esercito e città dall'unità agli anni trenta. tomo i - Sistema ...

JOHN _A._ D AVIS
THE ARMY AND PUBLIC ORDER IN ITALIAN
CITIES AFTER UNIFICATION
By the end of the 19th century the internai 'public security' functions
that fell to the Italian army were widely seen as a major obstacle to it's military
efficiency and effectiveness. Rochat, for example, cites Pelloux's statement
to the Chamber of Deputies in 1896:
'L'esercito esiste si, ma pel mantenimento dell'ordine pubblico ed è ormai
completamente alla disposizione della pubblica sicurezza' 1 •
The circumstances of the final decade of the century had given the army's
'policing' role a particular prominence, and this was true not only during
the periods of emergency when military la w was invoked under the terms
of the state of siege (in Sicily and the Lunigiana in 1894; in Milano, Napoli,
Livorno and Firenze in 1898). Both during this decade and previously the
army had been used repeatedly and indeed almost as a matter of course to
repress rural disorders (Conselice in 1889 providing one notorious example
- but the agrarian strikes in the province of Mantua in 1884-5 had also been
put down almost entirely by a combination of squadrons of mounted
Carabinieri and troops). In the countryside, troops (cavalry in particular)
were also used as a matter of course to contro! demonstrations. But this
was also the case in the cities an d in his study of the development of Milan
in the final decades of the century, Volker Hunecke has argued that the use
of army units for civil policing and crowd control in particular was not exceptional
but 'un fatto quasi quotidiano'. Troops were invariably called in
to disperse demonstrations (on the ground that they were threats to public
order or constituted unlawful assembly), and in 1872 and in 1886 proces-
1 G. RocHAT, 'L'esercito italiano negli ultimi cento anni', Storia d'italia, Einaudi,
Torino, Vol. 5 (2), p. 1874.