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

494 ]OHN A. DA VIS
annual report to the Ministero dell'Interno that there were very few recruits
available for the PS guards and that 'i nuovi arruolati appartengono quasi
tutti alla classe degli agricoltori e quasi tutti sono trovatelli'. He doubted
whether the situation could be improved since:
' ... è per ora invincibile nella classe operaia, come nelle campagne, l'antipatia
verso gli Agenti della Forza Pubblica (non esclusa l'Arma dei RRCC) e
ciò, per le ragioni che qui sarebbe ozioso di discutere, segna un permanente
abbassamento del senso morale (e) non è d'altronde meno grave difficoltà nel
promuovere l'arruolamento . .. ' 27.
Crispi's investigations exposed the confusion that stili existed in the
policing of even the major Italian cities twenty years after Unification. The
outcry that followed the murder of a jeweller named Ida Carcano in Milano
in 1889, for example, revealed that there were only 200 PS agents in the
whole city. The Prefect of Milan claimed that most of these were:
'Individui nei quali il peso degli anni paralizza l'attività e la prontezza che
nelle operazioni di polizia giudiziaria sono primo . .. ' 28•
The Prefect also noted that these deficiencies could not be made good
by the RRCC 'i quali neppure possono essere utilmente adibiti a servizio di
prevenzione e d'indagini causa l'attenzione che su di essi è richiamata
dall'uniforme ... '. But there were other obstacles as well to relieving the RRCC
of policing duties in the larger cities, not least the hostility shown by the
municipal authorities to any attempts to strengthen the Guardie di PS which
was seen as a further expansion of the powers of centrai government.
At the time of these events in Milan Italy was already in the throes of
the the financial crisis and commerciai depression which ushered in the
peri od of acute social an d politica! tensions with wich the century of Unification
was to dose. In the situation of growing emergency there was no room
for reform or reorganization and successive governments resorted to more
traditional and ad hoc expedients in the face of rising urban and rural
disorders.
27 Ibid. , Min. Int., Rapporti dei Prefetti; Firenze (gennaio 1884).
28 Ibid., Carte Crispi, b. 236/1 (27.11.1890).
THE ARMY AND PUBLIC ORDER IN ITALIAN CITIES 495
Crispi 's Reforms and the Crisis of the 1890s
Crispi' s proposed reforms of the RRCC an d civil policing were a casualty
of the crisis, and ironically the RRCC actually fell in size between 1891
and 1896 as did its budget. However, the recognised inadequancies ofboth
the RRCC and the PS Guards may well have been important factors in determining
the response of successive governments to the crisis that finally carne
to head with the disturbances in Sicily and the Lunigiana in 1894. While
lack of confidence in the normal apparatus of policing was neither the major
nor most important factor, it did leave the authorities with little alternative
but to look to the army for safety.
This was particularly evident in the cities. As early as 1890 steps were
taken to strengthen the garrison in Milan before the May Day processions
and 10,000 additional troops were brought into the city as reinforcements
29. As in the 1860s, the cities were the again principal object
of concern an d the need t o keep large numbers of troops stationed in them
made it all the more difficult to respond to rural disorder that began to occur
up and down the peninsula and its principal islands.
The recourse to the state of siege in 1894 and again in 1898 conformed
to the logic of relying on the army as the ultimate instrument of internai
policing. But the deployment of the army in 1894 and 1898 was not
necessarily exceptional and while it is true that the civil authorities and the
judiciary in Italy showed less strenuous opposition to the suspension of civil
law than in other European states, and that the Cassation court endorsed
the legality of the state of siege in 1894, the army was or could be used in
comparable circumstances in most European states in this period.
It was not so much that the army's role in urban policing in Italy was
unusual but that it was particularly visible, especially in moments of crisis.
Certainly the lack of alternative means of urban policing contributed to this,
but, it was by no means the case that the military authorities willingly embarked
on these duties. The relish that Generai Bava Beccaris showed for
his task in Milan in 1898 was less typical than the repugnance which his fellow
generals - Pelloux in Puglia and Heusch in the Lunigiana - showed when
they were forced to become policemen rather than soldiers.
It is also worth noting that neither Pelloux nor Heusch were prepared
to perform the essentially repressive and reactionary roles assigned them.
Both showed much deeper sensitivity than the ordinary policing officials
29 V. HUNECKE, op. cit.,, p. 367.