Pisacane and Crocco: Two Italies That Never Met
Index:
Introduction - Biographies
in Comparison - Their
Endeavors - The Two Legends
- Conclusion
Carlo Pisacane and Carmine Crocco lived in the same era, were born in the same Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, served in the same army, and carried out their remembered deeds in the same regions. Legends about them emerged simultaneously. However, they represent two Italies that never crossed paths, despite fervently seeking one another.
Pisacane embodies Mazzinian,
democratic, and socialist
Italy, striving to uplift
the oppressed masses. This
Italy was cultured,
progressive, and infused
with new ideals, maintaining
close ties with advanced
European societies.
In contrast, Carmine Crocco
represents the people:
illiterate peasants, toiling
from dawn to dusk for mere
sustenance, locked in a
perpetual struggle against
poverty and the powerful
elite, seeking justice and
redemption above all.
The Italy of Crocco sought the emancipation Pisacane’s Italy aimed to provide. Yet, these two Italies remained estranged: one championed freedom, democracy, and secularism; the other remained loyal to the monarchy, tradition, and the Church.
This article seeks to uncover the reasons for this missed connection, comparing Pisacane and Crocco as embodiments of these two Italies.
BIOGRAPHIES IN COMPARISON
Carlo Pisacane was born in Naples in 1818 to a noble yet declining family. He pursued a military career at the prestigious Nunziatella Academy and served as an officer in the Two Sicilies' army.
Carmine Crocco was born in Rionero in 1830 into a peasant family, working as a laborer or shepherd until conscription into the army in 1848. Although he learned basic literacy from an uncle, Crocco remained largely uneducated.
Pisacane’s military career was short-lived due to his rebellious, nonconformist nature, leading him to flee the kingdom over a romantic scandal. Similarly, Crocco’s service was brief: after participating in campaigns in Sicily and Gaeta, he killed a local lord who had insulted his sister, forcing him into a life of brigandage.
While Pisacane sought exile abroad in Paris and London, immersing himself in revolutionary ideals, Crocco became one of many brigands roaming the kingdom’s mountains.
THEIR ENDEAVORS
Pisacane envisioned a true people's revolution to liberate oppressed peasants. His ill-fated expedition began with a small group, liberating prisoners on Ponza, and landing in Sapri. Expecting support from peasants, he encountered only hostility and distrust, finding temporary refuge among liberal bourgeoisie. His makeshift band was swiftly defeated, and local peasants mistook him for a brigand, attacking and massacring his group near Sanza.
Around the same time, Crocco, initially joining Garibaldi's forces in 1860, sought royal pardon rather than patriotic transformation. After being denied amnesty, he returned to brigandage. Following Italy’s unification, Crocco led thousands of brigands in a widespread uprising across southern Italy, challenging the new order favoring the bourgeoisie over the peasants.
Crocco controlled large swathes of territory, reinstating Bourbon symbols, distributing wealth to the poor, and commanding temporary popular support. However, betrayed by some followers, his rebellion was crushed by the Italian army in 1864. He fled, was captured, and ultimately sentenced to life imprisonment, dying decades later.
THE TWO LEGENDS
From these events emerged contrasting legends. Pisacane became a symbol of the educated elite, celebrated in Luigi Mercantini’s poem La Spigolatrice di Sapri, taught in schools for over a century. This romanticized portrayal has faded in recent years amid Risorgimento revisionism.
Crocco’s legend, rooted in oral peasant traditions, resonated among the illiterate masses. Rediscovered by modern Neapolitan and neo-Bourbon movements, it has become a counter-narrative to official Risorgimento history.
Two opposite and parallel legends arose almost immediately: one of Pisacane and the other of Crocco. These were not strictly historical recollections but legends that, while rooted in real events, reached a symbolic realm of undeniable significance.
Pisacane's legend became the myth of the educated class, those who could read. Mercantini’s La Spigolatrice di Sapri, which celebrated him, was taught in Italian schools for over a century. Through this poem, falsely presented as popular, Pisacane's legend was passed down from generation to generation. In recent times, however, the poem has seemingly disappeared from schools amidst a wave of Risorgimento revisionism.
Crocco’s legend, by contrast, emerged from the poor and illiterate, inspiring rural tales that have endured to this day. Over a century later, his story has been rediscovered by official culture and revived by neo-Bourbon movements.
Yet, as stated, these are essentially two legends. Let us begin by examining Pisacane's, starting with its most famous version: La Spigolatrice di Sapri. For greater clarity, we present the full text:
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La spigolatrice di Sapri
Eran trecento, eran giovani e forti, e sono morti! Me ne andavo un mattino a spigolare quando ho visto una barca in mezzo al mare: era una barca che andava a vapore, e alzava una bandiera tricolore.
All'isola di Ponza si è fermata, è stata un poco e poi si è ritornata; s'è ritornata ed è venuta a terra; sceser con l'armi, e a noi non fecer guerra.
Eran trecento, eran giovani e forti, e sono morti!
Sceser con l'armi, e a noi non fecer guerra, ma s'inchinaron per baciar la terra. Ad uno ad uno li guardai nel viso: tutti avevano una lacrima e un sorriso.
Li disser ladri usciti dalle tane: ma non portaron via nemmeno un pane; e li sentii mandare un solo grido: Siam venuti a morir pel nostro lido.
Eran trecento, eran giovani e forti, e sono morti!
Con gli occhi azzurri e coi capelli d'oro un giovin camminava innanzi a loro. Mi feci ardita, e, presol per la mano, gli chiesi: - dove vai, bel capitano? - Guardommi e mi rispose: - O mia sorella, vado a morir per la mia patria bella. - Io mi sentii tremare tutto il core, né potei dirgli: - V'aiuti 'l Signore! -
Eran trecento, eran giovani e forti, e sono morti!
Quel giorno mi scordai di spigolare, e dietro a loro mi misi ad andare: due volte si scontraron con li gendarmi, e l'una e l'altra li spogliar dell'armi.
Ma quando fur della Certosa ai muri, s'udiron a suonar trombe e tamburi, e tra 'l fumo e gli spari e le scintille piombaron loro addosso più di mille.
Eran trecento, eran giovani e forti, e sono morti!
Eran trecento non voller fuggire, parean tremila e vollero morire; ma vollero morir col ferro in mano, e avanti a lor correa sangue il piano; fin che pugnar vid'io per lor pregai,
ma un tratto venni men, né più guardai; io non vedeva più fra mezzo a loro quegli occhi azzurri e quei capelli d'oro.
Eran trecento, eran giovani e forti, e sono morti!''
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Let us set aside the most obvious objections: from Sapri, it is certainly not possible to see Ponza; the journey from Sapri to the Certosa of Padula took several days; there were no epic battles or similar inaccuracies. One specific aspect worth noting is the depiction of the blond, blue-eyed hero—a typical feature of Nordic sagas, which hardly suits a Southerner like Pisacane (who actually had dark hair and eyes). These are poetic licenses, we might say.
However, it is the very essence of the events that is deeply distorted. The peasants did not view Pisacane through the romantic eyes of Nordic sagas but through the practical eyes of Southern farmers. To them, Pisacane's group was made up of brigands—though more dangerous than the ones they were accustomed to dealing with. These were not only brigands but also enemies of religion, the Kingdom, and everything they considered right and just. Indeed, the peasants attacked and annihilated them. It was not the Bourbon army that massacred them after epic battles, lamented and admired by the people, as the legend suggests.
In the minds of generations of Italians, the legend formed of a Pisacane acclaimed by the people and fighting against a hated tyrant. None of this happened in Cilento in 1857.
A few years later, the myth of Crocco arose: the defender of the poor against the abuses of the rich. In reality, brigands had always been viewed with a certain favor by the rural world. Brigands were themselves peasants who had become outlaws for committing serious crimes: sometimes for reasons of honor, considered a supreme duty at the time, or simply as a reaction to the oppressions of landowners. Brigands targeted the rich because, obviously, they were the ones who could pay and often distributed part of their loot to the poor. Ultimately, peasants saw brigands as one of their own.
Post-unification brigandage amplified this sentiment: to the poor, brigands were those who rebelled against the oppression of the bourgeoisie. It mattered little whether they were Bourbon or Savoyard—landowners were always the ones exploiting peasant labor.
However, even this is a myth. Crocco was a brigand, a murderer, a kidnapper; he had no particular political ideas and certainly did not conceive of a new state structure. He came to embody, for a time, the endemic revolt of the poor peasant against injustice.
Thus, we are dealing with two myths: yet it must be acknowledged that Crocco's legend adheres more closely to historical facts than that of Pisacane, which exists in an entirely idealized world. Yet even ideals have their own reality, which can be more powerful than facts themselves.
CONCLUSION
Let us then try to understand why the two Italies, so close in time and space, never converged.
One factor may be the simplest: they literally spoke different languages. Mazzini's Italy spoke Italian and French, often English, and communicated primarily in writing. Peasant Italy spoke only local dialects and was largely illiterate. Mercantini's song was written in Italian and spread in written form for over a century. Peasants' stories about brigands were in dialect and were never written down until recent times.
A second factor lies in their cultural horizons. Liberal Italy was part of a liberal Europe, actively engaging with its currents and ideas. Peasants, on the other hand, knew only their limited world: their fields, their mountains, their plots to cultivate. The rest of the world was distant and unknown; often, they had never even been to Naples. Pisacane was more at ease in Paris than in the villages of Cilento, where he had likely never been. Similarly, Mazzini, Garibaldi, and Cavour knew the world but had never been to Naples.
As a result, the Pisacanes saw the possibility of profound change because history was evolving rapidly across Europe. But peasants saw a reality that had remained unchanged for generations. They could not conceive of a different political and social order from what they had always known, which seemed immutable. Peasants did not seek change so much as justice: fair pay and freedom from oppression and abuses.
Against injustice, they believed in the intervention of the king and the Church. Every misfortune was attributed not to the king but to the actions of the nobles around him in Naples or in their villages. Revolts against the rich and powerful were carried out in the name of the king and the principles of faith, as happened in 1799: the defenders of the Holy Faith restored the throne to the king against nobles who had betrayed both the king and the Church.
For the peasants, during the Garibaldian revolution, landowners had betrayed the king and the Church to oppress the people unjustly. The brigand, who was always an oppressed peasant who had rebelled, could become a hero, while the army supporting the injustice and betrayal of landowners appeared as a foreign oppressor to be expelled from the Kingdom so that the king and the Church could return and bring about justice.
For the liberals, however, the root cause of the people's poverty and oppression was precisely the king (absolute power) and the Church (betraying its spiritual mission).
Two political visions, both clear and self-evident to their supporters, made any real dialogue impossible.
Furthermore, the liberty and democracy offered by figures like Pisacane—who could they appeal to? Certainly not to peasants: what use was freedom of the press to those who could not read? Freedom of thought implied that good and evil were relative concepts, but such relativism was utterly alien to a mindset where good was good and evil was evil.
The Church and Holy Religion, along with ancient traditions, remained their sole points of reference. Only landowners could vote or had the education to hold elected positions; certainly, a peasant could never become a deputy or even a mayor. Democracy and freedom were exclusive affairs of the landowning class, of those who had been able to study and spoke that "other language"—Italian.
The only truly essential element peasants could have understood was land ownership. In France, for instance, the peasant class sided with the Revolution because they had gained access to feudal lands and feared losing them with the return of the old regime. But liberal Italy was far removed from such a prospect.
When the peasants revolted in Sicily, Bixio ruthlessly suppressed the uprising. Garibaldi could not afford to get entangled in a struggle between peasants and landowners, yet that was precisely the issue that truly concerned the peasants.