The arrival of the 'Redshirts'

By the time Garibaldi landed at Marsala with his 1,000 on 11 May 1860 with Royal Navy and Piedmontese navy ships protecting his landing to prevent any interference from the navy of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, Pasquale Criscuolo may well have been courting Pasqualina Rispoli.

Maybe they met up in the square in Pontone and walked along the narrow streets of the town hand-in-hand under the Mediterranean sun. Maybe they had their entire families walking twenty yards behind them just like Michael Corleone and Appolonia Vitelli. Maybe when they managed to turn a corner to grasp a few short seconds out-of-sight of the families they stole a fleeting kiss and laughed mischievously when they did. There are a million maybes but there is no reason to believe that they weren't happy. As I have said already, on the whole, life was good ... and improving.

They probably got married at the little church in the square in Pontone - San Giovanni Battista - and settled down to live life as it had been lived by hundreds of generations of their fathers before them.

They may have heard of Garibaldi's feats in Sicily as Calatafimi, Palermo and Milazzo fell. He may have heard of landing of the Garibaldian troops in Calabria. He almost certainly heard of the battle of Volturno and on October 21 1860 he will amost certainly have known about the plebiscite that was held 'ask' the people of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies whether they wished to be 'annexed' to the Piedmontese kingdom in the name Italy; to become 'brothers of Italy'.

Sir Henry Elliott (the British Ambassador at Naples) described the plebiscite in the following terms - "the vote is to be taken by universal suffrage, and although no avowedly by open voting, it is so arranged that what each man does will be known, and public opinion brought to bear on him. I do not apprehend that the proportion of negative votes would under any circumstances have been very large but with the present arrangement there is still less chance of it ... both the terms of the vote and the manner in which it is to be taken are well calculated to secure the largest possible majority for the annexation, but not so well fitted to ascertain the real wishes of the country."

O'Clery, having cited Sir Henry, goes on to describe the conduct of the plebiscite by the Piedmontese government and its troops - "On the day of the Plébiscite the votes were subjected to the force of public opinion in a very tangible form. The National Guard, with fixed bayonets, stood at the voting urns. One man who voted No at Monte Calvario was repaid with a stab for his boldness. All the Garibaldians, most of whom, as we have seen, were Northern Italians, were allowed to vote in the capacity of "liberators"."

The result, O'Clery records, was 1,303,064 in favour of annexation and 10,312 against in Naples (that meant the whole of Southern Italy not just Naples) and 432,054 in favour and 667 against in Sicily. He observes, wryly, that these results showed "... the same surprising unanimity that had been witnessed in Savoy, Nice, the Romagna, Umbria, the Marches and invariably on the side of the men whose troops held the country."

I want to say one thing here to put the record straight. Garibaldi was not the all-conquering hero that those who wrote the history books would have us believe. O'Clery records, very matter-of-factly, that "Sicily had been revolutionized, from Marsala to Messina, in less than three months - but Garibaldi had not done it. Cavour's agents had prepared the way and Cavour's fleet had supported the movement. Garibaldi had been justly called the enfonceur des portes ouvertes - the man who broke through open doors - and nowhere did he deserve the title better than in Sicily. He won three victories. The first was gained over a weak, incompetent man, at Calatafimi; the second, at Palermo, was fought against a traitor; the third, at Milazzo, and the third only, was a genuine victory."

Garibaldi went on to bang his head against a number of closed doors in the years that followed. He was a clown who succeeded only because he was backed at every turn by the devious, duplicitous and powerful man who was Count Camillo Cavour. Unfortunately, like Inspecteur Clouseau, he believed that it was down to the fact that he was a genius.

Such was life in Amalfi

The principal source (actually, it's the only source) for the story I am about to relate is a book published in 1904 called "La Prima Repubblica Marinara d'Italia - Amalfi", written by a gentleman called Umberto Moretti.

In what is described as 'il capitolo unico' (the only chapter) in the section headed 'Notes on Industry and Commerce' Moretti discusses the traditional industries of the area (both manufacture and agriculture). Unfortunately for me, much of his chronological referencing is obscure. It was clearly understood by his readers and I have sought the assistance of Google on more than one occasion but not always with any notable success.

His first stop is with the fishing industry which brought in, among other things, coral, tuna, mackerel and swordfish which were sold in the markets in Naples and Salerno. Coral fishing in Amalfi, however, had died in the 16th century and was, at the time when Moretti was writing, restricted to Torre del Greco (it is still one of the principal tourist souvenirs in the shops along the coast).

The agricultural muscle of the area (involving a third of the local population earning about 1.5 Lira a day per man - it's pretty much meaningless to me too and I can't find anything on the internet to convert it into a modern equivalent) is dedicated principally to the lemon groves (and still is it has to be said) and that is closely followed by the grape (God bless the grape) although Moretti notes that much of the land given over to vines was being 'converted' (if that's the right word) to lemon groves on account of the fact that the latter is, apparently, more productive than the former which presumably means that lemons were more profitable.

Much of the grape grown in Amalfi is sent to Naples where it finds its way to the table. The rest is used to produce "light wines of excellent quality" much of which is exported under the name Capri Bianco. The area also produced sufficient pulses and potatoes for the needs of the local population but no more than enough.

Moretti next turns to mourn the fact that "... the art of extracting the essential oil of the rose and producing that pleasant perfume ... sought by medieval gentlemen for its fragrant qualities." for which Amalfi was once a centre of excellence had entirely disappeared - the rose beds making way for lemon groves. Rose water was, apparently, demanded of tenants by their landlords by way of rent and the last recorded case was to be found in a tenancy agreement dated 1824.

The Amalfi silk industry, run predominantly by Jews, which had prospered, particularly in Amalfi, Ravello, Scala and Agerola, was short lived and it faded and finally died when, in the early 16th century Garcia Alvarez de Toledo, 4th Marquis of Villafranca del Bierzo and Viceroy of Naples chased the Jews from the area. Another case of commercial good sense being suppressed by religious zeal.

It was replaced by a wool industry when Alfonso the Magnanimous (what a wonderful epithet) introduced merino sheep into the area. Wool mills sprang up in Amalfi, Scala, Ravello and, above all, in Atrani. This wool found its way onto the markets of Calabria, Sicily, Sardinia, Capua, Benevento, Naples, Foggia and Melfi. As appears to be the way of things in Amalfi, however, this endeavour too met its end when the wool mills were converted to flour mills. Once again Moretti is left to mourn the disappearance of a promising and productive industry.

Moving on to the manufacturing efforts of the good burgers of Amalfi and the surrounding area, we are taken to the paper mills. Amalfi was, and is, famous for its paper. It boasted, and boasts, that it started producing paper in 1276 and Moretti states confidently that, in 1861, there were 38 paper mills in the town employing 270 workers, producing 2,000,000 kilos of paper and bringing in Lit 145,000 per annum. In 1904 Moretti counted no more than 15 mills employing 80 workers. One of these mills, a very significant edifice, can still be found hidden in the woods behind the town, its machinery mute. Cobwebbed. Sad.

Next on the list of things to do in Amalfi is the work in the pasta factories (I use the term factory loosely because it has modern connotations that are misplaced). Moretti describes it as the principal industry in Amalfi which continues to survive not because it has been able to modernize and keep up with the rest of the industry but because the workers are very poorly paid. Nevertheless, employing 1,800 workers, it produces 2,000,000 kilos of pasta a year worth Lit 800,000.

He finishes his journey through the forms of gainful employment available to the Amalfitani with a visit to the merchant fleet which, in the days of the Amalfi Marine Republic, had made it very rich indeed. It stretched in the middle ages to every shore of the Mediterranean from the Black Sea to the Western Mediterranean Basin. By the end of the 19th century, it was reduced to the coast of Southern Italy and Sicily. Amalfi's exports (by sea and not necessarily to places outside Italy) included lemons, salted anchovies, pasta, cheese, paper and fresh fruit. Almost nothing was moved by land because of the mountainous nature of the region.

This was the land of my Criscuolos. This was the land in which Pasquale grew up. Life was clearly hard but as John Goodwin Esq. made abundantly clear in his paper on the development of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, things were improving and could be expected to improve further.