X. The greatest reserve is recommended towards all

persons with whom members are not well acquainted, but more especially in the bosoms of their own families.
The Alta Vendita, or principal Lodge, was composed of honorary members and of deputies from each particular Vendita. It was an administrative and legislative body, a court of council and appeal, and was therefore divided into different sections.
This Grand Lodge was held at Naples, and consisted of the most distinguished members of the Order and delegates from provincial lodges. It granted patents; made laws and regulations ; acted as court of appeal ; and for a time formed the centre from which all the revolutionary movements in Italy radiated.
Two registers were kept: the Golden Book and the Black Book. In the former the laws and records were entered; in the latter, the names of rejected candidates, also the names and particulars of expelled members.
The strength of the society grew with extraordinary rapidity. In some towns of Calabaria and the Abruzzi the whole of the male population had been initiated as Car¬ bonari.
The anonymous Italian author who gave an account of the society in 1821 when it was in the height of its power has recorded one strange instance of the anomalies inherent in such a widespread and all-comprehending political society.
“Excepting in the case of the absolute power of the Vendite, the Secret Societies flatter the taste of the age for equality. The rich and the poor, the noble and the artizan
1 Presumably in the Vendita.
THE CARBONARI
I31
are here confounded. ... So far is this system carried, that an assassin condemned to the chain is permitted to take his place in the Vendita of the Castle of St. Elmo, where he is confined with other galley-slaves, and the commander of the fort, himself a Carbonaro, has not dared to exclude him but is obliged to sit by his side.”
The penal statutes of the Order suspended all members who kept notoriously bad company, or appeared drunk in public, or abandoned their families, or played at games of chance. Severer penalties were attached to any offence against the chastity of a Good Cousin’s wife or female relative or mistress.
These and other graver crimes were tried by a court of Carbonari. The accused had the right to be represented by counsel, and the verdict was returned by a jury. No appeal to the ordinary law of the land was allowed until the Carbonari court had given such permission to appeal.
Thus the Carbonari formed a State within the State.
The Order also aimed at drilling and arming its members.
Many of the lower clergy became its ardent supporters, notwithstanding the severest prohibitions of the Holy See.
According to the ritual of the Order a Carbonaro Lodge or Vendita should be held in a room wainscoted with wood and paved with brick. At one end was situated a rough block of wood behind which the Master sat, and on it were placed certain objects — a linen cloth, water, salt, a cross, leaves of trees, sticks, fire, earth, a crown of white thorns, a ladder, a ball of thread, with three ribbons, one blue, one red, and one black, to complete the emblems. On the wall behind the Master was an irradiated triangle with the initials of the pass-word of the Master’s degree. On the left a triangle painted with the arms of the vendita. On the right, three triangles with the initials of the sacred words of the Apprentice.
At each side of the Master’s block were placed similar blocks for the Secretary and Orator, while two others at the far end of the room were for the Master’s First and Second Assistants.
132 FAMOUS SECRET SOCIETIES
Backless benches ran down each side of the room. To the right of the Master sat the Apprentices bareheaded; to his left, the Masters wearing their hats.
The meaning of all the symbols exposed to view formed the matter for a discourse addressed to the candidate which varied according to the period and place where it was delivered; in some venditas a political signification was attached to the emblems; in others, apparently not.
In the degree of Apprentice the candidate was blindfolded, and swore upon the axe to keep the secrets of the society, and to help his Good Cousins in time of need.
In the degree of Master the presiding officer was addressed as Pilate, while his assistants took the names of Caiaphas and Herod. The candidate was again blindfolded, and in the subsequent ceremony represented Jesus Christ.
The anonymous reporter of 1 82 1 mentions yet a third grade, in which the resistance of a certain Theban named Philomel to Philip of Macedon was commemorated, the legend being obviously given a political bearing; but if this grade did actually exist, it was no part of the regular Carbonaro system, which recognized only the two grades of Master and Apprentice.
Heckethorn1 describes two additional degrees practised by the Carbonari. In the first of these the candidate was attached to a cross, and the ceremony consisted in a mock raid by supposed Austrian soldiers. The second was named the Principi Summo Patriarcho, and the authority for its exis¬ tence is a certain De Witt of whom some account will be given later.
Let it be said at once, that in the period 1816-21 so many secret societies with revolutionary aims came into exis¬ tence in Italy, all postulating the desire to work hand in hand, that even contemporaries may have found it impossible to distinguish carefully between them; at any rate, the general term Carbonari was loosely used for them all; so that body undoubtedly got some undeserved discredit from the teaching and methods of other societies over which it had no real control. Thus the extra degrees mentioned
1 C. W. Heckethorn, Secret Societies, London, 1897.
THE CARBONARI 133
above most likely came from another source than the Good Cousins.
Such was the organization of the society which Maghella in 1814 enlisted in the struggle for an independent Italy under a constitutional government. He aimed to influence by it the middle and lower classes, who had a Gallio-like indifference for the word “constitution,” but were attracted by the promise that an independent Italy would mean lower taxation. To give prestige to the movement there was circulated a forged document, purporting to be a Bull of Pope Pius VII in favour of the Carbonari.
The order began to flourish exceedingly; and early realizing its strength, when it found that Murat hesitated to grant constitutional government, it sent ambassadors to King Ferdinand at Palermo, and found him ready to promise anything to get back his kingdom. A revolt in favour of “Ferdinand the Constitutional King” was accordingly set on foot, but easily suppressed.
Then came the Hundred Days of 1815, when Murat declared for Napoleon, marched on Rome, seized the Papal States, attacked the Austrians, and advanced to the Po. He was faced then by disaffection in his own troops and obliged to retreat. A tardy grant of the long-promised constitution on the 13th May came too late to save his kingdom. Ferdinand on the 1st May had already issued a similar manifesto from Palermo. By the end of the month the Austrian troops had marched into Naples, and the Bourbon king was restored to his throne.
A secret article in the treaty between the Emperor of Austria and Ferdinand stipulated that the latter should not introduce into his government any principles irreconcilable with those adopted by the former in the government of his Italian provinces, which were Venice and Lombardy, with the overlordship of Parma and Modena. Ferdinand therefore was sworn to rule as an absolute monarch. This suited his inclinations. A reign of terror followed his return to Naples. Maghella having been carried off to an Austrian prison was succeeded as Minister of Police by the Prince of Canosa, who, finding himself faced with the opposition of
K
134 FAMOUS SECRET SOCIETIES
the very powerful Carbonaro society, determined to oppose it by the establishment of a counter-society, which he named the Calderari del Contrapeso, Braziers of the Counter¬ weight. It came into being about January, 1816, and con¬ tradictory tales are told about the ways in which it was recruited. According to the Carbonari version, the new society was composed of those who had been expelled from the Vendite for misbehaviour. Another version given by the contemporary Minerva Napolitana asserts that the Calderari were an old reactionary society, known as the Sanfedists, revived under a new name by Cardinal Ruffo, archbishop of Naples. . . . “ On being reinstated in his epis¬ copal see, he assembled a number of persons of the lower and middle classes, and gave them the name of Calderari or Braziers, in order to resist the Carbonari, as kettles resist coals, which are exhausted by burning under them.”
An anonymous statement published in 1820, and supposed to emanate from Canosa himself, denied the facts laid to his charge. According to this document the Calderari were not expelled Carbonari, but originated at Palermo out of the trade gilds. Their original name was the Trinitarii; and they were under oath to defend legitimate monarchy. Since the Carbonari were sworn to destroy the latter, says the pamphlet, Canosa was quite justified in playing off one faction against the other during his term of office. The oath of the Calderari was couched in the following terms:1
“I, N. N., promise and swear upon the Trinity, as supreme director of the universe, upon this cross, and upon this steel, the avenging instrument of the perjured, to live and die in the Roman Catholic and Apostolic faith, and to defend with my blood this religion, and the society of True Friend¬ ship, the Calderari, to which I am about to belong. I swear never to offend in honour, life or property, the children of True Friendship; I promise and swear to all the Knights True Friends all possible succour that shall depend on me.
“I swear to initiate no person into the Society before I arrive at the 4th rank.
1 Count Orloff, Memoirs of the Kingdom of Naples.
THE CARBONARI
135
“ I swear eternal hatred to all Masonry, and to its atrocious protectors; as well as to all Jansenists, Materialists, Econo¬ mists and Illuminati. I swear as I value my life never to admit any of them into the Society of Friendship.
“Lastly I swear that if, through wickedness or levity, I suffer myself to be perjured, I submit to the loss of life as the punishment of my error, and then to be burnt: and may my ashes, scattered to the wind, serve as an example to the Children of Friendship throughout the whole world. And so help me God, for the happiness of my soul, and the repose of my conscience.”
Whether this society owed any recruits to that of Della Santa Fe or not is really immaterial; the fact is certainly indisputable that it contained many bad characters. Canosa provided it with arms, and incessant tumults between it and the Carbonari resulted. In the upshot, the Calderari committed so many excesses that Canosa was obliged to resign his post and leave Naples in 1816. Three months later the Calderari were suppressed by royal decree.
The Carbonari, however, were not to be suppressed. General Nunziante, the military commander in Calabria, reported that the forces at his disposal were quite inade¬ quate for any such purpose. He estimated the numbers of Carbonari in that province as approaching sixty thousand. Moreover, in Calabria and the Abruzzi in 1817 several new societies appeared as offshoots of the Carbonari : the three most important were the Filadelfi, the Reformed European Patriots, and the Decisi. The first two were military in organization, and were divided into camps and squadrons respectively. Their meetings were at first held at night in lonely deserted buildings, where they drilled and trained; but later they became bolder, and appeared in public during the daytime. The seal of both these societies was a figure of Liberty displaying the Phrygian cap and Roman fasces. The Reformed European Patriots also possessed a second seal, a sun enclosed within two triangles.
The society of the Decisi, it is said, was originally formed in 1807 to further a conspiracy against the French in Naples, but in this their later manifestation their purpose was
136 FAMOUS SECRET SOCIETIES
plunder and blackmail, and they consisted mainly of Car¬ bonari who had been expelled for their crimes.
The Decisi seems to have been a particularly horrible society. One of the officers of each Decisione 1 was known as the Registrar of the Dead, and his duty was to keep a record of the victims they immolated. There was also a Director of Funeral Ceremonies, who presided over the rites of assassination. The Grand Master of each Decisione had the power of decreeing Death, and added four points after his signature to imply this terrible distinction.
“When the Decisi wrote to anyone to extort contributions, or to command him to do anything — if they added these four points it was known that the person they addressed was condemned to death in case of disobedience. If the points were omitted, he was threatened with a milder punishment, such as laying waste his fields or burning his house.”
The symbols of the Decisi were the thunderbolt darting from a cloud and striking the Crown and the Tiara; the Fasces and the Cap of Liberty planted upon a death’s head between two axes; the skull and cross-bones with the words, “Tristezza, Morte, Terrore, Luto” — sadness, death, terror and mourning. Their colours were yellow, red, and blue.
Undoubtedly their activities vastly increased the volume of crime that has been committed in the name of Liberty.
By the beginning of 1818 bands drawn from these three societies were ravaging all Calabria. The Government of Ferdinand was impotent against them, and at last engaged an English General, Church, to raise a foreign legion to hunt them down. At this time they numbered about 20,000. Church finally overthrew the bands early in 1818, and executed prisoners wholesale, including a priest, Ciro Annichiarico, one of the most celebrated leaders.
Besides the societies already mentioned others with a political basis sprang up in different parts of Italy between 1816 and 1820. To understand the existence of such societies the political condition of Italy at that time must be borne in mind; there was the independent kingdom taking its
1 The Lodges of the Decisi were termed Decisioni, Decisions.
THE CARBONARI
*37
name from the island of Sardinia and embracing Piedmont and Savoy; the States of Lombardy and Venetia which were Austrian provinces; the Duchies of Parma and Modena ruled by members of the Hapsburg family; the Papal States; and the kingdom of the Two Sicilies; all of these entities were independent of one another, in all of them there was an absolute ruler, and in all of them there was a desire for change, whether to a constitutional monarchy or to a republic. The ideal of a united independent Italy was held of less importance than the desire to expel the Austrians in the north or to establish a more tolerable form of local government in the south.
About the year 1816 a revolutionary society named the Guelphs arose in the Papal states. It had its central council at Bologna, and provincial councils at Fermo, Macerata, and Ancona. The Carbonari were already established in the Papal States, probably the results of Maghella’s adminis¬ tration there in 1815, but were, naturally, quite independent of the Grand Vendita in Naples, and had their own Grand Lodge at Ancona. Correspondence probably passed be¬ tween these two bodies, but no real connexion of effort or plan can be traced between them. It is even doubtful if they were alike in ritual. The seal of the Ancona Alta Vendita was a hand grasping a dagger; and it used daggers instead of axes in its initiations. With this Grand Lodge the Central Council of the Guelphs had a conference in the autumn of 1816, at which a union of all the secret societies in the Papal States was arranged. These were divided into three districts, Bologna, Forli, and Ancona, each with its own subdivisions. Each of the societies was to preserve its own constitution and organization; but every Lodge was required to send a monthly statement of its mem¬ bership to the Central Council at Bologna. The Carbonari were to be admitted without initiation into the Guelph Lodges. The conference also devised a system of cipher for use in correspondence.
The new arrangment worked well, and by 1817 the Car¬ bonari or Guelphs, or both, had extended their operations into Lombardy.
138 FAMOUS SECRET SOCIETIES
In the spring of 1817 the Pope was rumoured to be lying on his death-bed, and the secret societies prepared for a rising to coincide with his decease. He recovered un¬ expectedly, and the revolt was postponed until June, when the attempt was made at Macerata, and proved a complete failure. The leaders were arrested, tried, found guilty, and ultimately sentenced to death or imprisonment, all of the sentences being promptly mitigated by the Pope, who on this occasion set an example of mercy that was not fol¬ lowed by the other absolute rulers of Italy.
At the trial of the conspirators which did not take place till 1818 the prosecution alleged that the Carbonari were accustomed to resort to poison as well as the dagger to punish disobedience, and accused them of incendiarism and treason. It would perhaps be unfair to assume that all the charges levelled against this group of unsuccessful plotters were strictly proven ; still the official report of the trial is interesting as showing the opinion held in conserva¬ tive circles about the Carbonari and their federated allies. For one thing, they were all supposed to be branches of Freemasonry.
“We had become fully acquainted,” says the report, “with the Masonic sect during past calamities, which owe their origin to it. That of the Carbonari was called forth just as those calamities were about to cease, as if to increase and perpetuate them. It had its origin and principal seat at Naples, whence it spread into some provinces of the Papal States; and its inauspicious influence had been particularly felt in the Marches. While, in the midst of general peace, this Society was making progress in several cities of Dal¬ matia, other secret associations, no less audacious, established themselves. The Guelphs extended themselves into Lom¬ bardy from the northern provinces of the States of the Church; the Republican Brother Protectors, of French and Lombard origin, insinuated themselves into some parts of the Marches; the Adelphi lurked in great secrecy throughout Piedmont; and lastly, the Society of the Black Pin attempted to introduce itself into Italy from France. These different denominations, which succeeded each other, were art¬ fully continued, not only for the purpose of deepening their
THE CARBONARI
139
secrecy, but to enable their chiefs, whenever it suited their purpose, to get rid of such members as change of times or circumstances had rendered obnoxious to suspicion. They also served to inform all the initiated at once of whatever was going on in the way of innovation or reform, and to keep them in constant activity, in order that they might be ready and ardent to support, on the first opportunity, a political change agreeable to their wishes. In fact, the ad¬ herence of any individual to one of the secret societies suffices to ensure his reception, with a corresponding rank, into all those that may be formed afterwards, so that one sect is always merging in another while procuring new proselytes. That they are all, however, no other than so many rami¬ fications of Masonry, some of the best informed sectaries themselves allow; and none of them differ essentially as to the object which they have in view — namely, independence and constitutional government.”1
The same year that saw the unsuccessful attempt at revolt in Macerata had been spent by the Neapolitan Carbonari in plots for a rising; but they had discovered that the popu¬ lace was not ripe for it. They had alarmed the Govern¬ ment by distributing a printed manifesto which demanded a constitution and advised the people to pay no taxes till it was granted. Consequently stern repressive measures were adopted, and unlimited judicial powers (in some cases the death sentence itself without any preliminary trial) conferred upon an officer appointed for that purpose. Tact¬ ful management, however, kept the public peace from being broken.
The next two years saw a great extension of the Car¬ bonari and the federated societies in Piedmont and Lom¬ bardy as well as the Papal States and Naples. In the last- named State in the year 1820 the numbers of the Carbonari amounted to upwards of a million of men, owing to an extensive recruiting campaign that had been conducted on the principles of a special exhortation issued by the leaders.
“Let us augment our strength; let us be cautious how we exclude; let us again examine those who have been re-
1 Quoted by Frost, Secret Societies of the European Revolution, Vol. I, 237.
14° FAMOUS SECRET SOCIETIES
jected in more suspicious times; let us exercise less rigour in admitting members. Let us refuse such only as are really unworthy and irreclaimable. . . . Let us overlook cor¬ rigible faults; they will be corrected in our baracche.”
This policy of accepting any recruit, good, bad or in¬ different cannot have benefited the society in anything but numbers, and was in reality sowing the seed of future weakness rather than strength, as was proved when the society was actually called upon to take part in governing the State in the year 1820.
In that year Spain gave a lead to the other European states, and forced King Ferdinand VII to concede a con¬ stitution. The Neapolitan Carbonari determined to follow this example. During March and April, 1820, conferences were held in Naples at which it was decided to concentrate troops on the capital and to hold Ferdinand and the royal family as hostages until a constitution was granted. The conspirators counted on the support of the army, which contained 3,000 Carbonari.
The 29th May was fixed for a rising in Salerno under Gagliardi, Grand Master of the Vendita in that city; but the plot was betrayed, and Gagliardi fled to Nocera where, ably seconded by a priest named Menechini, he continued his conspiracy. The great difficulty of securing an able military leader caused some delay, but at last on the 1st July the standard of revolt was raised and the march on Naples began. The Government soon discovered that it could not rely on the troops at its disposal; and when this was patent, General Pepe, a Carbonaro, who had only been awaiting the assured successs of the revolt, put him¬ self at the head of the army and marched out to join the insurgents at Avellino, where he was proclaimed generalis¬ simo of the Carbonari forces. On the 6th July Ferdinand executed a secret convention with Pepe, and handed over the functions of sovereignty to his son the Duke of Calabria as Vicar-General of the kingdom. The Duke immediately issued a proclamation granting a constitution. Three days later Pepe led the army into Naples, when the king in public took a solemn oath to maintain the new order of
THE CARBONARI
J4I
things. Ipso facto, all authority passed into the hands of the Carbonari. A new Liberal ministry came into being. A Carbonari guard was formed, and proceeded to keep good order; the society itself emerged from its shroud of mystery, published its constitutions and statutes; while the rank and file ceased to conceal their warrants and cards of member¬ ship. Were they not the conquerors; and should not the whole world know it in as open a manner as possible?
It seems to be a fundamental law of secret societies that they can maintain internal cohesion only when combatting strong external opposition. After the revolution in Naples it soon became apparent that two parties existed among the triumphant Carbonari; one, the larger, was content with the constitutional monarchy; the other desired a republic. The leaders of the minority tried to raise a revolt in September, 1820, failed and were arrested and brought to trial, only to be acquitted for lack of evidence. Another schism took place when the Carbonari of Salerno broke away from the Alta Vendita at Naples and formed a Grand Lodge of their own.
During the whole of that autumn robberies with violence became disgracefully frequent in Naples, and were ascribed, according to the politics of the reporter, either to the Carbonari or to the enemies of the constitution. In such times of public unrest and insecurity the blame always attaches to the party in power, and the popularity of the Carbonari began to wane. The anonymous reporter of 1821 is worth quoting in this connexion.
“It is a Jacobin or Radical Party,” he wrote, “such as is to be found elsewhere far beyond the limits of the Two Sicilies. The curiosity of its members is no longer irritated by an unknown object. Their zeal is no longer kept alive by mystery. The ceremonies and emblems have lost their power as symbolical of great events and a happy futurity; for habit has rendered them familiar and uninteresting. The abuse of them has often made them ridiculous, and the lower order of candidates have learnt to speculate more on the alms which they expect to receive from the society in case of need than on the marvellous secrets to be revealed
142 FAMOUS SECRET SOCIETIES
to them. The old members have begun to look down with contempt on the new, although they are themselves dis¬ appointed and disgusted with a reality by no means corres¬ ponding with the expectations they had formed. Free¬ masonry now appears to be destined as a retreat for such Carbonari as begin to despise their old associates, and who are glad of a pretext for joining a more respectable order. The Lodges of Freemasons are daily increasing in number at Naples. ... It is not uncommon to hear the expression: ‘Such a one is more than a Carbonaro, he is a Freemason’.”
Meanwhile, the Carbonari had been banned in every district of Italy where the old order of things continued; Austrian troops were being massed on the frontiers of the Two Sicilies; and the partizans of absolutism were busily preparing a counter-revolution. Religion, as is usual, was invoked in the dispute, and the Bull of August, 1814, against secret societies was quoted to discredit the Carbonari and all their works. The Alta Vendita in Naples published a lengthy remonstrance addressed to the Pope, the kernel of which was the assertion: “The ceremonies of the Society of the Carbonari are in no wise opposed to the Catholic and Apostolic religion, which its members jealously main¬ tain.” This remonstrance, however, as might have been expected, did not materially alter the situation; nor was much more achieved by the action of the Neapolitan Minister of Worship, who issued a circular to the higher clergy stating that the Carbonari were no longer a secret society, and therefore the Bull did not apply to them. The Emperor of Austria, for one, was far from sharing such an opinion, and in August, 1820, promulgated a decree condemning Carbonarism as a conspiracy subversive of all government and menacing its adherents with the penalties of high treason.
This decree was followed in the autumn by a meeting at Troppau of the Emperors of Austria and Russia with the King of Prussia, when the monarchs pledged themselves to support one another in any emergency brought about by their secret enemies; and further pledged themselves to
THE CARBONARI
143
enforce the secret compact between the Emperor of Austria and King Ferdinand by virtue of which the latter had been restored to his throne.
The Emperor of Austria had good cause to be alarmed at the activities of the secret societies in the north of Italy. The Carbonari Lodges had been spreading rapidly though- out Lombardy from the spring of 1820, and had attracted the most intelligent classes in the country. At this period, too, the new society of the Federati was formed which, in common with that of the Adelphi, was bound to the Car¬ bonari by a tie of mutual recognition; just as the Guelphs were bound to the Carbonari in the Papal States. In the autumn of 1820 these societies were jointly concerned in formulating a concerted plan of action throughout northern and central Italy. The plan was to achieve a union of Piedmont, Lombardy and Venice and bind them to the Central States by a federation, once the revolution had been accomplished and Austria expelled from Italy.
Meanwhile in Naples a constitution on the Spanish model was submitted to parliament and passed ; but, because the clergy objected to certain clauses in it, the royal veto was pronounced. Riots followed, when each side accused the other of responsibility for the disturbances. In January, 1821, the parliamentary hall of assembly was actually invaded by a mob clamouring for the arrest of unpopular reactionaries.
The Carbonari attempted to cope with the elements of unrest by first of all putting their own house in order. They remodelled the society, and expelled many ultra¬ republicans, who thereupon formed themselves into a new and short-lived body known as the Pythagoreans.
Leaving things at home in this state of turmoil, King Ferdinand set off to the Congress of Laybach, nominally in order to obtain the consent of the allied sovereigns to the new Neapolitan constitution, in reality, to implore them to suppress it. They were, of course, quite ready to grant his request. An Austrian army set out for Naples, and on the 7th February, 1821, defeated General Pepe, whose forces were outnumbered by six to one. The old regime
144 FAMOUS SECRET SOCIETIES
triumphed. The Neapolitan Carbonari were suppressed by the usual methods — the scaffold and the dungeon.
In the north, too, their cause was destined to failure. In Piedmont in 1820 the Prince of Carignano, heir to the throne, had put himself at the head of the Carbonari move¬ ment, which by the end of the year embraced most of the intellect and nobility of the country. Carignano, however, betrayed the patriotic aims of the society to the Russian ambassador, by whom the Austrian Government was in¬ formed of the conspiracy, and as a counterpoise began to mass troops on the frontier of Piedmont. In March, 1821, a rising took place in that country; the army declared for a constitution; King Victor Emmanuel abdicated; and Carignano, who had continued as leader of the Carbonari in order to betray them, was declared regent. He used his power and authority in this position to invite the Austrian armies to enter Piedmont, and their bayonets re-established absolutism in the person of Charles Felix, brother of Victor Emmanuel.
Lombardy had determined to rise against the Austrians the moment that Piedmontese troops entered Lombard territory, but this programme of course became impossible once the movement was betrayed in Piedmont.