The truth strengthens unity: the newspaper of the siege of Gaeta

Due to the ways in which it happened, thesiege of Gaeta represents one of the saddest pages of that war of conquest that will lead the Kingdom of Sardinia to be forcibly annexed by the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, a sovereign state that is far richer and more democratic than the aggressor.

From that moment on, the burden of this armed unity will weigh heavily on all of Italy, especially for the people of the South, an era of oppression, poverty and humiliation will begin. Not to mention the work of scientific removal of historical memory that is still being carried out today, so that over time the historical falsehood will become true.
This year, for the anniversary of the unification of Italy, 800 million euros have been allocated, the aim is to recall the deeds of thieves, opportunists and freemasons.
It’s like a re-enactment of a marriage that took place against the will of the two, of the bride, in which she is deceived, is then beaten and forced to consent to the unwanted marriage, finally sedated to make him say yes, then years later death means telling the children of that union that it was a good marriage and that the mother was crazy. But that’s not the case, of course the children are grateful for life and supportive of each other, but I think they would like to know the truth. It is not possible and it is not right to do such alchemy. However, the numerous historical documents that say the opposite are of no use, everything that happened must be remembered with pride, everything that happened must be said to be right, any event, if linked to the epic of the Unification of Italy. We still persist in not judging them for what they were, but instead glorify themselves, and whoever does not do so becomes an enemy of Italy, anti-democratic, “revisionist”, ultimately forgetting that history by its nature is revisionist.

This type of intimidation, ideological indeed, does not criticize the arguments or documents of the new historians, but their intentions; and it is difficult to defend oneself from this method. When you are accused, for historical research, of wanting to restore temporal power, or of wanting to rehabilitate fascism, you are immediately in the dock”.(Ernesto Galli della Loggia)

The Unification of Italy, from a secondary and romantic effect of the annexation, instead becomes the screen and the motivation that it was not, because it was a war of conquest and a war of Freemasonry and enlightened minds against the Church. Only with historical truth would we strengthen the current Unity, an effective and objective Unity that does not want to depend on that brutal era, on those petty episodes.

on 4 November 1860 the siege of Gaeta began by the Piedmontese, led by the “bloody” General Cialdini, which lasted until 13 February 1861.

In those long months one of the darkest pages of the Italian Risorgimento was written, lucidly told by the French scientist Charles Garnier in his famous Journal of the headquarters of Gaëte Dentu(Paris, 1861).

In the pages of his “newspaper”, Garnier tells an unpublished story cleansed of Risorgimento rhetoric, he speaks of ferocious cruelties that were perpetrated against civilians such as the poisoning of the aqueduct and the indiscriminate bombing of the city.

But it also talks about the aftermath of the siege, when the Bersaglieri entered the city and committed the most brutal violence.

The historian Gigi De Fiore, winner of the Saint Vincent prize for journalism in 2001, has also recently dealt with the topic with the book entitled: The last days of Gaeta – the siege that condemned Italy to unity, published from Rizzoli. (Maurizio Blondet / Source: effedieffe.com)

The massacres, the summary executions from that moment on will be usual practice so much so that even Napoleon will say this:

«I wrote my complaints to Turin; the details we become aware of are such as to alienate all honest people from the Italian cause. Not only are poverty and anarchy at their peak, but the most unworthy acts are considered normal expedients: a general whose name I don’t remember, having forbidden farmers to bring food supplies when they go to work in the fields, has decreed that all those found in possession of a piece of bread be shot. The Bourbons never did similar things – Napoleon”