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On June 13th 1799, those
"sanfedistas" of the Cardinal Fabrizio
Ruffo, they went from Calabria toward the Capital to
reconquer the throne for the Borbons, they arrived to
the doors of the city.
In The Magdalena's bridge, in the proximities of the
Barns, they were expected by the republican soldiers
from General Wirtz. Something but far, in the fortress
of Vigliena, 150 militiamen were retrenched this way
call "Legione Calabra" that hoist one black
flag with the legend "To conquer or to
Die".
They were commanded by Antonio
Toscani, a priest of Corigliano Calabro
that had hugged with remarkable anger the idea
republican and liberal; among them there were people
with strong ethical and moral motivations, but
certainly, not endowed with great know-how neither
military experience.
The Cardinal's militias, on the other hand, gathered
the cream of the Calabrian delinquency, taken of those
galleys and incited, with an overlapped publicity to
kill and to loot.
It had been orchestrated, with political ends,
everything: religious faith, monarchic loyalty, fear
for those revolutionary events, thirst of blood and of
booty, hate of classes.
They faced, therefore, fellow citizens, but of very
diverse origins; the respective bosses, also, they
represented two opposed worlds: the one Cardinal and
the conservatism and the priest and the liberation.
The "sanfedistas" assaulted the fortress.
The encounter, bloody and cruel, could not finish well
for those defenders, for the difference of forces in
the field of battle. But them, certain to not falling
in those hands of such "compatriots",
finally of the battle they preferred to make explode
the powder magazine, burying a good one numbers of
winners and conquered.
The material author of the expression was, almost con
security, the same one Antonio
Toscani, but some columnist also mentions
the names of others two defenders: Martelli and
Pontari.
The episode soon was object of a punctual work of
denigración and demolition on the part of the Borbon
columnists that sustained the chance of the explosion,
caused by the inexpertness and vicinity: then it was
not heroes but fans in danger.
On the other hand Pietro Colletta narrates the events
as he thinks they was:
"The Russian attacked Vigliena, but for the great
resistance that they found, was necessary to demolish
those walls with battery continuous of canyons, then
Russian, Turks, Borbons, entered to the fortress to
combat with short weapons, suffering, handicapped and
straits for the elevated number, the enemy's offenses
and of their partners. Many of the Calabrian
legionaries were died, other wounded, without desires
of continuing living; so the priest Toscani
of Cosenza, boss of the prison, being had in
foot to you last hardships and very wounded, he
approached to the powder magazine, and invoking to God
and the Freedom, it tosses fire to the gunpowder, and
in an instant with a terrible explosion they die how
many they were inside the walls, buried by the ruins
or rushed to the air, squashed by the stones: enemies,
friends, horribly married.".
In the time of Carlos of Borbon, at 1742, they were
carried out, for advice of the Engineer Bardet,
notables restoration works and driven consolidation
for the engineers Francisco Lopez Varies and Francisco
Rosso.
Almost a hundred years after the explosion, on
December 8th 1891, the Honorable Imbriani and others
deputies of the Parliament intended to declare the
fortress, national monument, in memory of the episode:
Villari, Minister of Public Instruction, associated on
behalf of the one Governement.
But things vanished rapidly, since the remains
of the fortress were used as polygon, with adaptations
that the damages increased, more that those caused to
the historical building by the one explosion of 1799.
The
construction of the fortress:
On the origins of the Vigliena Fortress they
formulated a very large number of hypothesis, frankly
not convincing.
At the end of the XIXth century, the specialist
Francesco Pometti finds in the Great Archive of Naples
the treasury identifications emitted for the
construction, in the year 1706. Coming to the light
the Engineer's names Filippo Mariniello, director of
works and of the landlord Luise Androsiglie (?), and
also of the supplier of ammunition Gregorio Minichini.
The realization happened, because, during the command
of the last Spanish Viceroy, Juan Manuel Fernandez
Pacheco, Marquis of Villena, evidently in the
circumstance from a last defense program those Spanish
domains of the south of Italy. It is explained this
way the name of the fortress.
The fortress, has a pentagonal design, was in
substance one battery for the coastal defense, lower
to avoid excessive visibility from the sea: it
messurates 6 meters of height on the side of the beach
and near 5 meters of the one opposed side;
surroundings had a moat of 9 meters of wide and high
as the building that, therefore, appeared as buried.
It was endowed with seven big canyons, pointing toward
the sea and two small mouths of fire toward inland.
The
Iconography:
- Francesco Irace, Antonio Toscano,
monument for
Vigliena (sculpture). Comune di Napoli.
- Domenico Cimatti, The Vigliena Fortress
(painting),
Napoli, Museo di San Martino, n.13523.
- Francesco Wenzel, Sightseeing of the Granatello
Fortress(painting), Napoli, Museo di San Martino, n.11107.
- Gaspard Van Wittel, The Vigliena Fortress
(painting),
Napoli, Società Napoletana di Storia Patria, n.11852.
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