Itri History: In the Era of Marie Antoinette

In the main square of Itri, in the piazza where you will find the 11th century church, you will also find a restaurant with the unusual name of Fra Diavolo. Fra Diavolo was the nick name that was given to Michele Pezze, a local Itri boy born in 1771.

He was given the nickname because of an Itrano (that’s what we call all things Itri) custom of dressing up little boys and girls who recently recovered from a serious illness, as a monk. They did this on the second Sunday after Easter and had the “dressed up” children walk in a procession in honor of St Francis. Because little Michele Pezze was dressed up like a monk in the procession, but was such a naughty little boy, the townspeople called him Fra Diavolo (Brother Devil) and the name stuck. 

I found the story of Fra Diavolo so interesting because it really helped me understand this portion of Italian History and how it was connected to the other major events happening in Western Europe at the time. For us Americans, we really only understand European History through “pop culture”. We all know about Napoleon Bonaparte, the French conqueror and Marie Antoinette who said “let them eat cake”, the remark that ignited the French Revolution. We all know you can learn a language by buying Rosetta Stone DVD’s. But we don’t know how these things are connected to Italy or Italian history.

Italian history is very hard to follow because Italy is comprised of many small Kingdoms such as the Kingdom of Venice, Tuscany, Naples, Gaeta, Sardinia and Sicily. In fact these Kingdoms had their own languages and royalty. To this day these regions will speak a dialect that is not known to other regions of Italy. When someone from Naples is interviewed on TV, they often use subtitles so other Italians can understand!

Not to mention that everyone was trying to attack the peninsula of Italy at one time or the other. The Lombards, the Gauls, the Spanish, the French, the Austrians. Because of this conquering, the land borders were always being adjusted accordingly. So, for this account we are focusing on my region of Italy, Itri, during the time of Fra Diavolo. Fra Diavolo lived under the rule of the King of Naples, Ferdinand IV & III who was of the House of Bourbons. The Bourbons were French royalty who had a king or queen on many thrones is Europe at the time: France, Italy, Spain, Luxembourg, Navarre in Portugal, etc…

King Ferdinands wife was Marie Carolina duchess of Austria, she became queen of Naples in 1768 when she married King Ferdinand. After the birth of her first child she became the “de facto” ruler (the ruler when the King was not around) of his Kingdom. I really don’t know how she got any ruling done when she was busy having 17 children but she still managed quite well to rule the Kingdom!

Marie Carolina was 15 years old when she traveled from Vienna to Terracina to meet her future husband, King Ferdinand. It’s hard for me to imagine this young queen stepping ashore at our own local beach town of Terracina to become the Queen of Naples. She married him as an alliance to Spain where King Ferdinands father was currently ruling as King. 

I also found it interesting that it was King Ferdinand who finished the construction of the Caserta Palace that was designed in the Baroque style of Versailles, the palace that Ferdinands wife Maria Carolina’s sister, Marie Antoinette, lived in. If you have ever been to Versailles in France, you know what an extravagant display Versailles is. Yet here in Italy, just 2 hours from my house in Itri, is the Royal Palace of Caserta. This royal palace housed King Ferdinands growing family as they struggled to keep up with their aunt, Marie Antoinette in Versailles, France.

Not to be outdone, the royal palace in Caserta is one of the largest palaces built in Europe in the 18th century. Maria Carolina gave birth to 17 children, 7 of which survived to adulthood. Seven of the children died in childhood of smallpox. Many of their children were born in Caserta Palace and all spent some of their childhood there. King Ferdinand died in 1825 and Maria Carolina died in 1814.

I found it so shocking that my area of Naples was ruled by the sister of Marie Antoinette. As you may know, Marie Antoinette was queen during the French Revolution, during the time when the common French people had their belly full of their own poverty while their greedy queen ignored their plight and lived in unparalleled opulence. When asked about the problems of the people, she said “let them eat cake”. This did not go over well and she was killed by beheading during the French Revolution in 1793.

Amongst all of this chaos happening in France, the French still managed to try and take over the world. Currently, in the life of Fra Diavolo, they were trying to take over his section of Italy!

When Fra Diavolo became a young man he got a job with the Neapolitan Royal Mail and would make the 194 mile round trip between Terracina and Naples twice a week, this made him him very acquainted with the local terraine. In 1797 he fell in love with a young woman but had competition with another young man, he fought the young man and his friend, killing both in the struggle. He fled to the countryside but was later caught and tried with manslaughter. Because the murders were done is self-defense he was sentenced with a tour in the Naples army. He quickly rose to Sargent and played important leadership roles in the intense fighting between the army of Naples and the French invasion. Because of Fra Diavolo’s fierce temper and intimate knowledge of the area of Naples, Gaeta, Sperlonga, Itri and Fondi he was able to resist the French Invasion, for a while.

Fra Diavolo and his band of guerrilla freedom fighters did, in fact, hold back the conquest of France from this section of Italy for a time but ultimately did not succeed. In 1806 Fra Diavolo was captured by the French, they offered him an enormous bribe to join them and he refused. Queen Maria Carolina of Naples (sister of Marie Antoinette, the Queen of France) offered the French 200 French prisoners in exchange for Fra Diavolo but they refused and on November 9, 1806 he was hung in the Piazza Del Mercado in Naples. Diavolo is remembered in Itri as a local hero who would not compromise or betray his local people in the face of bribery or death.

In the middle of this fierce battle between the French and Fra Diavolo is Napolean Bonaparte. Napoleon Bonaparte had already conquered much of Italy for France and had placed his brother on the Naples throne. But to make things more complicated, he was in fact Italian, he was born on the Italian Island of Corsica to Italian parents. In his early childhood Corsica was taken over by the French and Napoleon was educated in mainland France. French became his language and he changed the spelling of his name from the Italian spelling of Buonaparte to the French spelling of Bonaparte. He served in the French army from 1785 until he crowned himself emperor of France in 1804.

I also found it interesting that Napoleon had a sister that lived in Rome, she lived the life of royalty after marrying Camillo Borghese, giving her the title of Duchess and Princess. She lived in the Palazzo Borghese facing the Tiber River, the ground floor of this Palazzo is now the Spanish Embassy. The Palazzo is near Galleria Borghese (my favorite museum in Rome housing several masterpieces by Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Bernini and other famous artists). One of the pieces of art in Galleria Borghese is the carving of Venus by Antonio Canova. The model for the nude sculpture was none other than Napoleons sister, Pauline Bonaparte.

So if Napoleon Bonaparte was Italian why was he conquering Italy for France? Aside from a general need to conquer the world, he apparently also believed in the Republic, a government ruled by the people and not a monarchy. He was trying to replace the Bourbon rule with Republican rule, displacing the monarchy that held control of Europe for centuries.

He had indeed conquered much of the world and displaced many Bourbon monarchys. In 1795 the “Directory”; the group that governed France since after the death of King Louis XVI,  asked Napoleon to launch an invasion of England. He knew they were no match for England so instead he proposed an invasion of Egypt to cut off England’s trade routes to India. It was at this point in 1799 that a French soldier named Pierre Bouchard discovered the Rosetta Stone, the artifact that provided the key to cracking Egyptian Hieroglyphics. So many interesting things happening in the world circling around Fra Diavolo and Itri!

Napoleon Bonaparte abdicated the French throne in 1815 after a crushing defeat against Russia and the Battle of Waterloo. He died at the age of 51. So Napoleon was an Italian that conquered the Italian Monarchy…for France. So what was America doing during this time? Well, Napoleon lived during the Presidency of James Monroe, the fifth President of America. Napoleon even had a brother who lived in America, Pennsylvania and New Jersey to be exact. Another of Napoleons brothers was married to an American for a while, can you imagine Napoleon turning his attentions to America? Talk about worlds colliding!

When I combed the pages of history, I could not find much information about the King of Naples after Ferdinand and Marie Carolina. It looks like the French ruled for a while and the Austrians but ultimately it fizzled out and became part of the reason for the ultimate unification of Italy as one Kingdom in 1861. Italy was unified under one King- Victor Emmanuel II of Sardinia. His son Umberto married Margherita of Savoy who is credited with the invention of pizza, the Margherite pizza to be exact. She of course was not the one to invent it, but rather it was in her honor that it was created, served to her and given her name in 1889. This is one of my favorite parts of Italian History!

Unfortunately 1914 and WWI brought much suffering and deprivations for Italy. By the end of the war in 1918, 600,000 Italians were dead, 950,000 were wounded and 250,000 were crippled for life. The shame they experienced at the Treaty In Versailles added humiliation that the Nationalists would later use as leverage to allow Fasism and dictatorship to take root in Italy.

By 1922 Mussolini became the Prime Minister of Italy but dropped the title in 1925 when he established a dictatorship. He ruled until 1945 when he died by firing squad near Lake Como after loosing in WWII. Italy, prior to its collapse, had survived the deaths of 200,000 Italians, 320,000 Allied forces soldiers and 330,000 German soldiers. In 1946 Italy formally rid itself of a monarchy and became a republic.

All of this history helps us to understand Italy. If you visit, you will find enchanting castles, passionate people and delicious food, but you will also see a country that had two world wars fought on her soil and bombed out her cities, roads, buildings and treasures.

This part of history helps explain why so many of us from Americas return to Italy to search for our family. We are the children of third and fourth generations of Italian Americans who left Italy during the deprivations of the first and second world wars. They came to America to find a better future. They came from all parts of Italy, from the North to the South. Our grandparents and great grandparents boldly left behind everything they knew for the hope of work and a new life free of deprivations. Most of them learned that life in the “new world” of America wasn’t so easy.

They weren’t understood or appreciated. They were immigrants and immigrants never have it easy. But they left us a beautiful heritage both in America and back home in Italy. We, their grandchildren, often come back to Italy to find who they were and what their life was like. In every older man we see our grandfather and uncles, in the knowing eyes of the older women we see our grandmother. We recognize our brothers and cousins and self. We see traits in the Italians that we have always seen in ourselves and we marvel.

Meanwhile, the Italians that stayed in Italy during this time were tough and have rebuilt their lives and histories. So don’t judge Italy harshly if you see graffiti, pot holes, dilapidated and abandoned buildings and trash. Don’t judge her “Communist Era” apartment buildings and call it ugly. Just realize she has been through a lot and still laughs and welcomes us with open arms. She is always willing for her “children” to come home and learn who they are and share her treasures with us. To Italy we will always be family and her history is our history.

If you enjoyed this journey through Itri history, you may also enjoy this article about Giulia Gonzaga, one of my favorite Renaissance stories that comes from my area! You can also read about her in this article about my town of Itri.

If you want to understand more about life in Italy and read the personal history as told by those who lived here during the difficult “post war” years can be found in these articles “Matera” and “Bivogni”.

If you would like to read about my journey to establish my Italian Citizenship by family descent, click here. I did it without lawyers or legal help. Just a few kind Italian friends who stumbled into the Commune with me to help me translate. It cost me nothing accept the cost of acquiring the documents at home in America, getting the documents apostillized and paying for a “Embassy Approved” Translator to translate the documents. I don’t think all together it cost me more than $300.