Pasquale Casale: Il Sirente, Crocevia di Briganti

The book is the result of a research in the State Archive of L'Aquila and reconstructs the historical background of the insurrection and brigandage under the French invasion in Southern Italy, and more specifically the relevant events in the 13 municipalities included today within the Comunità Montana Sirentina. All the names are recorded for the "capi massa" of the municipalities who gathered in Roio to organize the rebellion against the French, that started with the slaughter of a number of French officers in Rocca di Cambio on 31 December 1798.

The connection between a noble family of Gagliano with Giuseppe Pronio, the most famous Abruzzese "capo massa", and the later treason in favour of the French is documented with a large correspondence between the parties. But possibly the most interesting part concerns the second French invasion of Abruzzo in 1806. In September 600 brigands gathered on the Sirente plateau and that meeting marked the beginning of brigandage and repression in the Aquilan Province. The reader will find here hundreds of bloody events, taking place in allthe municipalities above mentioned. From the mountain pass of Forca Caruso, ideal site of bloody ambushes, to the dire experience of the Governor of Acciano, from the arrest of notary Colananni from Rocca di Mezzo, to the slaughters of brigands escaping into the Gagliano mountain, from the sacking of Tione, to the attempted arrest of the friars in Castelvecchio Subequo.

Above all stands out the figure of Felice Ruggeri (alias GIOVINOTTI) from Ovindoli, who was able to organize a band of some hundreds of individuals of the area, and who was able to fight the French for a long time, until the latter started to arrest the relatives of the brigands in the villages. And it was the arrest of GIOVINOTTI's wife that brought to the defeat of the band in Val d'Arano. The French applied all their military strength to enact a harsh repression, and beheaded many brigands both in the Valle Subequana and in the Altopiano delle Rocche, using that sad instrument of death, guillotine, so popular throughout the French revolution.

In the beginning the local Gentlemen, that is to say the rich and powerful citizens of those centers, gave their support to the peasants, but later abandoned them to their tragic destiny, since their interest was attracted by the possibility of appropriating the large lands which were now without owners after the suppression of the feudal system.

The book includes 21 tables, with the names of all the individuals involved in the events of the period, their places of origin, professions, crimes committed, the prisons where they were sent. The documents, buried for two centuries in the archive and forgotten, were carefully collected and studied, in order to reconstruct the history of the people of the Sirente area, those people who, as it happened in other parts of Abruzzo, opposed courageously the foreign invaders. With his book Pasquale Casale gave his contribution to a reconstruction through documents of the history of the Sirente villages, which were for too long forgotten or little studied. In a fine graphical edition, the volume 17x24 cm includes 148 pages and colored cover.