The Italian Unification Plebiscites (1860) gave formal popular approval to the creation of a united kingdom, but the vote in Donnafugata reveals how easily an appearance of unanimity could conceal dissent. In the novel, Don Fabrizio Corbera, Prince of Salina, votes yes and advises others to do the same; later, the official tally reports no opposing votes, though he had expected dozens and learns that Don Ciccio Tumeo’s no vote was suppressed. The episode makes the plebiscite both a political instrument of unification and a test of whether public consent can be trusted.

National Context

The plebiscites followed the 1860 campaign that brought Sicily and southern Italy into the process of unification. The Risorgimento had gathered strength after the Napoleonic Wars and had already reached a crisis in 1848. In 1860, Giuseppe Garibaldi and his volunteers landed at Marsala, defeated Bourbon troops at Calatafimi, and occupied Palermo. Garibaldi then crossed to the mainland and entered Naples; after the Bourbon defeat on the Volturno, he transferred southern Italy to Victor Emmanuel II.

Votes across the peninsula endorsed joining the new kingdom, with the Papal States the exception: they remained outside the union while troops of Napoleon III occupied them amid French political concerns. In the novel’s historical account, the plebiscites mark the transfer of authority from the Bourbon order toward a unified state. The revolutionary phase of the Risorgimento ended in 1862, after Garibaldi’s march toward Rome was defeated at Aspromonte and he was wounded by Piedmontese troops. Rome’s declaration as Italy’s capital followed in 1870.

The Vote in Donnafugata

For Don Fabrizio, the plebiscite arrives amid a broader upheaval that has entered the family home as well as public life. Don Calogero Sedàra represents the ascent of the bourgeoisie; Angelica Sedàra’s beauty unsettles the family’s established social balance; and Tancredi Falconeri embraces the changes taking shape. Don Fabrizio also sees the vote as surrounded by scruples and evasions. Although he had urged those who sought his advice to vote yes, he estimated that roughly forty of Donnafugata’s electors would oppose the union.

The voting day is described as windy and grey. Don Fabrizio goes to the Town Hall with Father Pirrone and Don Onofrio Rotolo. At the booth, the committee members rise as he enters, and peasants who arrived earlier are put aside so that the Prince can vote without waiting. He hands his yes vote to Don Calogero Sedàra. Father Pirrone does not vote, having avoided being registered as a resident; Don Onofrio gives the affirmative vote the Prince had requested. The contrast between the Prince’s privileged passage through the procedure and the ordinary voters’ position is built into the scene itself.

The official announcement comes late at night, after the booths have closed and the votes have been counted. Don Calogero appears at the Town Hall balcony, wearing a tricolour sash, and reports 515 voters, 512 ballots cast, 512 yes votes, and no votes at all. The numerical precision gives the result the surface of an orderly, complete verdict. Yet it conflicts with Don Fabrizio’s prior estimate that opposition existed among the electorate.

Suppressed Opposition and Political Meaning

The discrepancy becomes explicit when Don Ciccio Tumeo tells Don Fabrizio that he voted no. He says his choice was swallowed up at the Town Hall and recorded as its opposite. Don Fabrizio then understands the official unanimity not as proof that dissent was absent, but as the result of dissent being removed from the record. He had expected about forty negative votes in Donnafugata; Tumeo’s account confirms at least one, while his own estimate and the surrounding circumstances make the zero-no tally deeply suspect within the narrative.

The novel distinguishes between the political outcome and the integrity of the process. Don Fabrizio believes that the negative votes would not have changed the result and might even have made it more meaningful. Their suppression therefore appears to him as needless damage: what has been sacrificed is the good faith of people whose opinions should have been allowed to count. His realization turns the apparent success of unification into a moral crisis about how the new political order secures its legitimacy.

The episode also places the plebiscite within changing forms of authority. In an earlier encounter with Ferdinand II, Don Fabrizio had watched a monarch combine personal familiarity with sovereign command, and had wondered whether a Piedmontese successor would bring anything substantially different. Later, when the new government offers him a Senate nomination, he refuses, describing himself as caught between the old world and the new and without the illusions he believes political leadership requires. He recommends Don Calogero instead, whose practical power and usefulness to the new order make him a fitting representative of the changing elite. These scenes frame the plebiscite as part of a transition in political personnel as well as sovereignty.

The Public Record and the Novel’s Judgment

The official count is followed by celebration: applause, speeches, fireworks, and messages sent to the new King and Garibaldi. Angelica claps from her balcony as the public spectacle presents the result as a shared national triumph. But the festivities do not resolve Don Fabrizio’s unease. The contrast between the jubilant announcement and Tumeo’s erased vote exposes the distance between the public record and individual experience.

The scene’s decisive revelation is not that the plebiscite failed to produce a political result, but that its proclaimed unanimity cannot be taken at face value. The episode places national unification beside local exclusion and shows how political consent can be manufactured through the handling of votes and their public presentation. For Don Fabrizio, the lasting consequence is a recognition that the new order has not simply inherited power: it has also inherited, or reproduced, the means by which power can make a person’s will disappear.