segmenting things, and while it might be too late to save he coverage of Italy's organization I'd like to know if there's anything I could do to increase readability once we get to the German front and beyond
IMO the size is fine, ideal even, given the relative frequency of the updates.
 
Things Fall Apart (Part B)


What is there in Rome so sacred and venerable as the Vestal Virgins who keep the perpetual fire? yet if any of them transgress the rules of her order, she is buried alive. For they who are guilty of impiety against the gods, lose that sacred character, which they had only for the sake of the gods. So a tribune who injures the people can be no longer sacred or inviolable on the people’s account. He destroys that power in which alone his strength lay.

- Tiberius Grachuss

Things Fall Apart: "Liberty" or "Justice"?

For a few tumultuous days, in last instance until at least the turn of the century, Italians across the country experienced a national consensus in their sense of lose as they processed the news of Garibaldi’s last blood stand on the plains of Bologana. However heated their disagreements ran on other issues, admiration of Italy’s Founding Father as a heroic champion of the nation invoked a common patriotic impulse that spanned a whole diverse array of peoples. From the Republicans who he’d risen from to the Royalists he’d pledged his loyalty to, the Nician streets where he’d come into the world to the Po farmland where he’d left, the Romans he’d failed to liberate to the Sicilians he had; groups across the Penninsula had a good grounds on which to see him as one of their own. Both familiar and larger than life, if there were anything together the deep wounds that still lingered from the tumult of Unification and allow a true sense of nationhood to take root it would have been the man cheating death one final time and crushing the Austrian hordes beneath his triumphal charge. It was at that critical moment, however: when he’d gamble the future of his country on the superiority of romantic gesturing and courage over the raw power and cold pragmatism of industrial warfare, that the odds finally proved too heavily stacked for even his legendary luck to overcome. Confronted with the cold reality of death and vulnerability, neighbors turned to one another for support and to help find the answer to the single question on which all their intimate feelings of fear and grief were converging: who or what had allowed this tragedy to pass?

Against this backdrop of moral crisis, gailed on by the evasive answers from an unreconciled clergy who dared not preach anything that might be construed as supporting or dismissing the common theory God was punishing the Secular Italian government for betraying its concordant with and attacking the Church without clear leadership from Rome, the arrest and proposed sentences for Ex-General Cialdini coulden’t avoid becoming an object of public contention despite every effort by the government to frame the affair as something to be deliberated by the military judtes rather than civilians. In a calmer climate it very likely would have remained an internal matter, with what coverage it did receive chalking up any discrepancies to the institutional prejudice that could simply be expected from partisan intrigues. Following the bungled implementation of the Pronunciamiento plot and their own heavily pushed narrative having irrevocably linked the case with the Ventian war effort, however, the Marmora government had no choice but to try to set up a public trial on the unenviable charge of being too eager to persecute a war their supporters had wholeheartedly embraced. Someone in the heights of the General Staff had betrayed his responabilities to Italy, and to those who bought the highly-curated coverage of events by the “respectable” media the duke was a natural suspect. Having largely spent his post-Unification career both politically and physically distant from the halls of power, he was not only without friends or contacts who could vouch for his character against the unfavorable assumptions about outsiders. The dramatic failures of the military systems he’d set up; even if he hadn’t made any of the decisions that lead to their collapse were used as circumstantial evidence of either gross incompetence of vile treason. He even looked the part of a villain; hard features and rough beard giving him the appearance of a constant grim scowl.

For those already predisposed to dislike him; either because they were horrified at his disregard for the oath of loyalty and the threat it posed to the sancity of contract or their deep need to find a blood sacrifice that could take on the sins of the nation and justify the faith they'd placed in the Crown and Civic state to provide guidance and security from their traditional enemies, guilt was immediately obvious; as own clearly stated words were more than enough to sincerely convince them. In their idea of Italian Honor, defined by how closely the state held to her promises between them and the people by plainly and uniformly enforcing the rule of law and punishing those who broke it, the only path forward was a conviction of treason in a properly run court-marshal. Anything else would be a miscarriage of justice and could only open the door for future abuse. This was the view espoused by the second stage of Italian Nationalism; the forces business and finance, white collar professionals, men of letter, and beuracrats who'd built Italy into a solid entity from the wreckage of it's intellectual basis in the aftermath of The Springtime of Nations. For them, Patrie was embodied in the order of the State and the dynasty that stood at it's head, and the implication that the system was in some way fundimentally corrupt was something they wouldn't suffer.

The methods they employed to assemble the masses behind that policy, however, would fall victim reckless disregard for the truth. Driven by a need to avoid running afoul the censors, beat their competition to circulation, and appease the emotional needs of their subscribers to feel privy to exclusive information and participating in a battle just as monumentious as those occuring on the front line in order to maintain circulation, the press coverage of Cialdini's professional history quickly moved from researched inquiry and official statements to testimonials, accounts ripped from less prominent papers, and bitter personal and partisan attacks masked as editorial discussion. For Swept up in the self-reinforcing cycle of daily coverage from multiple sources, a half-remembered anecdote from an unvetted 'soldier' about events a decade prior could take on the force of something straight out of the army briefs as it passed up the chain from penny-broadsheets to the legitiment publications, while highlighting every tiny blemish in records who's conclusions the author found distasteful. Where death or unavailability of a key witness or material proof left gaps in the story, authors felt justified in making up for it with fabrications that supported the message they wanted to push on the reader. Nowhere was this slow corruption by demegouges; placing principals and profit above proffesionalism, more obvious than the slow shifting in the narrative around Garibaldi. In the initial days, eulogies had focused on his acheivements and modivations: how the man had organized patriots from all walks of life and woke a patriotism people hadent previously known they had and encouraging them to rise above their condition through a common sacrifice. It was by always being the first to do so; leading from the front to direct his countrymen to the common good by example, typified by his setting aside of his Republican scrupples to serve the Savoyards as the best route to and guranteer of Italian Independence. It was a call for stoicim: the kind of envoking of historical values from their Roman past and appeal to personal responsibility that resonated so well with the honor culture of the noblity and bourgeoisie that had long been their audience.

In their efforts to avoid having this idyllic view of liberty tainted by conceding to the expectations of the local Mafia rackets that made up the provincial elite, however, the party of respectability, order, and progress had shaken up the passions of a group who would be the protagonists of the third wave. These were the liberal town's equivalent to the rural smallholder of Napoleon III or the economic brigand of the South: not naturally political or exclusively loyal to any particular principal, but possessing a driving need for certainty in a world which hated them and kept heaping on hardships outside their control and a tendency towards following a successful leader who offered a salve to their wounded pride. When posed will the question of what allowed tragedy and what was to be done with it: where an educated Liberal would answer the indifference of the universe and self-enrichment and the Reactionary could fall back on his Faith that the Lord was infallibly just no matter what it appeared and their earthly hardships would be rewarded in heaven, these men possessed the worst of both worlds. No longer having God and Satan and lacking the self-confidence to truely believe they could direct their own destinies, they turned to ideology as a substitute for Cosmic Good and Evil. Their side, the side of the "Common Good" was behyond reproach, and any critism no matter how legitiment was tandimount to heresy. Their ideas, being built out of a loose concensus later adopted as gospel, were semi-codified in figures the scholarship refer to as "Vanguard's"; charismatic leaders who the streets hold up as an aspirational state, who's approval was often used as a benchmark of status in the gangs of these activists.

For better or for worse, they stepped in to fill a practical and philosophical gap left by the indifference and arbitrary order imposed by a distant ruling class. Where the police were corrupt or simply dident find enough evidence to convict, the rough and ready justice of the mob brought wrongdoers punishment... though under a fairly broad definition of wrongdoing, and gave an outlet for self-expression and frustration and sense of meaning for a factory worker who's life consisted of work on goods he'd never personally own far away from friends and family, to be followed by a drunken stupor just to dull the pain. In the context of the Cialdini Crisis, however, this sense of Civic service and the collective helping the individual was shadowed under it's hatred. To be the innocent angels, they needed their oppents to be oppressive demons unworthy of the same considerations they did. The elements of the collective Reaction: the Church, the military and it's unabashedly aristocratic officer corps, moneylenders and landowners who lived off extracted wealth rather than doing any real work, and their supporters, were marked with the Scarlet letter of scrutiny: just looking for a sign of oppression so they could throw him into animalistic maw of popular outrage to be consumed.

Cialdini would be the first prominent victim of this revolutionary strain; being depicted as a butcher of innocent peasents who had been trained into being content in their oppression by centuries of carefully tailored messaging and religious brainwashing. They agreed with the State in that the Southerners couldn't govern themselves without being educated in the "right way" of thinking, being helpless to elevate themselves, but placed the responsibility on their being exploited and treated like a conquered territory to be plundered. This is exactly what Cialdini had done, first to them and later by selfishly keeping his men away from Garibaldi and doomjng the national defense. Just as he'd sent so many to death without trial, they reasoned, it wouldn't be justice to give him any chance to make his case in public: the only fitting end being an immediate public execution despite the fact the Kingdom did not allow death for political crimes. When news was finally leaked of the mansion I which he was being held, just a few miles out of Florence, a great mob formed and began a march on the place, armed with rifles and torches...
 
Things Fall Apart (Part C)
From his gilded prison in the village of Chianti, Enrico Cialdini was horrified to read of what he was becoming in the eyes of the people. Locked as they were in a mutual struggle for the nothing less than the soul of the nation; seeing this as their last chance to turn back the soulless clock of "progress" before it struck a final midnight for the old values or cleanse the "reactionary rot" from the body politic before it split the country apart and threw open the gates for enemy occupation, radicals were personifying everything they despised about their opposites in the figure of the General and transforming the debate over the judicial review of his alleged treason into a test case of the very nature of the Kingdom's courts. Across the north and west of the country, where the smoldering frustrations of the "New Left" had been lit by the twin shocks of the Pronunciamiento and Garibaldi's death and fanned by the hot air of demagoguery, the prevailing mood was one of unfettered rage. The fact Gaeta had been arrested and was on route to be judged by a tribunal that would no doubt find him guilty wasen't enough to satisfy them; the image of the Arch-traitor being allowed to live under the eyes of his former comrades in arms while their hero lay legless and dying as a consequence of his actions raising the thirst of the crowds to deliver personal vengeance. This demand wasen't based solely in immediacy either. Since the absolute worst sentence he could receive under the law was life in prison, and he'd already demonstrated he was able able to secure himself comfortable, safe, and pleasant accommodations, to allow the matter to go to a court of any kind would make certain he wasen't properly punished for his crimes, with muckraking publishing rumors that his good friends in government were already setting things up for a distinguished exile on a private estate somewhere in Latin America. This suspicion of backroom maneuverings was only confirmed in their mind when wardens of prisoner across the country began denying interviews with the private press and the official government reports began to go to elaborate lengths to avoid mentioning anything that might reveal Cialdini's location. Realizing how sensitive this particular case had become due to the potential for Austrian involvement and the fact that if the mobs thought they's gleaned information of his wearabouts they'd have armed lynching parties attacking government buildings in full view of the world, the Justice Ministry had expanded its press blackout on matters of national security to include the time and place of the imprsonment and trail. Thus began a complex dance to both find and conceal the truth, with reporters using every trick they had to circumvent attempts by the state apprentice to maintain its respectability and the shield that provided the Dynasty.

Liberal resistance to the calls for execution was grounded in an unshakable belief that to restore the death penalty was to discredit the rule of law, and a State that surrendered that sacred principal in the face of blackmail couldn't fight radicals and anarchists. For men who'd seen the fate of Ultraroyalists who tried to rule via proclamation, arbitrary rule meant revolution and trying to combat revolutionaries with a disgraced leadership would be a rerun of the disastrous defeats of 1848. How could officers order their soldiers into battle for a government that dispised them, or the common people rally under a principal they'd been taught could be discarded whenever it was convenient. However revolting they found the campaign of censorship or the intolerable notion of condeming a man to prison without the presumtion of innocence, the popular campaign against due process was far worse because it destroyed trust in the legal system. It was this fear of what would happen if, with the legitimacy of it's rule already being questioned by the Naplese, Habsburgs, and the Republican community in exile, the regeime was further weakened by distrust in the army that intimidated the Mamora cabinet and keeped a modest majority of the population against execution. With the countryside already a nest of alienated dissidents being riled up by refractory priests and forgein armies clawing at their door, the army was their one gurantee of order. While on principal they wanted the government to represent popular will, putting it above the gurantee of rights was tandimount to sacrelige against the civial creed of Constiutional government, and anyone favoring such an approach was just as if not more of a traitor than those they sought to condem

Emerging from this civil war on the Left, a few scattered individuals tried to sooth the uneasiness about the closed trial. Beleiving the proof of the General's guilt exceeded any reasonable definition of reasonable doubt, they sought to provide the death sentince the crowd was clamouring for by dragging the case into criminal rather than military court where a guilty verdict for murder would allow for it. While this would require convincing a jury who, while likely still highly biased, would at the very least be more diverse than the high ranking brass that would otherwise decide his fate, they believed they could easily construct a case and that the promise of a public trial and hanging would end the prying and pressure from forgein creditors who wanted some kind of gurantee that payments be collected... and made it clear they weren't above leveraging their influence in French government and banking sector to bring down Mamora's government and replace it with one more cooperative to their needs. As they assembled their dossiar, however,they quickly uncovered the evidence that had been held back from the public as to cladestine communications with the Prussian military attache and the forged nature of the Pronunciamiento. While not illegal, on the basis that treason can hardly be committed on the express instruction of a sovergein, it did stink of a Court that had fallen victim to the mood of conspiracy and deep forgein engagements without consulting the representative portion of government. When these deputies tried to raise the question of the morality of convicting an innocent man to their superiors, who couldn't afford to open these facts to the world lest it destroy what political capital they had left in the eyes of everyone, the truth-seekers found themselves frozen out, labled as enemies of the Executionists and enemies of the state by the Court-marshal faction if they didn't fall back in line.

A handful of friends among the investigators, realizing the legal weakness of the evidence collected against Cialdini and trapped in their public position by early commitment to the idea of putting the case in public hands, refused to partake in the machinations of their fellow politicans. At the head of this particular collection; almost entirely recent appointees by Mamora up from the ranks of the provincial armies and so their noble intentions still undulled by the realities of politics and having been out of the loop of the conspiracy, was Franesco Crispi. Long having been a fervent Italian Nationalist and close associate and confident of Garibaldi, his personal prestige and connections had allowed him far more latitude in opposing the power of the House of Savoy and increasing centeralizing impulses of the Old Left than most politicans. This made him a magnet for 'fringle' dissenting elements that still fit into the respectable range of political positions: those who's constituency were the regional market towns whos elite strata was dominated by small capitalists, chambers of commerce, and redudent retired/cached officers from the old Kingdom militeries who balked under the overly heavy hand of Turin, Florence, and Milan while falling just under the line of having real influence over national affairs. It was exactly these sort who, as rivals of the dominant Piedmontese faction, they were slated to bare the brunt of the inevitable post-war purges. Having nothing to lose and everything to gain by seeing the blame shifted, it took little prodding for Crispi to renegade on his recent resignation to Monarchism, especially seeing the fate that had befallen his comrade in the unessicery war King Emmanual had brought about and who's noble officers had bungled, casting the unity of the Kingdom into jeprody. With the weight of his reputation, the Liberal Deputy found a reputable paper willing to publish the leak anonymously.

The people who read those papers though were by and large supportive of the government narrative. Reconciling the complex examination secret documents and midnight meetings, of counts who proudly rode in parades or with saber in hand to defend Italy from all comers turning around and playing the part of almost theatrical villians, was something they couldn't do. There was nothing heroic or regal about condeming and innocent man for obeying his King, much less celebrate it, so the story must be some kind of fabrication from the "others": the Republicans, Jews, and the despicable separatists and anti-Monarchists who clung to their rifles and roseries in the undeveloped hill country who, they were told, were set to destroy them. It's immediate impact was not shouts to investigate the government, but "Long live Micino! Long live the King! Long live Mamora!"

But, more ominously "Shame to the Mutioneers and Cowards! Death to the Briganti! To Rome, to Rome!". And these were the words on that were reprinted by the smaller broadsheets and right-thinking church comminiques that were proliferating in the south and east...

 
Things Fall Apart (Part C)
The extremes of the nationalist press, to those who suffered its constant stream of criticism and venom epitomized the disease of decadence and mischief-making that afflicated Italy under the Savoyards. While they represented every shade of the political spectrum; from pure White Bourbon Loyalists and Ultramontanists to the Blackist Anarchist with every conceivable grey in between, they were united in the fact they were locked out of every important element of national life by the prevailing political opinions and prejudices of the forums of debate. To a public mind befuddled by political neuance, where one’s tribe was based on support or opposition to the argument of the day rather than principals, everybody who did not identify as a Savoyard Patriot was treated as an interchangeable part of the sans-patrie; fit only for abuse and insult and to be prevented from gaining a platform from which to plead their treasonous ideologies. This haunted the efforts for Public Trial at every turn; only adding fuel to the arguments being pushed by the Old Left that revising the rules would mean revolution and the New Left that Cialdini was in bed with the enemies of the State. With thought of these terrifying figures being tied to cause, public opinion on the trail could be kept focused not on what was actually happening, but when the Liberal press and rumors said what was happening. To try to prove innocent a man condemned by his own words and the accusations of the infailable defenders of the nation who everyone already believed was guilty was to call down the smear and desubscription campaigns of the government-supportive papers… who were more than happy to reap the financial rewards of feeding the fears of their new readership.

As the terror of invasion and insurrection devoured any sense of moderation or propriety, this ousting would expand far beyond the fringe press. Increasingly, the lines between what was loyal opposition and what was passive acceptance if not veiled support of the enemies of the state became more and more blurred. The denials of anybody called out on having any sort of connection of a known revolutionary were ignore, while on the other hand openly expressing insult without “proving” one’s loyalty by providing the names of a traitorous relative, colleage or co-worker was elevated to the point of threatening outright insurrection if the public diden’t buy her clearly false denials. Any willingness to even consider the merits of a public trial or critique the possibility of execution were denounced as cowardly submission to Austrian pressure and the power of the "Templars".

In its proper historical context,the term had origionally been a creation of the National-left as shorthand to describe those segments of society that sowed ideas hostile to the status quo. Though having not yet coalesed to the extremes of the "Popish Plot" myth that would be propagated post-war, it still envoked the image of everything they thought wrong with the Right as the actions of an ancient secret fellowship with Cialdini as it's sword hand. With their traditional dominance over society threatened, this cabal of bankers, priests, and petty nobles had mobalized the obedient sheep of soldiers and farmhands to reverse the enlightening struggle for unification, putting the dark-age Church in it's place as the sole font of knowledge and authority. Appealing as this simple narrative was, the New Left quickly seized upon it to explain any developments in the countryside that went against them. Any government official or garrison commander who didn't allow the popular mobs to personally search their buildings was under orders that came from a Templar. Moral concerns expressed by prominent figures over the brutality of the efforts to smoke out traitors in the army, church burnings, or the shooting of families and neighbors of known brigands were evidence of psychological manipulation by a secretly Templar associate. They had supposedly spent millions of Lira embezzled out of bank accounts and collection plates to buy up grain and specte and store it in the catacombs of churches and country estates, being solely responsible for the corrupt manipulation of the markets. They supposedly used the seal of confession to receive instructions from their advisors, appointed on recommendation from the Archduke's army Chaplins. That was the only plausable way the dull Austrian could have predicted and prepared a counter for every move of the dynamic Italian soldiers, and if nothing was done they'd throw a defenceless Italia to the mercy the Hun. As the scope of it's plotting expanded, so too did the membership of the league,; eventually including the Jews, Republicans in Exile, forgein bussinessmen who were undercutting Italy's blooming economy, and families with any degree of their own means in the countryside who were still physically and mentally outside the intellectual communities of Italy. The Templars were everywhere, lurking at the shadows around the edges of their becons of Enlightenment, as everything they instinctually feared and hated. It had to be called out into the open and destroyed, before it could weasel it's servent away into the night. By whatever means we're nessicery...
 
Things Fall Apart (Pard D)
"It is those people who know that they are right because some outside or higher power conveys the conviction to them who do the great damage in the world."

~ Maxwell Perkins, The Long 19th Century


It is one of the great ironies of history that, despite the charges of cronyism and favoritism being leveed at them from the fringes of both sides, the men entrusted with guarding their would-be target were some of the least partisan in Italy. Not exclusively Liberal or Conservative, Secular or Clerical , Royalist or Republican; despite many of it's officers having strong sentiments on all these things, the army as a body was united in its oath to the Kingdom. Unlike in Spain, they accept their role as an instrument of the State whatever their individual politics and the King, recognizing the fact he'd survived the tide of liberalism thanks to his serious, professionally trained force leading the charge for Italian unification, rewarded their loyalty with prestige. The upper echelons comfortable in their position in the Savoyard's good grace, it's lower-tier corps still dominated by hold outs from the predecessor armies, and it's rank and file hardened from long, dreadful garrisons in some wary provincial town, it had developed a culture distinct from the rest of the nation built around loyalty to it's members and the common experience of the service. By nature, it was little concerned with or aware of the civilian problem of the day: so long as the nation was secure, and the public esteem of their club held high, they were more than content with their position.


It was precisely of this high reputation that the Pronunciamiento had produced such a violent reaction to Cialdini from those who normally were the regime’s most ardent supporters. The Army was supposed to be high above petty politics. It was the greatness of the Italian nation, the hero and handmaiden of Risorgimento, where men from every corner of the nation could rise by defending the nation and restoring, someday, the glory that was Rome after a century under the never-absent shadow of the Germanic invaders. It was consoling proof that they could succeed in unity and certainty in purpose where the mass revolutions had failed under constant self-critism and indeterminate goals. To be told that put at the head of those brave men who landed on the shores of Sicily, held off the Slavic behemoth in Crimea, and whom the King himself had lifted his hat to as they paraded down the streets with their dashing uniforms, flags, and bands was one who treated his oath so casually wasn't just, like equivalent ploys in the rest of the Latin world, a power grab by an alien entity: it threatened to bring down the mystery-cult of the uniform and, by extension, the connection it created between the old Greater Piedmontese political establishment and the intellectual-literary idea of Italy as a nation.


In one important aspect, however, this culture was as reactionary as its worst critics claimed it was: its members considered themselves brothers in arms and, many of their officers being privy to the manufactured nature of Cialdini's defense, were prepared to go to great lengths in order to keep him alive and out of the hands of the either the mobs, rebels, or invaders. As their counterparts faced the nightmares originally surpressed or meant for them the bloodbaths north of Bologana, looting and roadside ambushes in the hills of Naples and Sicily, and the genocide of reputations taking place in the pulpits and parlors, the 80 man company entrusted with their commander’s fate were relieved to being enjoying the peace and safety of the Tuscan estate that had been renovated to detain as honored a guest as the hero of the Siege of Gaeta. Positioned atop a spur of high ground overlooking a valley of orchards and a small vineyard, there were no shortage of employee’s cabins and outbuildings to be converted into spacious, comfortable quarters with proper beds alongside the chief two-story stone villa that housed the officers. A commissary well-stocked with civilian food, open spaces free of military infrastructure, and mild summer weather gave the assignment the feel of virtual leave compared to their previous tours of duty, with only the occasional patrol and lack of camp followers disrupting their idyllic conditions. While the General himself, obviously more on edge and unable to settle his tactical though, noted with some considers the obvious weaknesses of his haven: the easy avenues of approach created by the open roads and the fields extending to the south-west, the lax borders being kept, and the scattered nature of the “barracks”, these misgivings wouldn’t end up being acted upon. The boy-commander left in charge of the garrison; the nephew of the estate’s owner given the posting as part of the agreement worked out for its use, believed trouble could best be kept away by hiding in plain site, which precluded the overt fortifications that might catch wandering eyes or fostering tension in the garrison by over-enforcement of displace that might encourage them to wander off the estate and (likely for drink or pleasurable company) spread new of a suspicious military garrison in the middle of nowhere with vital assignment, tried to assure him the immediate situation called for more discression, with the pickets presenting the guise of groundskeepers trying to enforce property security to discourage bandits, poachers, or other passing persons from being too curious.

Meanwhile, the already substantial number of “civic guards”; the glorified mobs of the yet-unnamed New Left, were making trouble among the outlying villages from their base in Florence. On his daily excursions for exercise and fresh air, Cialdini and his escorts could spot the smoke rising from fires they self-evidently set ; acting as authorized muscle for the desperate recruiting officers who, facing demands for manpower by Turin to fill the ranks of a surpressive force to replace professional troops being pulled up from the South, turned to issuing later-day letters of marquee to these men willing to hunt down draft dodgers and other less-than-enthusiastic potential conscripts. Sweeping across the countryside in small groups, they fell upon the isolated farmhouses of the village communes; Sundays and Wednesdays providing a conveniently concentrated and politically acceptable target at Masses. Consisting of a mixture of armed veterens, petty criminals on parole in exchange for public service, and men who’d been active in the milita and thus technically in-service at the time of call up, they would turn dwellings and barns upside down in search of both legitimate deserters and other “suitable recruits”. The later could be anybody who’d pass as qualified; teenagers, men beneath the physical standards of the army, those of excempted professions, with any dissenting documents being dismissed as meddling with the local records by the disloyal local priest. Unlike the pseudo-legal terror in the South, however, the violence here was entirely one sided. For one thing, the children, women, and old men they faced were still loyal and patriotic subjects of the crown: initial surprise that their regional officials were bent on fudging the laws giving way to the stark reality that, without guns and the gangs having the blessings of the courts, they could offer no practical resistance.



Though suspicious of the sight of fit men isolated on the country estate, they fell for the Army’s ruse to the extent of believing their prejudice that it was some overprivileged disloyal old Tuscan Aristocrat who’d hired substitutes or bribed his employee’s out of their duty to the nation. As the weeks passed and more and more members joined the gangs as their cause gained momentum and wild tales arrived from the east and south to stoke up the call for more bodies, the company became increasingly anxious about the prospect of being caught isolated and unarmed. Mentions of the estate started appearing in the hastily-assembled newsbills, dire editorials calling it an “eyesore” demanding a full investigation to see what they were hiding. Though the officers wrote dispatches to the mayor’s and censors’ offices to explain the situation and requesting quiet suppression of the inciting language, the response with a dispiriting admittance that, whatever the offical statements, periodicals were coming out so quickly in such volume that an actual press blackout had become impossible. With the civic guard “recruitment drives” closer and thicker on the ground, the risk of being caught isolated and unarmed drove the company into a more and more isolated state. The troops kept a wide birth from the sight of the road unless they absolutely had to; and in those cases only in groups and with their service rifles close at hand, hoping to hunker down until the date for the court marshal arrived and they could finally leave their open-air siege for a night of drink and pleasurable company.

For others this reputation as a possible sanctuary against service diden’t invoke rage but hope. Fearing it was only a matter of time before their younger sons would be carried off and panicked by the stories of death cruelties used as propaganda against the Austrians and Sicilians that might befall them, concerned mothers came together in a party of 30 people to hazard a trip to the vineyard in hopes of protection. Loading up their wagons with rye both to hide the boys and use as an impromptu bribe, they departed after dark in hopes of evading pursuit. Unfortunately for them, however, the were called to stop a mile from the estate and, fearing what would befall them if they were discovered, decided to stage a break for the villa. With their clear line of sight and route, the garrison night watch coulden’t help but be roused by screams and chaos, who were prepared to take any precaution to keep armed men away at all cost. The half-dozen patrolmen, on high alert, fired into the air over the New Leftists as a warning, sending them scattering. Unable to risk allowing the women and children to wander free, they were croweded into the cramped space of root celler to wait out the quiet night, leaving the question of what to be done with them for the officers to decide in the morning.

While this heroic gesture undoubatly saved innocent lives, and arguably could not have been avoided, this was the moment that blew their meticulously maintained cover for good. Already be mourning, the poorly armed by numerous “civic guards” had already begun congregating in a nearby home as they tried to convince the other patrols of what they had seen. Over the new few days, they were able to collect about 300 men from the surrounding gangs: about 50 of which had muskets from confiscated stockpiles and the rest armed with a mix of improvised farming implements and artisan’s tools, who began launching disorganize but distracting attacks on the outlying properties and causing the garrison proper to pull into the villa to await an attack. With a week left until the transfer of Cialdini into proper tribunal custody the general prayed the young hotheads woulden’t storm the house, lest these popular heros be massacured for his sake and thus only solidify the false accuations or, worse, they manage against all odds to break in. As the protestors gained more and more of the outbuildings and the mobs began arriving from Florence and its suburbs, though, the prospect of capturing the treaonsious women and looting the stored wealth grew far more tempting. The tipping point, however, came when the Duke was surveying the hastily-constructed enclosure around the front porch, and an looking from the camp below watching them through his telescope spotted the hated criminal atop the balcony. As expected, this sighting quietly spread through the camp, conceptions coming together to produce the narrative that Cialdini was indeed treasonous and was gathering deserters to stage his real coup as part of a conspciracy of the integrated officers against their Piedmontese superiors. Forming into a crude mockery a line on parade, the so-called Patriots began to converge on the main foritifed buildings.

At first, the men simply took cover behind the board-and barrel hardpoints around the windows and doors of the building. After one soldier was killed and another wounded by the sporadic and undisplined fire, however, they began firing at will despite a lack of proper orders. The resulting firefight between the impromptu, untrained attackers in the open against experienced men in cover went about how one would expect; the former quickly wasting what ammunition they had on hand and withering in the hail of bullets being fired in tandem, supported by fire from the upper floors which drove the attackers away from the buildings and back towards their wagon-and-tent camp at the base of spur. After this first rush failed, with over 40 men laying back up on the hill and either dead or dragged or left to bleed out as the defenders prioritized their own men for the virtually non-existent hospital capacity, the rest of the day saw distant potshots from self-proclaimed “sharpshooters” that accomplished little more than scratching the paint on the house. During that time, the boys who were taking refugee were tasked with rescuing supplies from the exposed outbuildings, operating safely under the cover of an armed detail as they brought the ammunition into the main stone structure. The Civic Guard, having never encountered proper combat before, were surprised and disturbed by the difficulty, and spent the night erecting their own barricades of cordwood and overturned wagons to keep away a counterattack while they decided weather or not it would be wise to withdraw back to Florence to procure proper weapons, or simply send word for support in the form of one of the 12-pounders of old howitzers which were laying around the public buildings…
 
Dins flaming fist... I suppose I really need to knuckle back down to deserve this nomination and be a worthy read for perspective voters. Time to show the world what Sicilians can go in with when death is on the line!
 
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