Brigandage in south Italy

During the time of the Napoleonic conquest of the Kingdom of Naples, the first signs of political resistance brigandage came to public light, as the Bourbon loyalists of the country refused to accept the new Bonapartist rulers and actively fought against them until the Bourbon monarchy had been reinstated.
 
After conquest of southern Italy by the Kingdom of Sardinia in 1861, the most famous and well known form of brigandage in the area emerged. Once the Two Sicilies had been taken, social unrest, especially among the lower classes occurred due to poor conditions and the fact that the Risorgimento benefited in the "Mezzogiorno" of Italy only the bourgeoisie vast-land owning classes.
 

Many turned to brigandage in the mountains and hills of Basilicata, Campania, Calabria and Abruzzo to continue the fight against the northern invaders, resorting to  kidnappings & robbery

Amongst the brigands were a mixture of people, with different working backgrounds and motives, but the same desire to defeat the common enemy; the brigands included people who the Italian government considered criminals, many former soldiers and loyalists of the Bourbon army, but also nobles, poverty stricken farmers who had fled due to extortionate Italian taxes placed on them and peasants who wanted land reforms, both men and women took up arms...

...Driven by passion rather then politics and loyalty to their men, the brigandesse were highly regarded, they demanded to be heard and taken into account and some of them were also feared .

Women toting guns : they were to be the foremother of the female terrorists in 1970s Italy.
With pretty names like Michelina, Filomena, Maria, Marianna they were known as the Female Brigands.
They were young, pitiless and held vague political convictions.
After 1860, in a newly united Italy, they chose to don a rifle and join up with the bands of brigands with whom they fought to gain control of the region of the ex-Kingdom of the Two Sicilys from the Italian army.

They launched attacks against the Italian authorities (who were regarded as foreigners) and the land owning upper-classes, coming to be viewed by many of the common people as Robin Hood like figures, some of them gained celebrity in the area via the spreading of their stories.

Especially after passing the Legge Pica legislation in 1863, an extremely strong handed repression of the brigands by the Italian authorities picked up; it also allowed the execution of relatives and those suspected with collaborating or helping a brigand. 

Villages such as Pontelandolfo and Casalduni in the Province of Benevento are famous for the killing of civilians by the so-called "Piedmontese" authorities.
In total several thousand southerners were arrested and executed, while many more were deported or fled the country.

Two different images of Brigandage.  Above the romantic one.  Seeking refuge in the mountains. Below, the crude and ruthless one. Partisans   captured by the North-South Piedmont and local mercenaries. The four, are all dead in spite of appearances, they are being held up straight by their executioners.

The brigand is supposed to derive his name from the Old French brigan, which is a form of the Italian brigante, an irregular or partisan soldier.

There can be no doubt as to the origin of the word bandit, which has the same meaning.
In Italy, which is not unjustly considered the home of the most accomplished European brigands, a bandito was a man declared outlaw by proclamation, or bando, called in Scotland "a decree of horning" because it was delivered by a blast of a horn at the town cross.
 
The brigand, therefore, is the outlaw who conducts warfare after the manner of an irregular or partisan soldier by skirmishes and surprises, who makes the war support itself by plunder, by extorting blackmail, by capturing prisoners and holding them to ransom, and who enforces his demands by violence.

Laws of war: Towards the end of wars, there may be irreconcilables who refuse to accept that their cause is lost and continue the war using irregular tactics.

Upon capture by the victorious side, whether the capturing power has to recognize them as soldiers who must be treated as prisoners of war, or as brigands who can be tried under civilian law as common criminals, depends on whether the detainees "respect the laws and customs of war" and that they are within a chain of command and are "not persons acting on their own responsibility". 

Resistance: In certain conditions the brigand has not been a mere malefactor.

"It is you who are the thieves", was the defence of the Calabrian who was tried as a brigand by a French court-martial during the reign of Joachim Murat in Naples.
Brigandage may be, and not infrequently has been, the last resource of a people subject to invasion.

The Calabrians who fought for Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies, and the Spanish irregular levies, which maintained the national resistance against the French from 1808 to 1814, were called brigands by their enemies.
 

The brigantesse

Their stories, which almost always ended dramatically, can now be recounted thanks to the reconstruction of the events of the lives of the most famous of the female brigands: Marianna Olivierio, Filomena Pennacchio, Michelina De Cesare, Maria Capitano.
 

​Related reading :
 Brigandage in Southern Italy 
By David Hilton Wheele