CHAPTER XVIII

OTHER ITALIAN SOCIETIES
It is hardly necessary to say that the Carbonari in the Papal States, Lombardy, and Piedmont, had not copied the example of their associates in Naples, but still maintained secrecy as part of the system. This was partly because the different countries had different methods of recognition, partly because of the understanding with the new societies, Federati, Adelphi, etc., similar, though not the same, and all having a common object; but mainly, of course, because it was dangerous to avow oneself a Carbonaro in any territory ruled by an absolute monarchy.
It became more dangerous than ever after the failure of the Piedmontese revolution ; and the leaders of these federated societies were so uncertain how far their secrets were known to the authorities that they resolved to dissolve all the associations, while awaiting a convenient opportunity to revive them under new names and with a new sym¬ bolism.
The palmy days of the Carbonari in Italy ended in 1821. Of course, the society continued to exist there, and was also carried abroad by exiles; but henceforth the bulk of the revolutionary plotting in Italy was carried on by societies bearing other names.
Various attempts seem to have been made to establish a central directory of the Carbonari at some place outside the borders of Italy, but this never became a power, even if ever set at work, which is doubtful — accomplishment in such things usually lags far behind intention.
Some light is thrown upon the state of secret societies in the north of Italy after the debacle of 1821 by the narrative
145
146 FAMOUS SECRET SOCIETIES
of a young German, by name A. Buloz, who, under the pseudonym of Jean de Witt, wrote a book 1 in which, though he allows his imagination ample scope, some infor¬ mation of possible value is contained.
De Witt, to give him his pen-name, was born in 1800 at Altona, and studied at Kiel and Jena universities. In 1818 he had to fly to England, because of his association with the Black Knights, a secret German student society founded in 1815, whose members were pledged to the cause of political freedom. In England De Witt supported him¬ self, or so he says, by contributing scandalous articles about German affairs to the newspapers. He entered into connexions with French and Italian conspirators, and ac¬ cording to his own account joined secret societies of all kinds. From England he went to Paris at the invitation of an uncle, Baron Eckstein, and while there was protected by Count Serre, the Minister of Justice. In 1821 he was in Geneva, where he was appointed Inspector-General of the Carbonari of Switzerland and Germany. In the exercise of this office he was arrested on the soil of Savoy and imprisoned in Turin and Milan, during which period he had the opportunity of studying the Italian secret societies at close quarters. He escaped from his Italian prison into Germany, only to be arrested at Bayreuth as a conspirator against the State. After a long delay he was tried, and acquitted on all charges. On his release he abandoned the profession of conspirator, married an heiress, and lived to grow old as a wealthy landed proprietor who professed extremely conservative principles. Needless to say, he has been accused of acting as spy for the absolutist govern¬ ments.
In the book already mentioned De Witt gives the following account of Carbonari activities.
When the Austrian troops entered Naples, the society of the Carbonari dissolved itself, not from fear of being discovered, but in order to check the activities of the subordinate bodies, and to make some modifications in its constitution which were rendered necessary by the
1 Jean de Witt, Les Societe's Secretes de France et d'ltalie, Paris, 1830.
OTHER ITALIAN SOCIETIES 1 47
huge masses of persons affiliated to the three (sic) first grades (1).
In the summer of 1821 the eleven Chiefs of the society assembled at Capua. They resolved (10th June) to send two initiates abroad to come to an understanding with the Chiefs of the Grand Firmament, and to see if they could make arrangements for altering the seat of the Directory of the Carbonari. They were inclined to favour Paris because of its central position, and because the wealthiest and most influential members of the Grand Firmament resided there.
De Witt goes on to say that the Grand Firmament was the Directory of the Secret Societies in France, but that its origin and even the names of its members were veiled in obscurity . . . and he adds nothing to lessen that obscurity.
“The most ancient authentic decree of the Grand Firmament I know of is addressed to the Adelphes, and proves how extensive was its power at that epoch. General Malet’s conspiracy shows that the influence of the Adelphes and Philadelphes was not without importance, and yet a decree was sufficient to dissolve them.
“Decree of the Grand Firmament supplementing the Statutes of the Sublimi Maestri Perfetti.
“The Grand Firmament decrees as follows:
“ 2. The association of Adelphes and Philadelphes is incorporated with this Order.
“ 3. Every Adelphe or Philadelphe will receive at once when he is admitted, unless he is already a Freemason, the three symbolic Degrees, without any expense save what is indispensable to his reception.
“ 4 and 5. Every Adelphe or Philadelphe can be pre¬ sented to the Orient . . . and immediately afterwards his reception shall take place according to the statutes. Those received in this way are exempt from all fees.
1 De Witt’s statements here and in other places about the organization of the Carbonari must not be relied on implicitly. It is quite possible that he may have confused some other society with the Carbonari and believed its cere¬ monies to be a superior degree of the Good Cousins.
14^ FAMOUS SECRET SOCIETIES
“Given under the Equator, the 22nd of the 7th lunar month 5812.” (PI8I2)1
Having quoted this amazing document, De Witt tells us that the distinctive tendency of the Grand Firmament was to incorporate in itself all other societies, even those whose direct aims were contrary to its own; and it endeavoured to do so in such a way as to save appearances and to make all foreign societies serve in executing its plans.
The two envoys charged with the embassy to fuse the Alta Vendita with the Grand Firmament were the Duke of Garatula and a Neapolitan gentleman Carlo Chiricone Klerckon, son of the Duke of Fra-Marino.
Klerckon met De Witt in Geneva and offered him the post of Inspector-General of the Carbonari for Switzerland and Germany, which De Witt accepted under pressure, for the same reason, he says, as a similar office controlling the north of Europe was accepted by a “highly honoured Prince,” unnamed, who neutralised the power of the League in his bailiwick by refraining from putting its orders into operation.
There are many Carbonari, continues De Witt, even as there are many Freemasons, who know really nothing about their Order; and very few of them even know how many grades it comprises or where the Alta Vendita has its seat.
Then follow some interesting but unauthenticated state¬ ments about the origin of Garbonarism. The Carbonari, in his opinion, really sprang from Freemasonry ( Franc - magonnerie ) , using this term as having a distinct connotation from Masonry ( Magonnerie ), meaning thereby the regular Lodges which Napoleon turned into a police institution by favouring them. When that happened, the Freemasons who had supported the defunct Republic formed another associa¬ tion inside the Lodges, and this association was known as the Philadelphes. Besan^on was the headquarters of these Magons-Charbonniers, and their chief was Colonel Oudet.
1 This date together with everything else about this document seems to me suspicious. If the French Society of the Philadelphes ever had an existence, it never had anything to do with General Malet’s conspiracy. See chapter XVI for the evidence about the Philadelphes.
OTHER ITALIAN SOCIETIES I49
They it was who propagated the order of Carbonari in Piedmont and the north of Italy, and established the first Vendita at Capua in 1809. The society was founded in Naples and Sicily by the English, who wished to use it as a weapon against Napoleon, and Lord William Bentinck was one of the most ardent evangelists of the system.
The spread of Carbonarism throughout Southern Italy was certainly surprising; but few knew its real tendency. The ordinary initiate imagined the first three (sic) grades inculcated just morality, and the unity and independence of his country; but in the 4th grade, the Apostoli, the can¬ didate swore to overturn all thrones, particularly those occupied by a Bourbon.
Only in the last grade of all, the 7th, Principi Summi Patriarcho, was the veil completely withdrawn. It corre¬ sponded, according to De Witt, with the highest degree, Homo Rex, of the Illuminati, and its object was the same. The initiate swore to work for the destruction of every religion and every positive government, whether despotic or democratic.
To attain this every means was looked upon as justifiable. “I obtained this grade S.P.P. under the name of Giulio Allessandro Jerimundo Werther Domingone, and yet took no oath. ...”
De Witt goes on to say that it was conferred on him not by formal initiation but by communication, a method adopted when it was desirable that the initiation should not be generally known or when done at a time or in a place where members were not numerous.
Here again, if De Witt did actually receive such a degree from a secret society, it was certainly not from the Car¬ bonari, as that term is understood throughout the present account of their activities.
Let us pass on to his account of the secret societies in the north of Italy.
The political societies which played the leading parts in Upper Italy, where the police spared no efforts to extirpate them, were the Filadelfi and Carbonari, to whom De Witt joins the “Francs-Magons,” the name bearing his own
150 FAMOUS SECRET SOCIETIES
peculiar connotation, that section of the Freemasons who professed revolutionary principles and taught them in their Lodges. Most of the members of these secret societies, says he, had played a part in State affairs under Napoleon and regretted their lost importance ; while with these were associated a certain number of Lombard nobles who had been slighted by Austria.
There had also been formed a new society known as the F ederates, which numbered 1 00,000 initiates by the beginning of 1 82 1 . It aimed at preparing public opinion, so as to ensure bringing about a revolution at a favourable opportunity. The Federates were divided into two classes; the first con¬ sisted of the commonalty, and the members were told that their object was to drive the Austrians out of Italy; the second class consisted of men of standing, whose aims were a United Italy and constitutional government.
Opposed to all these revolutionary bodies was one known as the Society Della Santa Fe. According to De Witt, this reactionary body was spread all over Europe with the object of restoring the pre-Revolution order. To cover its designs it purported to aim at the liberation of Italy from the Austrians; and it was known by a variety of names — Societa della Santa Fede, del Anello, and even Bruti. Its adepts called themselves: Consistoriali, Croussignati, Crociferi. The order was most active in Piedmont. Its grades were three in number. Since the members promised to report to their chiefs any discovery of interest, it formed a real secret police; and, needless to say, De Witt believed it to be closely connected with the Society of Jesus.
That such a society was believed to exist in the south of Italy and to have been the origin of the Calderari, we have already seen. It may well have existed; but, if so, most probably divested of many of the trappings with which it is caparisoned in De Witt’s picture.
He tells an even stranger story, however, about another secret body, named the Society of European Regeneration. This association, according to De Witt, was modelled on one known as the Francs Regeneres, which had been sup¬ pressed in F ranee when Decazes was Minister there (1815-19).
OTHER ITALIAN SOCIETIES
151
The new society, on the contrary, had the approbation of the French government, who instructed a secret police- agent to gain the confidence of political refugees from Piedmont and initiate them into the society, which was designed to ferment trouble for Austria in Italy. This was actually done, and while the Richelieu government lasted the society was protected in France. Things changed, however, with a change of government. There were four grades in this society: Initiate, Knight, Provost, and Grand Provost. The new French Ministry persecuted the Society of European Regeneration, and allied itself with the San- fedists of Italy in order to continue the same policy of stirring up trouble for Austria in that country.
Whether the whole of this story or any part of it is true, calls for no opinion here; but there is no doubt that De Witt believed that this particular society was at work in northern Italy when he was imprisoned in Turin. One day, he says, on returning to his cell after an interview with the magistrate he found on his bed the following message:
Chi che tu sia, in questa dimora chi entre,
Attente legge che sulla porta sta scritto
He hastened to the door, whereon was found written:
Colpeval ’or innocente, mai tu conviene Del tuo deleite -
followed by the same symbols as before. His explanation of these is, that the three points signified the Carbonari; the four, the Society of European Regeneration; the en¬ circled three points, the Chiesa degli Sublimi Maestri Perfetti; and the encircled five points, the latter’s Synod. He took the messages as proof that his friends in the federated secret societies were interesting themselves in his fate.
152 FAMOUS SECRET SOCIETIES
If the story is true, and it contains no inherent impossi¬ bility, it shows how widespread and powerful the secret societies had become. Nor was it the only occasion on which De Witt was to benefit from his connexion with them. After his escape from prison and while making his way out of Italy in disguise he was hampered by lack of funds, and determined to make use of the Maestri Perfetti.
“We sent a notice to the neighbouring lodges, and within three days I was possessor of 1,200 francs. It was the first and last time that necessity obliged me to make use of the influence I possessed. Some time later my family provided me with money, and the first pressing use I made of it was to repay the sum I had received.”
He goes on to say that during the time of his escape there was neither town nor village in which he was not sure of a safe resting place and men devoted to his interests. “I passed through the country under the protection of the Sublimi Maestri Perfetti.”
Before leaving this author, whose information is unfor¬ tunately more entertaining than reliable, it will be worth while to quote his judgment on the secret political societies of his day.
“Governments imagine that they have completed their work, when the suppression of such-and-such a society has been decreed; nothing could be more senseless. You strike at the hydra, and lop off one head; a hundred immediately spring forth to replace it ... . What is the good of fighting against the effects of unrest? The causes of it are what should be destroyed.
“Any other method of action is mere folly, and sure to fail. The surest means of destroying secret societies is to let them flourish in the open (les rendre publiques) ; for few public societies contemplate wicked or revolutionary objects. They only become dangerous when exploited by wicked members ; thus it was that Napoleon ruined Franc-ma$onnerie by favouring it. . . . Secret societies never enjoy more influence than when the authorities are persecuting them . . . Vic- trix causa diis placuit, sed victa Catoni .”
OTHER ITALIAN SOCIETIES 153
With which tag we may allow De Witt to take his de¬ parture.
After 1821 the main direction of the revolutionary movement in Italy had devolved on secret societies other than the Carbonari. The latter continued to exist, however, in foreign countries for some time longer.
The Carbonaro leaders who were exiled from Italy carried the society abroad with them. In France it had already been established in 1820 by some young Frenchmen who had been initiated at Naples. Here it was to be the progenitor of many similar bodies.
As for the refugees, General Pepe fled, after the counter¬ revolution, to Barcelona, where he was joined by other Carbonari from Piedmont. London and Geneva proved cities of refuge also.
The circumstance of so many Carbonari leaders having been driven to find new homes all over Europe, together with the success which the recently established Carbonari society was achieving in France gave Pepe the idea of forming an international secret society to embrace political reformers in all the States of Europe. He accordingly approached some ultra-Liberal deputies in Madrid, and expounded to them the objects of the proposed society, chief of which was a regular correspondence, so as to pre¬ clude a lack of union among the separated groups of patriots.
“Several deputies of the Cortes were inclined to regard such an association as extremely beneficial to the public cause, more especially in their own peninsula, where a great want of concord existed between the Portuguese and Span¬ iards. The Society was accordingly founded ; several mem¬ bers of the Cortes formed part of it, as well as General Ballesteros,1 Councillor of State. I still preserve the regu¬ lations of the Society, the great object of which was to open a communication between the most enlightened patriots of the different cities in Europe. It was decided that I should exert myself to give it extension in Lisbon, London, and Paris; and that, in the event of my success, other
1 Later one of the founders of the Comuneros in July, 1822.
154 FAMOUS SECRET SOCIETIES
members should proceed to propagate it over Germany and Italy.”1
The first Circle of the Constitutional Society of European Patriots was accordingly instituted in Madrid, whereupon Pepe proceeded to Lisbon, where he was given an even warmer welcome, and a flourishing Circle was formed in that city under the direction of Almeida-Moraes, the president of the Portuguese Cortes. From Lisbon Pepe went to London, where he was unsuccessful in his endeavour to induce the leaders of English Liberalism to engage in anything of the nature of a secret political society with an international circumference. He next entered into communication with Lafayette, who was then engaged with his friends Manuel and Argenson in the reorganisation of the French Carbonari on a new system.2 It can also be assumed that he was keeping in close touch with the veteran conspirator Buonarotti, who was now at Geneva engaged in trying to reorganize the Carbonari with a special eye to effective action in Italy.
During Pepe’s absence from Spain a split had taken place in the political party of the Freemasons, which resulted in the formation of the new society of the Comuneros, 3 but both these antagonists had joined in discouraging the Carbonari society established by the refugees from Italy; and as for the Constitutional Society of European Patriots, no Liberal-minded Spaniard could perceive any advantage to be drawn from international correspondence at a moment when a French army was massing to the north of the Pyrenees in order to invade the country and restore absolute monarchy.
This emergency, however, gave Pepe the chance of making one last effort to keep life in his moribund bantling. His correspondence with Lafayette was directed to an attempt to make the French Carbonari corrupt the discipline of the army collecting round Toulouse for the invasion of Spain. His scheme was that the money for this purpose
1 Pepe, Memoirs, quoted by Frost, II. 3.
“This triumvirate was also supposed to have directed the French Associated Patriots of 1816.
3 Vide chapter XXIV.
OTHER ITALIAN SOCIETIES 1 55
should be supplied by Zea, who was an emissary in Europe from the revolted Spanish colony of Colombia; and the return to be made by Spain was an acknowledgment of the independence of Colombia and Mexico. This proposition was submitted by Pepe to the leading ultra- Liberal members of the Cortes at Riego’s house in Madrid. They refused to accept it, on the grounds that such a surrender to the revolted colonies would be too unpopular in Spain. As a consequence, no money was obtainable from South American sources for purposes of corruption or defence, the French army entered Spain in April, 1823, and soon after constitutional government there was at an end. With it ended the political secret societies of the Freemasons, Comuneros, Carbonari, Constitutional Euro¬ pean Patriots, and every other body, secret or public, that opposed absolutism.
Meanwhile towards the end of 1822 Andyane, an agent of the exiled Carbonari, had left Geneva for Milan to prepare for a renewal of the struggle in Italy; but he was arrested and imprisoned before he could accomplish anything. The same fate befell most of the Carbonari leaders in Lombardy; they were arrested en masse and after mock trials sent to Austrian dungeons. For the time being the Holy Alliance had triumphed; the remnants of the Carbonari had to remain inactive, and await events.
The news of the 1830 revolution in France set the Italian Carbonari, or perhaps it would be more correct to say the federated societies, plotting once more. This time the scheme was to drive out the Austrians, and unite the Kingdom of Sardinia, the Papal States, the minor duchies, and the Lombardo- Venetian provinces under the sove¬ reignty of the Duke of Modena, who had given his encourage¬ ment to the plot through his friend Menotti. Thus in the autumn of 1830, while Milan, owing to the presence of a large body of Austrian troops, remained to all appearances peaceful and contented, Modena, Parma, and the Papal States were seething with unrest. Bologna was the centre of the conspiracy, but the relations between the leaders there and those in Parma and Modena were anything but
I56 FAMOUS SECRET SOCIETIES
satisfactory. The Duke of Modena waited on the course of events, greatly desiring a crown, but as greatly hating Liberal institutions. The Carbonari were badly in want of funds, but they firmly believed that help would come from France, in which they had miscalculated, for the new French king, Louis Philippe, had hastened to attach himself to the Holy Alliance. Having satisfied himself about the certainty of this turn in the political situation, the Duke of Modena turned traitor to the Carbonari. Had there been any real unity of aim among the leaders of the conspiracy, much might have been accomplished; for when in February, 1831, the rising took place it soon proved general and popular, and in a short time there was was not a Papal or Ducal authority valid between the Ap- penines and the Po. However the conspirators had aimed not at a United Italy, but a mere expulsion of Austrians and the concession of local constitutions by native princes in separate States. The house was divided against itself, and when the Austrian armies were reinforced they made short work of the insurgents by units ; by the end of March the old order had been re-established once more. France not only did not raise a finger to intervene, but even pre¬ vented Italian refugees from returning to their country to take up arms in the quarrel.
Once again the remnants of the Carbonari went to prison or into exile.