Sarzana becomes the scene of a decisive reversal in the book’s account of Fascist violence: an armed expedition intended to overawe the city instead meets organized resistance from the Royal Carabinieri of Italy and scatters. The encounter does not end the local conflict, but it exposes the difference between raiding unarmed opponents and confronting a disciplined force, and it helps push Benito Mussolini toward an attempted accommodation with the socialists.

A city on the brink

Sarzana had been tense for months. Its antagonism with the Fascists was longstanding, and suspicion could rapidly draw armed residents into the streets. The surrounding countryside was also on alert: peasants were said to have revolvers and hunting rifles, alongside rudimentary bombs made by anarchist miners from the Apuan Alps. The city therefore appears not as a passive backdrop but as a place where a political struggle had become an armed local standoff.

The immediate crisis concerned Renato Ricci, the Fascist leader of the area. He had been arrested with members of his squad after another failed attempt to storm the socialist stronghold. The Royal Carabinieri of Italy had surrounded them on the dry bed of the Magra, among willows along its banks. The expedition that followed aimed to secure Ricci’s release and retaliate against the communists. The prospect of doing so by force drew Amerigo Dumini’s Florentine squadristi to the coast at Avenza, where they spent the night before setting out for Sarzana.

The approach and confrontation

The march began without an operational plan. Many of the squadristi did not know one another; they moved in a loose, straggling line along the moonlit coast and then beside the railway. A train slowed and stopped when it encountered them. One marcher fired at it, announcing the group’s approach. At 5:30 in the morning they reached Sarzana’s station. The city appeared deserted as it slept, but a detachment of about fifteen Royal Carabinieri of Italy waited at the far end of the avenue leading from the station. The machine guns remained in the vans behind them.

The disparity in numbers seemed overwhelming: the account contrasts the fifteen carabinieri with five hundred Fascists. The latter had often treated the carabinieri as allies in punitive raids and greeted them accordingly. At six, however, Dumini came forward to negotiate and met open hostility. He demanded Ricci’s release and the opportunity to retaliate against the communists; the demands were rejected. The squadristi then advanced, disorderly and confident of victory, while the carabinieri took up a firing position with bayonets ready. A shot triggered an exchange of fire. The first volley brought down Fascists at the front of the advancing group, and both sides fired before the leaders and Captain Jurgens managed to stop the shooting and resume negotiations.

Flight and immediate aftermath

The halt came after the confrontation had already produced casualties and panic. The unexpected resistance broke the squadristi’s confidence: they fled over hedges, ditches, and walls, scattering into the countryside. Captain Jurgens called after them, trying to get them to return. The intended assault on Sarzana had collapsed, though Dumini did obtain Ricci’s release. The surviving squadristi were escorted to a special train that carried them back from the area.

The contrast between the force’s original expectations and its retreat is central to the episode. Its members had set out to overwhelm an enemy stronghold, but the plan had been improvised, the march disorganized, and the assumption of friendly cooperation from the carabinieri proved false. The account presents the outcome not as a triumph of numbers or intimidation but as a check imposed by a small, trained body of state forces. Sarzana thus marks a limit to the squads’ usual method of attacking opponents who were unarmed or poorly organized.

Political consequences and significance

News of the deaths reached Rome, where Mussolini convened the national council. Rather than treat the reports simply as an occasion for further escalation, he interpreted Sarzana as a warning that Fascism’s own violence could become politically fatal. The episode came amid a broader political danger: a possible united front of moderate socialists and Catholics under Ivanoe Bonomi could isolate the Fascists. Mussolini therefore proposed a pacification pact with the socialists and ordered a retreat from individual violence and punitive raids, alongside scrutiny of members’ criminal records and the removal of recent recruits from command positions.

Sarzana also altered the meaning of Fascist force within the narrative. The squads’ brutality had often depended on attacks against disorganized enemies and on the authorities’ complicity or passivity. Here, according to Mussolini’s assessment, the rout showed that their ferocity could vanish when they faced trained troops and the first return of fire. The city’s importance lies in this exposure: Sarzana does not resolve the conflict, but it makes visible the weakness concealed by the squads’ reputation for invincibility and helps explain why Mussolini tried, at least briefly, to exchange unrestrained violence for political maneuver.