Historical voices

The traditions of the Neapolitan government are hereditary perjury.

OFFICERS AND SOLDIERS: My greatest title to your confidence is the confidence which the man reposes in me who represents your noblest aspirations.

But the seeds of intelligence have been assiduously sown and cherished of late years by the patriotic societies of Italy, who by their cautious, yet often daring and hazardous efforts, have long since brought many of the poor and rude, but…

As soon as I shall have done with the task imposed upon me by the wishes of the people, who groan under the tyranny of the Neapolitan Bourbon, I shall lay down my sword at your majesty's feet, and shall obey your majesty for the remainder…

May your majesty, therefore, permit me this time not to obey!

But if I should now hesitate, I should endanger the cause of Italy, and not fulfill my duty as an Italian.

I am called for and urged on by the people of Naples.

SIRE: Your majesty knows the high esteem and the devotion which I feel toward your majesty; but such is the present state of things in Italy, that, at the present moment, I cannot obey your majesty's injunctions, much as I should like it.

Extraordinary are the ravages of the royal troops—villas sacked and burned.

The people are wild with joy at their deliverance.

If the Neapolitans respect these 3,600 Sicilian exiles going home, we may thank the stars and stripes under which we sail.

Some of them, many of them, are from the first Italian families, who have never known a hardship in their lives; here they cannot even lie down to sleep, but huddle together, rolled up like balls; many have to stand all night.

No one murmured; indeed the patience and cheerfulness of the volunteers are beyond all praise.

The Italian patriots know how to discriminate between good and bad priests, many of whom are their enemies, either open or secret, but some of whom have always been their staunch friends.

In the communes occupied by the enemy's forces, every citizen is bound to refuse to the Bourbonic government payment of the taxes, which taxes from this day henceforth belong to the nation.

Under the Turin porticoes you hear the pure, sharp Tuscan, the rich, drawling Roman, the lisping Venetian, the close ringing Neapolitan, as often as the harsh, guttural, vernacular Piedmontese.

Such a sudden and universal swarming and blending together of the long-severed tribes of the same race the world never witnessed.

They are everywhere organizing themselves into committees, instituting clubs, or 'circoli,' and other political associations, inundating the country with an evanescent but not inefficient press.

Those scholars whom mature age unfits for warlike purposes, either sit in parliament, or go out to Palermo to lend a hand to the provisional Italian government.

There are fourteen universities, and at least four times as many lyceums in the North Italy kingdom, and all of them are virtually closed, for nearly all the students, and many of the professors, are under arms.

Half the youth of the towns are under arms; young boys of 12 or 13 break their parents' hearts by declaring themselves, every one of them, irrevocably bent on becoming soldiers.

It is a nation in the struggles of its second birth.

There is no pen able to describe, nor imagination strong enough to conceive, the nature of the present Italian movement.

This is our advantage in these street fights; the longer they last, the more they increase the confidence of the irregulars, and destroy the discipline of the regular troops.