An Armchair Traveller's History of Apulia (30 page)

Then Don Cirò and his followers banqueted in the castle hall, drinking the health of
La bella principessa
with her fine wines, before riding off into the night and the rain. The only person they left alive was the princess’s eight year old cousin, who had hidden under a heavily draped table. But for this little boy, no one would ever have known who was responsible for the massacre at Martano.

Brigands took full advantage of the confusion after Murat’s fall in 1815. The harvest that year was the worst on record, causing famine and then starvation, followed by outbreaks of plague and scarlet fever; in the Terra d’Òtranto 17,000 people would die from cerebro-spinal meningitis in 1817. Law and order collapsed, brigands raiding ware-houses and ambushing grain-convoys, besides robbing and kidnapping. After unsuccessfully campaigning for five months against them in the Capitanata, Colonel del Caretto warned, “They are endangering the realm’s food supplies since, as we all know, Apulia is its granary.” The campaign that at last broke the brigands was directed from Lecce, by an Irishman.

The Neapolitan commander-in-chief, General Count Nugent (an Irishman formerly in the Austrian service) called in his old friend, Colonel Richard Church. Born in 1784 at Cork, during the Napoleonic Wars, Church had served in Egypt, Calabria and Capri, and in the Ionian Islands, where he commanded a regiment with the unlikely name of “The Duke of York’s Greek Light Infantry”. Military governor of the Terra di Bari and the Terra d’Òtranto with the rank of General, he established his headquarters at Lecce in 1817, and brought the situation under control in less than two months, after a ruthless campaign of what would now be called counter-insurgency, with shrewd intelligence work and cynical bargaining.

Hunting down Cirò Annichiarico was among his greatest successes. In retrospect one can see that Don Cirò never had much chance of escaping General Church. Yet at the time it did not seem at all like that to the Leccesi, who feared the terrible Annichiarico more than any other living man.

Cirò Annichiarico, the son of a prosperous farmer and nephew of a canon, was born in Grottaglie in 1773. At twenty he entered the Tàranto seminary, studying under Archbishop Capecelatro and acquiring the prelate’s revolutionary politics. But in 1803, by then a priest and choir-master, he committed a murder. Some reports say he killed a rival for the favours of a local beauty, or even the girl herself. The most likely version, however, is that Cirò cut the throat of a certain Gisuseppe Mottolese because he refused to marry his sister after seducing her. Sentenced to fifteen years in the galleys, he spent four in an underground dungeon at Naples, before escaping with another prisoner, who introduced him to a secret society known as the
Decisi
(the Resolute).

At that date the
Fratelli Decisi
were a group of young men recruited by Pietro Gargano, a cavalry trooper who had deserted from Murat’s army. Political outlaws and hardened criminals, they terrorised the Terra d’Òtranto, while at the same time enjoying a certain amount of popular support. In order to join this organisation, whose real name was “The Society of Jupiter the Thunderer”, the applicant had to commit at least two murders and then undergo tests of courage before his final acceptance. Senior members possessed the power of passing death sentences on somebody they disliked. Writing to a victim selected for extortion, they would add four dots in blood to their signature to show they were serious. The society had some of the trappings of freemasonry, such as signs of recognition, passwords and far from empty threats of dire consequences if secrets were betrayed. But although professing liberal opinions and recruited “to make War against the Tyrants of the Human Race”, the society – certainly after Cirò became its leader – appears to have been primarily a means of lining its members’ pockets or settling vendettas by murder.

There is a vivid description of Don Cirò Annicchiarico in General Church’s reminiscences. Although coarse-featured and scarfaced, with an upturned nose and red, pig-like eyes, the unfrocked priest had become a dandy:

His usual dress was of velveteen, highly laced, with many rows of buttons, and belts in every direction. He also always wore several silver chains, to one of which was attached the silver death’s-head, the badge of the secret society, the Decisi... On his breast he wore rows of relics, crosses, images of saints, and amulets against the Evil-Eye. His head-dress was a high-peaked drab-coloured hat, adorned with gold band, buckle, and tall black feather, and his fingers were covered with rings of great value.

Armed to the teeth with carbine, pistols and daggers, he carried poison hidden in a red pocket book.

Even if Cirò denied killing Giuseppe Mottolese, he admitted to many other murders during his career as a brigand, lasting for nearly ten years. Often disguised as Punchinellos (Neopolitan puppets), he and his band terrorised the Terra d’Òtranto. When a girl refused to sleep with him, he went to a dance at her parents’ home in Carnival time, wearing his clown’s costume, and gave her a last chance. She still refused, so he drugged the party’s wine, left the house and then burnt it to the ground with the entire family inside.

Sometimes he said Mass for his men in an underground chapel before galloping out under his black standard to rob and kill. Macfarlane comments, “banditti... will send a knife into your bosom while a crucifix and a reliquary repose on their own.” He also tells us, “Not one of his band could fire his rifle with so sure an aim, or mount his horse like the priest Don Cirò”. Living in caves or the forest toughened him and, always well mounted, he would ride forty miles a night along lonely paths to
gravine
where he could hide. His amazing escapes convinced the peasants that “the Abate Annichiarico” must be a necromancer protected by demons and they always gave him warning of approaching troops.

Cirò shared the
Decisi
’s dream of a Carbonari republic, persuading them to ally with another secret society, the
Patrioti Europei
, and try to build an army. Late one night during spring 1817 two of Church’s officers were riding to Barletta when they saw a light flickering in the distance. The guides claimed it was a will-o’-the-wisp, but as the horses approached, the officers hid in the under-growth beside the road. The horsemen halted a few yards away, and they heard them say that Cirò and Gaetano Vardarelli, another brigand leader, were at Castel del Monte to discuss joining forces. Since both were
Carbonari
supporters and might well have led their united bands in a full scale rising, the government hastily signed a treaty with Vardarelli to prevent a link-up. Cirò immediately offered to clear the Terra d’Òtranto of brigands in return for a similar agreement, but was refused.

Church gave a dinner at Lecce where he publicly promised, “I swear never to rest till I have destroyed Cirò Annichiarico and all his blood-hounds.” He met with constant obstruction, local troops arguing that Cirò was a popular hero. The general had to rely on his Swiss officers and Greek irregulars. Often Cirò left a
Masseria
or a wood just before their arrival, alerted by peasants. When the soldiers raided a safe-house, the
Masseria del Duca
near Martina Franca, where he and his brigands had been enjoying a hearty meal, they simply slipped away through the olive groves.

At last, Church learnt that Don Cirò was attending a wedding at San Marzano di San Giuseppe, some miles off the Manduria-Tàranto road. “A mountain village, straggling up and down among crags and walls, the houses jumbled among patches of olives”, is how Church remembered it, “At the top of all a castle, and below the village a belt of woods.” The Marchese Bonnelli’s castle (still there) had been lent for the wedding by a terrified steward. “The bride, a strapping
brigandessa
, did not depend on her splendid costume, bright eyes, and straight black brows entirely for her conquests”, says the general, “The wine flowed freely, the people gathered round and swore fidelity to Cirò and the Decisi with brimming glasses and ringing cheers.”

However, the troops had followed close on Don Cirò’s heels. After fighting for several hours, the guests surrendered. Including the bride and bridegroom, caught hiding in a cellar, the survivors were taken prisoner to Francavilla Fontana with 130 horses and 2,000 muskets. Among those executed was the bridegroom, who confessed to having committed twenty-three murders. Cirò, however, had escaped on his fast English mare.

Even so, the brigand-priest knew he was doomed. He had already tried vainly to make his peace with the government, and then to take a ship from Brìndisi but he could not find the 2000 ducats demanded by the skipper. He realised too that his friends, the
Decisi
, were betraying his hiding places. Ten days later he was trapped in the
Masseria Scaserba
, only ten miles from General Church, who was at Francavilla Fontana. For forty-eight hours, he held out with three companions in the
Masseria
’s tower, against 130 regular troops and numerous militia, killing or wounding over a dozen of them. Finally, the usual Apulian lack of water forced him to surrender.

Asked by the military tribunal at Francavilla Fontana how many people he had murdered, he replied “
E chi lo sa? Saranno tra sessanta e settanta.
” (“Who knows? Maybe between sixty and seventy.”) When a fellow-priest offered him the last rites, the Abate Annichiarico declined the offer with a grin: “
Lasciate queste chiacchiere! Siamo dell’ istessa professione – non ci burliamo fra noi.
” (“Let’s not bother about that nonsense! We belong to the same profession – we don’t want to laugh at each other.”)

On 8 February 1818 he was marched through crowded streets to his death in the main piazza at Francavilla Fontana, which was guarded by troops with cannon. Again refusing the last rites, he was blindfolded and made to kneel down with his back to the firing-squad. After a first volley, he was still breathing, muttering to himself. Later a soldier explained what happened next. “Seeing that he was enchanted, we loaded his own musket with a silver bullet, and this destroyed the spell”. His head was cut off, and displayed with the words, “Here is the head of the chief of assassins, Cirò Annichi-arico of Grottaglie.” Then it was taken away, to be hung in an iron cage above the main gate of Grottaglie, his birthplace.

Shortly after, Church arrested Don Cirò’s betrayers, the council of the
Decisi
, when they met at Grottaglie to plan the general’s murder. The troops found them sitting beneath a black banner, not a band of brigands filthy from living rough in the
gravine
, but ten of Grottaglie’s leading citizens, grown rich on extortion and blackmail. They were shot and then beheaded in the same
piazza as Cirò
.

45

The Baroque does not know what it wants...

Eugenio d’Ors, “Du Baroque”

THERE IS A MISTAKEN BELIEF that the Baroque in Apulia is confined to Lecce. There are fine examples of Baroque at Apulian cities further north, like the Palazzo del Monte di Pietà at Barletta or the
duomo
of Monopoli. But it is certainly true that there is far more in the Salento than anywhere else in Apulia. Many of the smaller Salentine cities have churches with wildly extravagant façades and
campanili
,
palazzi
with frenziedly elaborate balconies and doorways. Although the style, as at Lecce, sometimes seems to be ornament for the sake of ornament, these are often delightful buildings.

After being destroyed by an earthquake in 1743, the city of Nardò spent over forty years rebuilding itself in imitation of Lecce. Even by Leccese standards the church and convent of San Domenico in the
piazza
of that name are ornate. The façade of the church, attributed to Tarantino, which survived the earthquake of 1743 was built in two phases; the lower part covered with caryatids typical of the earlier period and the upper very much more restrained. There are attractive little palaces in and around the triangular Piazza Antonio Salandra, like the white Palazzo della Pretura, which has an elegant loggia on the first floor over an open arcade. The
guglia
of the Immacolata in this
piazza
erected in 1769, is one of only three in Apulia – the others being at Ostuni and Bitonto. (A
guglia
is a Neapolitan folly of Austrian origin, a fantastically decorated, free-standing column.) The streets in the city centre are full of ironwork balconies with swags and caryatids.