You are in: Home–› History–› The 1860 Facts–› The Facts

Antefacts - Garibaldi's decrees - Local situation - The Facts from 2 to 5 August - Debates and Reconstruction

The Facts from 2 to 5 August 1860

From July 29 to August 6, an impressive sequence of violence and hatred of class fell on Bronte.
The population, to the "sbarco dei Mille" (landing of the thousand) was divided into two factions: that of the "Communists" or Municipal, led by the lawyer Lombardo Nicolò, and the other of the so-called "civilians" or Ducal, friends of the duke Nelson, (at the epoch of the facts the Dukedom was in the hands of Charlotte Nelson-Bridport, granddaughter of Horatio Nelson, married to Samuel Hood, second viscount Bridport).
The brontese people, badly misinterpreting the spirit which was animating the Garibaldian shipment to Sicily, realizing that they were getting only promises. not trusting the courts for legal operations nor the managers of the council any longer, decided to intervene armed and compact, creating disorders and a terror climate.
Sure to be able to take possession of the immense land property of the Dukedom, gave vent to their secular hatred and anger with an aberrant slaughter of "Cappelli" (so were called the wealthy people and the feudatories of Bronte).
The massacre was in the air and had been nearly announced.
A common man, thought to be crazy, was shouting in the town streets, under the houses indicated to him, the repetitive chant: "Cappelli guaddativi, l’ura du giudizziu s’avvicina, populu non mancari all’appellu" (" look out hats, the time for justice approaches, people do not miss your roll call").

The "Galantuomini" (Hats, or gentlemen), stupidly enough, were laughing at the lunatic, while the common men were sharpening hatchets and knifes and preparing gun powder, opening their souls to the craving for wild vengeance.

Maybe if the lawyer Nicolò Lombardo, captain of one of the three teams of National Guard and "leader" of the "Communists" or Municipal, would have obtained from the Governor of Catania one of the two charges to which he was certainly aiming, (president of the municipality or judge), maybe he would have been able to brake the farmers agitation.
But the situation deteriorated in a few days: a street demonstration, got out of his control, resulting in a bloody revolution planned for the Sunday 5 August, the "Holyday" for the Madonna della Catena (of the Chain).
From the moment, however, that the persons indicated for revenge were slipping away on the quiet, the rebels (but not Lombardo) decided to besiege the town and, to the sound of the "funeral" bells, to anticipate the slaughter (the "scanna") at August 2.
Among the roadblock instituted to avoid the running away of the "hats" and the fires set to the theatre, the municipal archive, the "The gentlemen's club" (46 were the houses set to fire), the rebels, as a herd of ravenous wolves, desirous of blood and robberies, were coming out of every alley, they were sacking, they were firing, killing.
In a sequence of ferocious scenes were mercilessly slaughtered many well to do people and a rebel hit by mistake by a stray bullet.

Sixteen persons were cruelly massacred:
among others were killed, the notary Cannata and his son Antonino, the Council cashier Francesco Aidala, the municipal guard Carmelo Luca, a employee of the land register Vincenzo Lo Turco, Rosario Leotta accountant of the Duchy and the bailiff Giuseppe Martinez.

Behind these killings there was hatred never soothed, vexations never forgotten, extreme poverty, but also wish for freedom and generous anxieties risen up again in front of what was appearing the splendid and quick Garibaldi action, with his promises to give immediate satisfaction to the rural claims.
The hopes of the farmers, all poor laborers, had been suddenly re-lighted, they wanted to re-appropriate of the state properties and of the immense land property usurped twice by the Hospital In Palermo (1494) and by the admiral Nelson (1799).
And the gigantic case undertaken by the brontese community against the usurpers for three centuries (had lasted since 1554 and it had not been yet concluded ), could finally have an end.
The anger, for long repressed, of the farmers exploded in forms of atrocious violence also for the infiltration of the many elements escaped from jail in all of Sicily and the contemporary arrival, from surrounding country towns, of other individuals not very reliable.
«Had got back to Bronte, from the jails, some criminals, known for killings and robberies. The rumbling in Bronte attracted also, as vultures to the smell of carrion, other lawless elements from Adernò, Biancavilla, Pedara, Alcara Li Fusi». (Benedetto Radice, Nino Bixio a Bronte).

On the other hand, the new Italian government, from which was expected the annulment of the gift of 1799, renewed it in his turn and assumed also the burden to pay the canon due to the Hospital In Palermo for property that the Bourbon had assigned in 1799 to the Admiral.

Bixio reached Bronte on August 6 with two battalions of bersaglieri , when the rising had exhausted his violent charge and the true authors of the misdeeds had already disappeared in the near countryside ("...the rebels obviously have run away", so Bixio himself wrote to the major Dezza in a letter of August 7).
He lodged in the Capizzi College and stayed there only three days.
Ordered immediately the state of siege and intimated that all arms would have to be handed over within three hours and a war tax of ten onzes per hour was quickly imposed.
To set an example of severity, as deterrent to other similar situations developing in other towns, he implemented a retaliation without precedents against defenceless farmers, and. improvised avenger, turned his fury on the first fellows who fell in the net.
He made intervene the «commissione mista di guerra» (mixed war committee), to hold a quick and hasty trial against those who were considered the chiefs of the riot.

The matter was liquidated within few days: with extremely grave trial and juridical procedures, the cause was concluded, the evening of August 9, in just four hours.

At 12.00 to the defendants ( some of them almost illiterate) was given an hour of time to present in writing their defence.
Rather than an hour, four of accused presented their paper at 14.30 and this was sufficient for the court to reject everything because the defense had been presented at expired time.
The attempts and the disputes of the principal defendant (the lawyer Nicolo' Lombardo) were useless and unsuccessful. he tried with all his strengths to convince the judges of the weakness and falseness of the charges gathered against him.

The war committee issued the sentence on Thursday August 9 at 8 p.m.: five people, among which the Avv. Nicola Lombardo (old patriot of liberal education, who had spontaneously presented himself), culprits according to Bixio's judgment and that of the improvised and frightened Committee, were sentenced to death by firing squad.
The lawyer Lombardo Nicolò (truly innocent victim) and the common men Nunzio Spitaleri Nunno, Nunzio Samperi Spiridione, Nunzio Longhitano Longi and Nunzio Ciraldo Fraiunco, the town's idiot, totally infirm of mind, pointed to as the provokers of the sacks and the killings, victims of reasons to them incomprehensible, at the dawn of August 10th, 1860,  were shot in presence of all the population in the little square before the church of San Vito.
"One of the sentenced, not hit by the shooting discharge, keeping in his hand the image of the Virgin, was shouting": - Grace! Grace! - It was the madman.
The officer approached him and gave him" the grace blow. (Benedetto Radice)

On August 10th, 1860, together with five unlucky ones, was also dying the warlike spirit of the brontese folks, betrayed by the one in whom they had believed: the "liberator" Garibaldi, behind whom many volunteers from Bronte had gone "to do" the revolution.
The action imposed by Bixio to the judges of the mixed war committee was a choice coldly calculated.
He was certainly sacrificing justice but fully answering to politic necessities and the hard laws of the war.
The shootings gave wide satisfaction to the British nation whose secular interests on the Dukedom had been seriously threatened by the revolutionary wave.
In Bronte it wasn't possible to touch these privileges that the people wanted to knock down and that had languished and degraded in poverty for many generations all the brontese community.
Few days later Bixio was announcing that "the murderers and thieves of Bronte were strictly punished"... the shooting followed immediately their crimes".
And in the end everything was getting back as before: the "gentlemen" to their place, the poor rural men now poorer than ever.
"In the town everybody went back to what were doing before. The gentlemen couldn't work their land with their own hands, and the poor people couldn't live without the gentlemen.

The tragedy of Bronte had ended, and had not solved anything. The brontese people were left with the same miserable conditions, the hunger, the "freedom wish" from slavery and poverty and the bitter certainty of promises never kept.
Nino Bixio shall have for all his life on his conscience those dead of Bronte; so was writing in a letter to his wife: "damned mission, where a man of my nature should never been destined".

To the first summary proceedings instituted by Bixio before a special commission and rapidly concluded with five death sentences, another one, celebrated before the Catania Court of Assizes, followed. It lasted three years and ended in 1863 with 37 sentences, 25 of them to life imprisonment.
 

The convent and the church of  San Vito. On the square in front, near the entrance to the courtyard, Bixio had the avv. Lombardo Nicolò and others shot, as culprits of slaughter in the facts of 1860. The drawing from the History Of The Town In Bronte of Gesualdo De Luca (1883)