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Global Crisis

Page 71

by Parker, Geoffrey


  Genoino and other members of the city's intellectual elite had consulted legal and historical sources, which convinced them that the Spanish government had tampered with the ‘Ancient Constitution’. They found, for example, that ‘Naples was born a free Republic, divided into Senate and People’; that it had paid no taxes until the time of the Normans; and that it had ‘elected a doge pleasing to the [Byzantine] emperor or to another friendly prince who offered protection’. The historian Camillo Tutini published an erudite but controversial book which argued that, since Roman times, popolo and nobles had shared power in Naples equally, with the implied argument that they should do so again.17 By contrast, the Neapolitan reformers kept silent about another innovation: the capital's exemption from all taxes imposed on the rest of the viceroyalty. Representatives from the rest of the kingdom met every two or three years in a Parliament dominated by the nobility and voted taxes that, for the most part, fell on their vassals. It could scarcely be otherwise, because by 1640 only ten towns besides Naples remained under direct royal control: the crown had sold the rest, along with most of its domain lands, to the nobles. As in other countries, it had also sold titles of nobility – the 161 peers of 1613 rose to 271 in 1631 and to 341 in 1640 – and to raise cash it also sold to the nobles (both new and old) public offices, regalian rights and, above all, jurisdiction over their vassals (including the right of final appeal). Once they had acquired these comprehensive legal rights, the nobles used armies of retainers to compel their tenants to sell produce to them far below the market price, to exact numerous (and sometimes new) feudal services and to suppress any opposition by force. A book published by a retired judge in 1634 listed hundreds of recent cases of feudal abuse, all of them unpunished. Such excesses generated anger and protests throughout the kingdom.18

  The mounting fiscal burden imposed by Madrid exacerbated these dangerous tensions. Each year between 1637 and 1644 over one million ducats left the kingdom to pay for Philip IV's wars – one viceroy protested that Naples contributed more than the Americas to imperial defence – but with the revolts of Catalonia and Portugal to suppress, and war with France on multiple fronts, the government's requirements for 1641 reached an unprecedented nine million ducats and 14,500 troops. Demands on this scale forced the viceroys to triple tax revenues by using much the same combination of old and new taxes as other regional governments of the Spanish Monarchy. They also resorted to loans from local bankers, which dramatically increased public sector borrowing, until by 1647 the total public debt lay between 120 and 150 million ducats – not far short of the kingdom's gross domestic product. The viceroys also ‘squeezed’ the eight public banks of Naples to surrender their cash deposits, which they then exported, issuing paper currency in lieu of the absent specie (probably the first true paper money in Europe). By 1647 all eight banks were effectively bankrupt, while private financiers demanded ever-higher interest on each loan transferred to Spain and Lombardy: 8 per cent in the 1630s but 40 per cent in 1641, 55 per cent in 1642, and 70 per cent in 1643.

  These fiscal developments affected the entire population of the kingdom. Tens of thousands of Neapolitans subscribed to the loans – either directly or through bankers – attracted by the high interest secured on the yield of future taxes. They faced ruin when those taxes failed to materialize. However, as in Castile, depopulation reduced tax revenues. A census of the kingdom (excluding the capital) in 1595 revealed some 550,000 households; half a century later, another census recorded scarcely 500,000. The viceroy's financial advisers blamed the decline on migration to avoid the inexorable increase in fiscal pressure: ‘from Calabria they move to Messina; from the Abruzzi to the Papal States; and, saddest of all, from the area around Otranto to the Ottoman empire’. Migration also created such a shortage of recruits for the army that the government sometimes placed conscripts in manacles as they marched to their port of embarkation ‘in order to prevent their escaping’.19

  In the face of the unremitting fiscal pressure from Madrid, the viceroys of Naples searched for new sources of revenue. In 1642 the Parliament of the kingdom agreed to raise an unprecedented 11 million ducats, financed largely by a hearth tax to be paid by every household in the kingdom with exemption only for those in the capital – but only on condition that it would not be asked to vote new taxes for a decade. This agreement meant that only the magistrates of the city of Naples could raise new taxes, and they duly imposed duties on certain ‘luxury’ imports such as tobacco and fruit until, according to a city chronicler, ‘there was no item of food that did not carry as much tax as its actual cost’. He underestimated: by 1647 taxes on some items tripled their sale price.20

  Although the fruit excise (gabella della frutta) targeted the rich, because most of the fruit purchased went to well-to-do households, its imposition had caused riots in the past and it now symbolized unjust and oppressive taxes. Nevertheless, when the Seggi offered to advance a million ducats against the yield of a new fruit excise the viceroy accepted. Before long, ‘placards went up throughout Naples, inciting the people to “make a revolution” like that of Palermo’; and unknown persons blew up the excise office, located in the Piazza del Mercato, surrounded by the shacks and ‘high-rise’ projects that housed the poor.21 In June 1647, as he passed through the piazza on his way to hear Mass at the church of Santa Maria del Carmine, which housed an image of the Virgin widely reputed to perform miracles, the viceroy received numerous protests against the fruit tax. Don Rodrigo Ponce de León, duke of Arcos, had been viceroy of Naples since 1646, and before that viceroy of Valencia for three years: he should have known better than to promise to suspend a levy whose yield had already been promised to creditors, because it required him to find an alternative source of revenue. Arcos proposed a tax on those who owned carriages, but when the Seggi (who owned most of the carriages) objected vociferously, he reimposed the fruit excise.

  At this point, a French fleet appeared off Naples, and the viceroy immediately sent part of the city's galley squadron, manned by troops from the garrison, to drive them away. Coincidentally, an urgent command arrived from the king to defend Genoa from a French assault, and so Arcos dispatched another detachment of the garrison aboard the rest of the galleys, leaving Naples virtually undefended. The viceroy's decisions, at a time when he was well ‘aware of the ill-will of the Neapolitans on account of the new tax on fruit, and knew equally well that for the same reason – excessive taxes – the people of Palermo and of almost every other place in Sicily had rebelled’, mystified some loyal Neapolitans. It seemed to them that Arcos had committed political suicide. And so it proved.22

  Red Flag over Naples

  Since popular violence often occurred on Sundays and holidays, when everyone was either in the streets or in the taverns, Archbishop Ascanio Filomarino of Naples prudently cancelled the customary St John's Day celebrations on 24 June. He also planned to cancel the festival honouring the Virgin Mary on 16 July, because it involved a ritual battle in the Piazza del Mercato between two teams of young men from the area, dressed as ‘Moors’ and ‘Christians’ and armed with sticks. One defended a mock castle of wood and painted canvas erected in the square, while the other attacked it. They ‘rehearsed’ in the piazza on Sunday mornings.

  On the morning of Sunday, 7 July, a dispute broke out between the stallholders of the Piazza del Mercato and the local producers over who should pay the fruit excise. Eventually, one of the fruit vendors ‘flew into such a rage that, throwing two great baskets [of figs] upon the ground, he cried out “God gives plenty and the ill government creates a dearth. I don't care about the fruit. Help yourselves.”’ When the Eletto del popolo arrived to try and restore order (and secure payment of the tax), ‘the women and girls’ in the marketplace ‘began to shout “Long live the king and death to the evil government”’. Suddenly a man dressed in white overalls and wearing a red bonnet leaped onto a fruit stall and shouted ‘No excise! No excise!’ and threw first fruit and then stones at the Eletto.23

&nbs
p; The demagogue was a 27-year-old fishmonger named Tommaso Aniello, commonly known as Masaniello, born and raised in one of the lanes adjoining the Piazza del Mercato, and leader of the ‘Moorish’ team during the festival. He had already drilled his ragazzi (‘boys’), dressed in red and black, to a high level of cohesion, and ‘in the twinkling of an eye, thousands and thousands of common people’ came into the square, and under Masaniello's lead they seized some weapons stored in the tower of the Carmine church and ‘unfurled the red flag on the tower of the church as a sign of war’. When some refugees from Sicily in the crowd ‘called them cowards because they were satisfied with only one thing and incited them to demand everything, as had happened in Palermo’, Masaniello directed the crowd into the streets leading to the viceroy's palace.24 Meanwhile, other rioters forced open the prisons, setting free the inmates.

  Archbishop Filomarino, who loathed ‘this Masaniello’, expressed his amazement that a simple fishmonger could ‘acquire such authority, command, respect and obedience that he has made this whole city tremble at his orders, which are carried out by his followers punctually and rigorously. In short, he has become a king in this city, and the most glorious and triumphant king that the world has seen.’ Masaniello's supporters also proclaimed that ‘he is a man sent by God’ and compared him to Moses.25 Masaniello's genius lay in his ability to inspire not only his ragazzi and the lazzari, who had little to lose, but also the artisans and shopkeepers who normally sided with the forces of law and order. By midday on 7 July 1647 the insurgents numbered 30,000, and when they reached the viceroy's palace, they demanded the immediate abolition of all excise duties. Fearful of the fiscal consequences of such a sweeping concession (estimated at five million ducats in lost revenue), Arcos replied that he would abolish only some of them. This angered the crowd, which surged forward, and the viceroy's guards (who had orders not to fire) fell back. Arcos was lucky to escape the fate of Viceroy Santa Coloma in Barcelona, seven years before.

  Masaniello had chosen his moment well. After the galley squadron departed with most of the garrison, Arcos had only 1,200 soldiers left to preserve order in one of Europe's largest cities. When the viceroy started to create defences around the Castel Nuovo, the crowd sealed off the area while reinforcements arrived from the country armed with ‘ploughshares, pitchforks and shovels’, and ‘women were seen in great numbers, armed with fire shovels and iron tongs, with spits and spikes, and their children with sticks and canes’.26 The following day, two important figures emerged at Masaniello's side: Giulio Genoino and his nephew Francesco Arpaja, both of them veterans of the attempt to change the city's Constitution in 1620. Together, the triumvirs compiled a list of houses to be sacked and burned each night – a list that contained the residences of Genoino's personal enemies as well as of those connected with the oppressive fiscal system.27 Archbishop Filomarino, acting as mediator, persuaded Arcos to abolish all excise duties and to issue a general pardon, in order to restore at least a temporary peace, but once again the viceroy misstepped: his pardon unwisely characterized the rioters as ‘rebels’. Such disrespect provoked a new wave of violence, and the houses of several more ministers and tax collectors went up in flames.28

  On 9 July 1647 Genoino and his associates drew up a list of 22 Capitoli (‘Articles’) that insisted not only on a comprehensive pardon but also on a host of specific concessions which, they claimed, had been granted to the city in previous charters – including an end to all excise duties on food, the equalization of the tax burden between the capital and the provinces, and the selection of the Eletto del popolo by the popular assembly. (Arcos ruefully observed that the Capitoli incorporated the reforms Genoino and his supporters had proposed almost 30 years before.) As the list was read out in the crowded Carmine church, a member of the audience shouted out an objection: the Spanish government had reneged on promises made to its opponents in the Netherlands, Catalonia and Portugal, so what could be done to secure compliance this time? Arcos agreed that, until the king confirmed the Capitoli, the insurgents could continue to bear arms – a dangerous concession given that Masaniello's well-drilled militia now numbered 10,000.29

  Meanwhile, some local priests assured the insurgents that ‘because they were oppressed by excessive taxes, and were attacked and provoked by the Spaniards’, their struggle was just; while others formed a regular militia company, and others still preached sermons that compared Arcos with Nebuchadnezzar, Goliath and Pharaoh, and the insurgent leaders with Daniel, David and Moses. All this, according to one source, ‘animated the people so that they went freely to fight, and believed they would be martyrs and go to Paradise’.30 Masaniello skilfully used militia to prevent the royal galleys from re-entering the harbour when they returned from chasing off the French. He also placed an embargo on the export of grain from the city, and abolished all excises within it, which ‘reduced the price of almost all foodstuffs to the levels not seen since the reign on Charles V’.31 Filomarino persuaded Arcos to give in and accept all the rebels’ demands.

  The revolt of Naples might have ended at this point had a group of heavily armed horsemen not ridden into the Piazza del Mercato and tried to assassinate Masaniello. They missed their mark, and when the crowd overpowered and tortured them, the ringleaders revealed that they had the viceroy's approval for their attempt, that they had planted barrels of gunpowder around the square (which they intended to detonate in order to kill as many rioters as possible), and that they had poisoned the city's water supply (in order to kill the rest). The plot radicalized the rebels, some of whom now called for an independent republic. In desperation Arcos appointed Genoino as head of the treasury, while his nephew Arpaja became Eletto del popolo, and he promised them that the rest of the kingdom should pay a new hearth tax to replace the city's excise duties; that a new census should be undertaken to establish a more equitable tax base; and that the people might continue to bear arms until the king confirmed his concessions. In return, the viceroy made only one demand: the elimination of Masaniello.

  At this point, many insurgents were prepared to sacrifice their leader. Genoino and the lawyers despised him; those whose property had been burnt wanted revenge; many felt alienated by his increasingly erratic personal behaviour. On 16 July four conspirators (each of whom later received a handsome reward from Arcos) murdered Masaniello, and the crowd then mutilated his body. Many believed that this event would end ‘the great revolution of the people’, after just ten days; but, once again, unforeseen and unrelated developments transformed the situation.32

  One of the viceroy's guards celebrated Masaniello's murder by riding through the streets shouting that the nobles would soon make the people eat dirt again, while rumours spread that the viceroy would reduce the size of loaves of bread. Several bakers anticipated this order, whereupon angry consumers seized their pikes and, spearing the small loaves, marched on the viceregal palace in protest. They also recovered Masaniello's mutilated body and a procession of 40,000 men and women followed his coffin through the streets, ‘saying the rosary and the litany, to which they added “St Masaniello, pray for us”’. Archbishop Filomarino himself conducted the exequies.33 News also arrived that other places in the kingdom had followed the example of the capital, starting with Salerno, where on 10 July a crowd of peasants and citizens demanded the abolition of all excise duties, as had happened in Naples. When the excise collectors refused, the crowd torched their houses and elected a Capopopolo (also a fisherman). By the end of the month, in over 100 towns (in the words of a French observer) ‘the people took a cruel revenge for the ill treatment they had received from their lords’, hundreds of whom fled abroad. By the end of the year (according to the Tuscan envoy) ‘There was not a village left that has not experienced revolution, with arson, murders and robbery’.34 Only church lands seem to have escaped popular violence (Fig. 41). As Genoino and his colleagues consolidated their control over the capital, they reached out to the local lawyers and other ‘intellectuals’ who, as in Naples, had t
aken the lead in uprisings elsewhere in the kingdom. And then news arrived of a fresh uprising in Palermo.

  Red Flag over Sicily

  It took only four days for tidings of Masaniello's revolt to reach Palermo, where it immediately upset the delicate balance of forces created by Viceroy Los Vélez in the wake of the May riots. As elsewhere in the northern hemisphere, appalling weather presaged another thin harvest, causing food prices and tensions to mount. Giuseppe d'Alesi, an artisan who had witnessed ‘the revolution in Naples’, returned to Palermo bearing a copy of the 22 Capitoli conceded by Arcos and at once began to plot with some colleagues how to secure similar concessions. Having laid their plans, the conspirators decided to follow Masaniello's example and wait until the next religious festival – 15 August 1647, Assumption Day – when they rode through the streets shouting ‘Death to the evil government, out with the Spaniards’. The viceroy and his outnumbered Spanish guards fled.35

  His supporters now hailed Alesi as chief (Capopopolo) of the city, and they burned over 40 buildings belonging to nobles and merchants before meeting the viceroy to negotiate an agreement acceptable to all parties. The resulting 49 Capitoli included concessions to the common people (abolition of excise duties throughout the kingdom), to the guilds (who would henceforth appoint three of Palermo's six city magistrates as well as many subordinate officers), and to the lawyers (who secured a promise that the legal system would be reformed and the laws returned to the ‘days of King Peter of Aragon’). Above all, Los Vélez swore that henceforth only native Sicilians would hold secular and ecclesiastical posts and pensions.36

 

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