The political crisis in Sicily during 1860

The political crisis in Sicily during 1860 marks the passage from Bourbon rule to a united Italian state, but the change of sovereignty does not amount to a clean break with the old order. The novel sets military upheaval and plebiscitary politics beside courtly patronage, local self-interest, and Don Fabrizio Corbera, Prince of Salina’s suspicion that new rulers may reproduce familiar forms of power. Revolution arrives as both a real transfer of authority and a change that leaves much of Sicilian life intact.

The Bourbon crisis and the national revolution

When the story opens, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies is nearing its end. Ferdinand II of the Two Sicilies has died, and the peninsula is moving toward a single state for the first time since the fall of the Roman Empire. The Risorgimento had gathered strength after the Napoleonic Wars and had already reached a crisis in 1848. In 1860, leadership rests chiefly with the Kingdom of Sardinia, ruled from Turin by Victor Emmanuel II, with Cavour as prime minister.

In early May, Giuseppe Garibaldi sails from near Genoa with a thousand volunteers, acting against Cavour’s wishes. The Garibaldini land at Marsala, defeat Bourbon forces at Calatafimi, and occupy Palermo within three weeks. Hailed as dictator of Sicily, Garibaldi gathers further volunteers, crosses to the mainland, advances up the coast, and enters Naples. In the autumn, Bourbon forces are defeated on the Volturno; the Piedmontese besiege Francis II of the Two Sicilies at Gaeta; and Garibaldi hands southern Italy to Victor Emmanuel before withdrawing from public life. The sequence turns a Sicilian revolt into a national transfer of rule.

Plebiscites endorse union across the peninsula, with the Papal States the exception: they remain occupied by troops of Napoleon III for reasons tied to French domestic politics. The revolutionary phase ends when Italian government forces wound and rout Garibaldi’s men on the slopes of Aspromonte in 1862, as he tries to march on Rome. The unification project nevertheless continues, culminating in Rome’s declaration as Italy’s capital in 1870. Sicily’s 1860 crisis is thus one decisive stage in a longer, unfinished process.

Old loyalties and the uses of change

The transition is already visible in Don Fabrizio’s dealings with the Bourbon court. Recalling audiences granted by Ferdinand II of the Two Sicilies at Caserta, Capodimonte, Portici, and Naples, he remembers the contrast between magnificent rooms, dirty passages, waiting petitioners, and a monarch whose signature completes the administration’s work. In a later audience, the King moves from friendly questions about Don Fabrizio’s daughters and scientific reputation to probing him for information about Sicily’s lieutenant-general. Don Fabrizio avoids becoming an informant. The exchange makes royal authority personal and theatrical: intimacy can turn into a demand for service, while a friendly manner can conceal a threat.

After the audience, Don Fabrizio wonders what will replace a monarchy that seems already marked by death. He doubts that rule from Turin will alter the substance of power: the dialect may change, he suspects, while political life remains much the same. The novel gives this skepticism a sharper form through Tancredi Falconeri, who leaves to join the revolution. When Don Fabrizio warns him that a Falconeri should defend the King, Tancredi answers that the identity of the King is precisely the question. His argument is that change may be needed to preserve the existing social order. Don Fabrizio is moved by his nephew’s departure, imagines him dying in a guerrilla skirmish, and then slips him gold before he goes. The gesture makes the crisis intimate: the Prince fears the revolution and finances the young man who is entering it.

Don Fabrizio later recognizes a related calculation in the hopes of local figures. Don Pietro Russo, a dependent who professes loyalty to the Prince, says that his sympathies lie with the bold young men, while claiming that he himself cannot risk involvement because he has a family. He invokes searches, police spies, and restrictions on ordinary business, and anticipates greater liberty, security, lighter taxes, and trade. Yet he is also trying, through intermediaries, to buy the Salina estate of Argivocale. His promises of protection for Villa Salina rely on his local connections and on Don Fabrizio’s kinship with Tancredi. Political allegiance, property, and private advantage are entangled rather than separated into clear revolutionary and royalist camps.

The plebiscite and local political practice

Don Fabrizio’s doubts about the new order extend to the people poised to benefit from it. He sees Don Pietro Russo as a sign of an upward-moving class and suspects that local liberals chiefly want opportunities to enrich themselves. His reflection after hearing of the changing political circumstances is that there may be shooting, but that negotiations will follow and, in substance, life will remain familiar. Russo’s prediction that everything will improve, while the rest stays as before, gives that suspicion a local voice. The image of swallows leaving the nest earlier suggests not a transformed society but a slight adjustment in its timing.

The Donnafugata plebiscite makes the gap between political spectacle and participation concrete. Don Fabrizio goes to vote in his black frock-coat, the same one he wore when visiting Ferdinand II of the Two Sicilies two years earlier. At the Town Hall, the committee rises as he enters, and peasants who arrived before him are put aside. He hands his yes vote to Don Calogero Sedàra. Father Pirrone does not vote because he has avoided being registered as a resident; Don Onofrio Rotolo votes at the Prince’s express wish. Even before the count, participation is shaped by status, residence, and personal direction.

The announced figures are 515 voters, 512 votes cast, 512 yes votes, and no votes against. The unanimous result is presented amid applause, speeches, fireworks, and messages to the new King and Garibaldi. Yet women have been excluded from voting. A group of women in the square, wearing tricolour ribbons in their hair to protest that exclusion, are jeered at and driven away, while a newspaper later recasts their appearance as a demonstration welcomed by the patriotic crowd. The episode exposes how the public account of political consent can erase coercion and rewrite dissent. Italy is born at Donnafugata, the narration observes, but the night leaves Don Fabrizio troubled rather than reassured; his unease is deeper than the immediate political interests of his kingdom and class.

The new state and the old ruling class

The crisis continues after the transfer of sovereignty through the question of who will represent Sicily in the new institutions. Cavaliere Aimone Chevalley di Monterzuolo arrives with a proposal that Don Fabrizio be considered for the Senate of the Kingdom. The appointment would recognize his lineage, scientific standing, and conduct during recent events, while allowing Sicily a voice in a national legislature. Chevalley describes the Senate as a chamber that can promote or restrain government policy and help the country progress. The offer presents unification not only as conquest and plebiscite but as an attempt to create a functioning political system.

Don Fabrizio refuses. He sees himself as belonging to the old ruling class, compromised by its connection to Bourbon rule and stranded between the old world and the new. He doubts that an inexperienced legislator without illusions can guide others, and thinks the coming politics will favour younger men able to blend private interests with public ideals. His refusal is not simply a rejection of Italy: he says that he would have accepted a merely honorary title and acknowledges the duty to support the new state. Instead, he argues that his generation must stand aside. He recommends Don Calogero Sedàra, judging him more suited to the Senate because he has practical power and can create political illusions when required. Don Calogero does, in fact, enter the Senate ten years later.

The crisis therefore ends neither with the restoration of the Bourbons nor with the disappearance of the habits formed under them. The Prince’s court memories, Tancredi’s revolutionary calculation, Russo’s pursuit of land and security, the plebiscite’s manufactured unanimity, and the proposed Senate all show power changing hands through different combinations of loyalty, force, administration, and private interest. The new state is real, but the novel’s account of Sicily insists on the limits of political change: institutions and flags may change quickly, while the social arrangements beneath them prove more resistant.