Lomellina is presented as a countryside where Fascist power became tangible through raids, intimidation, and the destruction of peasant and socialist institutions. Its importance lies not only in the spread of the squads but in the local alliances and conflicts that connected rural landowners, armed groups, and national political leaders.

Rural power and organized violence

During the 1921 election campaign, Lomellina is identified as one of the areas, alongside Tuscany, Ferrara, and Cremona, where Fascist squads had become widespread. Their local leader was Cesare Forni, a war-decorated former artillery captain from an affluent rural family. The account describes him as the son of one of the region’s richest tenant farmers; elsewhere it calls him the son of one of Lomellina’s richest landowners. After returning to his father’s home, Forni led attacks on peasant organizations, extending his operations from his family’s lands across southern Lombardy.

In a forty-eight-hour campaign, Forni personally led raids against the Mutual Aid Society at Bigli and socialist headquarters in Garlasco, Lomello, Tromello, San Giorgio, Valle Lomellina, and Ottobiano. All were destroyed. The violence was followed by pressure to reorganize rural workers under Fascist control: farmers were assigned to Fascist unions and expected to submit to the party. Lomellina thus appears not simply as territory contested in the streets, but as a place where the destruction of independent associations could be followed by efforts to replace them with institutions answerable to the Fascists.

Estates, protection, and local networks

The account also links the countryside’s political coercion to the power of landed estates. Countess Giulia and her husband are described as employing armed men to terrorize peasants on their property. Their manor offered shelter to Milanese Fascist squad members sought by police, while powerful spotlights were mounted on its towers. The estate therefore figures as more than a private residence: it is presented as part of a local network in which land, armed protection, and Fascist activity reinforced one another.

Forni’s authority similarly rested on ties between a local leader and a body of followers. He brought 700 men from Mortara to Milan to confront a strike, carrying Lomellina’s organized squad power beyond the countryside. That movement of men makes the region visible within a wider political struggle: local forces could be deployed in the city, while rural operations helped establish the influence they carried with them.

Mortara and political reversal

Mortara gives this geography a pointed historical contrast. On May 8, Benito Mussolini arrived there with his brother Arnaldo and Michele Bianchi, a week before election day. He had visited the town before, in the spring of 1914, as editor of Avanti!, to inaugurate the Casa del Popolo. By the later visit, that meeting place had been destroyed by his own Fascist squads. The two visits mark a reversal in the political meaning of the town: a former socialist gathering place had become evidence of the movement’s campaign against its opponents.

Across these episodes, Lomellina is rendered as both a base and a conduit. Its estates and rural organizations were sites of coercion, while Mortara supplied men for action elsewhere and preserved the stark contrast between Mussolini’s earlier socialist association and the later Fascist assault on socialist institutions.