Belfiore martyrs
Encyclopedia

The Belfiore martyrs were a group of pro-independence fighters condemned to death by hanging in 1853 during the Italian Risorgimento. They included Tito Speri
Tito Speri
Tito Speri was an Italian patriot and hero of the Risorgimento.-Life:Speri was born in Brescia.He began his military career as a volunteer in the First Italian Independence War in 1848 and after that war ended in an armistice he returned to Brescia, where he gave clandestine assistance to...

 and the priest Enrico Tazzoli and are named after the site where the sentence was carried out, in the valley of Belfiore at the south entrance to Mantua
Mantua
Mantua is a city and comune in Lombardy, Italy and capital of the province of the same name. Mantua's historic power and influence under the Gonzaga family, made it one of the main artistic, cultural and notably musical hubs of Northern Italy and the country as a whole...

. The hanging was the first in a long series of death sentences imposed by Josef Radetzky, governor general of Lombard-Venetia. As a whole these esentence marked the culmination of Austrian repression after the First Italian War of Independence
First Italian War of Independence
The First Italian War of Independence was fought in 1848 between the Kingdom of Sardinia and the Austrian Empire. The war saw main battles at Custoza and Novara in which the Austrians under Radetzky managed to defeat the Piedmontese....

 and marked the failure of all re-pacification policies.

Mantua

The city of Mantua had formed part of the lands of the Austrian House of Habsburg since 1707. It was the capital of a small but quite rich dukedom, as well as being of some military importance, both for the quality of its fortifications but also for its geographic position, allowing it to control the route between the Veneto
Veneto
Veneto is one of the 20 regions of Italy. Its population is about 5 million, ranking 5th in Italy.Veneto had been for more than a millennium an independent state, the Republic of Venice, until it was eventually annexed by Italy in 1866 after brief Austrian and French rule...

 and Lombardy
Lombardy
Lombardy is one of the 20 regions of Italy. The capital is Milan. One-sixth of Italy's population lives in Lombardy and about one fifth of Italy's GDP is produced in this region, making it the most populous and richest region in the country and one of the richest in the whole of Europe...

 and a large number of crossings over the River Po. Indeed, the city had been at the centre of the 1797 campaign during the French Revolutionary Wars
French Revolutionary Wars
The French Revolutionary Wars were a series of major conflicts, from 1792 until 1802, fought between the French Revolutionary government and several European states...

, with repeated Austrian invasions of the area until Eugène de Beauharnais
Eugène de Beauharnais
Eugène Rose de Beauharnais, Prince Français, Prince of Venice, Viceroy of the Kingdom of Italy, Hereditary Grand Duke of Frankfurt, 1st Duke of Leuchtenberg and 1st Prince of Eichstätt ad personam was the first child and only son of Alexandre, Vicomte de Beauharnais and Joséphine Tascher de la...

 surrendered it to Heinrich Johann Bellegarde on 23 April 1814. It was thus logical that, from 1815 onwards, the Austrians turned the whole city into a kind of large stronghold, perhaps the strongest one in the Lombardy-Veneto.

Such a militarised city was very well suited to house what could in modern terms be called a maximum security prison (in the castello di San Giorgio) to hold the Lombard and Venetic patriots, imprisoned for their opposition to the Austrian occupation. The French had also thought the city suitable for a prison when, on 20 February 1810, the Tyrolean
County of Tyrol
The County of Tyrol, Princely County from 1504, was a State of the Holy Roman Empire, from 1814 a province of the Austrian Empire and from 1867 a Cisleithanian crown land of Austria-Hungary...

 rebel leader Andreas Hofer
Andreas Hofer
Andreas Hofer was a Tirolean innkeeper and patriot. He was the leader of a rebellion against Napoleon's forces....

 was executed in Mantua for leading a rebellion in two of Napoleon
Napoleon I of France
Napoleon Bonaparte was a French military and political leader during the latter stages of the French Revolution.As Napoleon I, he was Emperor of the French from 1804 to 1815...

's client states.

Political context

Charles Albert of Sardinia
Charles Albert of Sardinia
Charles Albert was the King of Piedmont-Sardinia from 1831 to 1849. He succeeded his distant cousin Charles Felix, and his name is bound with the first Italian statute and the First War of Independence...

 had united the Sardinian army and countless volunteers from Lombardy, Veneto and many other Italian regions, but the defeat of his force by Radetzky at Novara
Battle of Novara (1849)
The Battle of Novara or Battle of Bicocca was one of the battles fought between the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Sardinia during the First Italian War of Independence, within the era of Italian unification...

 in 1849 led to a hardening in the Austrian government's attitude. In just one year, from August 1848 to August 1849, the Austrians carried out 961 hangings and executions, requisitioned many expatriates' goods and imposed heavy taxes and extraordinary taxes on the people. The repressive policy was directly carried out by field marshal Radetzky, governor general, but strongly supported from the imperial court in Vienna. In all, they allowed no amibguity as to the occupying power's real intentions.

The atmosphere became even worse with two visits by emperor Franz Joseph
Franz Joseph I of Austria
Franz Joseph I or Francis Joseph I was Emperor of Austria, King of Bohemia, King of Croatia, Apostolic King of Hungary, King of Galicia and Lodomeria and Grand Duke of Cracow from 1848 until his death in 1916.In the December of 1848, Emperor Ferdinand I of Austria abdicated the throne as part of...

 in 1851 (in March-April to Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...

 and in September-October to Milan
Milan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...

, Como
Como
Como is a city and comune in Lombardy, Italy.It is the administrative capital of the Province of Como....

 and Monza
Monza
Monza is a city and comune on the river Lambro, a tributary of the Po, in the Lombardy region of Italy some 15 km north-northeast of Milan. It is the capital of the Province of Monza and Brianza. It is best known for its Grand Prix motor racing circuit, the Autodromo Nazionale Monza.On June...

), which showed up how little success Radetzky's policy had had in winning over the region's population and nobility to the Habsburg regime. These failed visits led Radetzky to issue two proclamations (on 22 February and 19 July 1851) decreeing that anyone found in possession of 'revolutionary' writings would be sentenced to 1 to 5 years in prison, reimposing the state of siege, holding the city collectively responsible for housing secret societies (even unknowingly).

The Mantua plot

Discontent in the region grew yet more and the patriots began to organise and meet secretly. A section organised itself in Mantua, with its first meeting on 2 November 1850 attended by 10 patriots, including the engineers Attilio Mori and Giovanni Chiassi, the teacher Carlo Marchi, Giovanni Acerbi, the lawyer Luigi Castellazzo, Achille Sacchi and the Mantuan doctor Carlo Poma. The group's inspiration was Enrico Tazzoli, a prelate close to the Mazzinian movement. In particular it had contacts with notable figures such as Tito Speri
Tito Speri
Tito Speri was an Italian patriot and hero of the Risorgimento.-Life:Speri was born in Brescia.He began his military career as a volunteer in the First Italian Independence War in 1848 and after that war ended in an armistice he returned to Brescia, where he gave clandestine assistance to...

 (protagonist in the Ten Days of Brescia
Ten Days of Brescia
The Ten Days of Brescia was a revolt which broke out in the northern Italian city of that name, which lasted from March 23 to April 1, 1849.In the early 19th century Brescia was part of the Austrian puppet state called Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia...

) and Antonio Scarsellini of Legnano
Legnano
Legnano is an Italian town and comune with 59.147 inhabitants in the province of Milan, about from Milan.It's crossed by the river Olona, and it's the 13th town for inhabitants in Lombardy....

 in Venezia. Proclamations were printed, cells founded in Milan, Venice, Brescia
Brescia
Brescia is a city and comune in the region of Lombardy in northern Italy. It is situated at the foot of the Alps, between the Mella and the Naviglio, with a population of around 197,000. It is the second largest city in Lombardy, after the capital, Milan...

, Verona
Verona
Verona ; German Bern, Dietrichsbern or Welschbern) is a city in the Veneto, northern Italy, with approx. 265,000 inhabitants and one of the seven chef-lieus of the region. It is the second largest city municipality in the region and the third of North-Eastern Italy. The metropolitan area of Verona...

, Padua
Padua
Padua is a city and comune in the Veneto, northern Italy. It is the capital of the province of Padua and the economic and communications hub of the area. Padua's population is 212,500 . The city is sometimes included, with Venice and Treviso, in the Padua-Treviso-Venice Metropolitan Area, having...

, Treviso
Treviso
Treviso is a city and comune in Veneto, northern Italy. It is the capital of the province of Treviso and the municipality has 82,854 inhabitants : some 3,000 live within the Venetian walls or in the historical and monumental center, some 80,000 live in the urban center proper, while the city...

 and Vicenza
Vicenza
Vicenza , a city in north-eastern Italy, is the capital of the eponymous province in the Veneto region, at the northern base of the Monte Berico, straddling the Bacchiglione...

, and money collected to finance the revolutionary activities via 'interprovincial loan folders' organised by Mazzini. It was these folders that led to the arrest of Luigi Dottesio from Como, hung in Venice on 11 October 1851. That execution was followed, at the end of 1851, by that of don Giovanni Grioli, pastor of Cerese, arrested on 28 October and condemned to death on 5 November for having tried to cause two Hungarian soldiers to desert and for possessing revolutionary writings.

Arrest

With a renewal in the repressive climate, the Austrian police increased their surveillance activities in Mantua and on 1 January 1852 commissioner Rossi found a folder of 25 francs from a Mazzinian loan during a raid on the home of Luigi Pesci, communal esattore of Castiglione delle Stiviere
Castiglione delle Stiviere
Castiglione delle Stiviere is a town and comune in the province of Mantua, in Lombardy, Italy, 30 km northwest of Mantua by road.-History:During the War of the Spanish Succession, the French under the duc de Vendôme occupied it....

. The raid was on charges of Pesci's forging Austrian bank notes and so the discovery came as a surprise. Under fierce interrogation, Pesci revealed that the folder came from the priest don Ferdinando Bosio, a friend of Tazzoli and professor of grammar at the episcopal seminary in Mantua. Bosio was then arrested and after 24 days confessed and indicated that don Enrico Tazzoli was the movement's coordinator. Tazzoli was then arrested on 27 January, and with him many documents were seized, such as a register in which he had encrypted annotated receipts and expenditures, with the names of members who had paid money.

Torture and trial

Tazzoli did not give into his interrogators, led by the judicial auditor Alfred Krauss, but the police managed to decipher the register thanks to informing by the Mantuan lawyer Giulio Faccioli and by one of the society's members, the son of Luigi Castellazzo (a commissioner of police). This allowed them to move on to arresting Poma, Speri
Tito Speri
Tito Speri was an Italian patriot and hero of the Risorgimento.-Life:Speri was born in Brescia.He began his military career as a volunteer in the First Italian Independence War in 1848 and after that war ended in an armistice he returned to Brescia, where he gave clandestine assistance to...

, Montanari and other members in Mantua, Verona, Brescia and Venice, with 110 patriots being arrested in total, as well as 30 (including Benedetto Cairoli
Benedetto Cairoli
Benedetto Cairoli was an Italian statesman.-Biography:Cairoli was born at Pavia, Lombardy.From 1848 until the completion of Italian unity in 1870, his whole activity was devoted to the Risorgimento, as Garibaldian officer, political refugee, anti-Austrian conspirator and deputy to parliament...

) condemned in absentia.

The Austrian police and occupying government evidently exaggerated the society's extent, putting most of the prisoners under torture. Most confessed, some died before they could do so, and Pezzotto even chose to commit suicide in his cell at the Castello di Milano. In the end 110 people came to trial. Krauss supported the Austrian belief in the existence of an association in Mantua and of committees in other provinces, communicating with Mazzini and expatriates in Switzerland, attempts by Carlo Montanari to map the fortifications of Mantua and Verona, a plan by the Trentine patriot Igino Sartena for an attempt on Radetzky's life, another plan to capture Franz Josef on his visit to Venice (both of which plans Poma and Speri had in the end quashed as impractical).

Executions

Subsequent events

After the Second Italian Independence War Mantua remained in Austrian hands. During June 1866, in preparation for the Third Italian War of Independence
Third Italian War of Independence
The Third Italian War of Independence was a conflict which paralleled the Austro-Prussian War, and was fought between the Kingdom of Italy and the Austrian Empire.-Background:...

, the Austrian commander ordered work to reinforce Mantua's fortifications. As part of those works it proved necessary to excavate the sand needed for the work on the city walls and in doing so the chiefs of works from the Andreani family (father and son) recovered what were identified as the martyrs' remains (only those of Pietro Frattini and don Grioli, found in 1867, were missing). The Andreani kept the discovery secret and asked their absent Austrian contractors to speed up the work by working at night. The Austrians' absence allowed the wall-workers to transport the corpses to a city cemetery in great secrecy. Funeral rites for the remains were finally celebrated some months after this, when Mantua became part of the Kingdom of Italy
Kingdom of Italy (1861–1946)
The Kingdom of Italy was a state forged in 1861 by the unification of Italy under the influence of the Kingdom of Sardinia, which was its legal predecessor state...

 at the end of the Third Independence War.

Tazzoli continued to be honoured throughout the Mantua diocese, led by Monsignor Giovanni Corti, who Tazzoli had authorised to publish the sermons Tazzoli had written in jail. Tazzoli had done a great service to the Roman Catholic Church when, under Austrian interrogation, he had written that the Mantuan clergy were as faithful to the revolt as to Catholic tradition, "with spirit adhering to the social and practical value of men's education and training ... and to implement what was necessary to be free. May God forgive me."
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