"War of the Worlds": the French occupation of Southern Italy in 1799 in the testimonies of participants and eyewitnesses
Zaytseva Daria
In the 18th century, Enlightenment ideas swept Western Europe. The Italian Peninsula was not immune to their influence, although Enlightenment values were shared by a relatively narrow circle of educated elites, while they were alien to the bulk of the population. Therefore, when the French invaded Naples in 1799 and established the Parthenopean Republic, Southern Italian society was divided, and this division escalated into civil war: some enthusiastically welcomed the foreigners, whom they revered as liberators, while others rose to defend their faith, king, and fatherland. It was a clash of two alien worlds, and their confrontation is best illustrated by the memoirs, reports, and diaries of participants and eyewitnesses, reflecting the opposing sides' perceptions of each other. In the texts of the republicans, their enemies are portrayed either as religious fanatics who succumbed to priestly propaganda or as criminal rabble. At the same time, the Republicans considered their main adversary not the people, but rather the clergy, who allegedly instilled false values in the plebs. The Sanfedisti, on the other hand, described their enemies as barbarians who desecrated churches, cruel, unbridled, and greedy, who, under the guise of loud slogans, seized countries and plundered them. But even more hated by the plebs than the French were their compatriots Jacobins — the local enlightened elites who had effectively lost their national identity by siding with the enemy.
The study is sponsored by the Russian Science Foundation, project № 25–18–00510 “Relations between military personnel and civilians during the Napoleonic Wars”.
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