The Mystery of Michelina, the Italian Brigantessa

 

The story of the Italian Brigands who fought the Piedmontese army in the 1860s is little known outside Italy and even in Italy it is being rediscovered only now. One of the protagonists of the Brigands' war was Michelina De Cesare ( (1841-1868) known as La Brigantessa (the brigand woman). Over the years, she became an icon of martyrdom for the independence of Southern Italy. But her story is somewhat of a mystery: many things said about her just do not fit together. Who was she, exactly?

If you are not familiar with Italian history, what you need to know about the Southern Brigands is that Italy was turned into a single state in 1860s, after a successful campaign of the Northern Kingdom of Piedmont against the Kingdom of Naples. It was quick and brutal and the King of Naples fled after a token resistance. Then, the remnants of the Neapolitan army were left without leaders. Some of them took to the woods, trying to continue the fight against the Piedmontese invaders. Their attempt was doomed from the beginning: they had no money, no support, no allies. But their resistance lasted for about ten years until it was quelled by a brutal repression, aided by a propaganda campaign that painted them as bandits and murderers. All normal things in history.

But the insurrection of the 1860s had a characteristic that made it special: it was one of the first wars in history for which we have a photographic record. It was not the first: this record goes to the Crimean war, about 10 years before. But, in Crimea, photographers still didn't know very well how to deal with chronicling a war. All we have are stiff and uninteresting photos of battlefields and people in uniform. Instead, in the 1860s, photographers had learned a lot and they were injecting drama and interest in their photos. 

So, we have hundreds of photos of the protagonists of that desperate war. All were taken from the Piedmontese side: as far as we know, the brigands had no photographers. But the Piedmontese photographers delighted in showing the brigands. There was a brisk market for these photos. After that the brigands were captured, they were given back their weapons (obviously not loaded) and then posed with their guns as if they were still fighting. You can see an example in this picture -- these men are clearly posing for the photographer. Sometimes, they were shot immediately after that the picture was taken. 

There was also a streak of necrophilia in these photos: photos of dead brigands were popular and, apparently, appreciated. You see here the photo of a Piedmontese "Bersagliere," who pulls up the head of a dead brigand for a better portrait. These pictures were printed as postcards and sent by the Piedmontese soldiers to their families. 

And then, there were the brigantesse. The women of the brigands sometimes just followed their men in the woods, and sometimes they fought themselves. Also in this case, the Northern photographers loved to pose these exotic ladies with their (unloaded) weapons. They were rarely executed after capture, but sometimes killed in battle. On the left, we have the photo of two of them, identified as Arcangela Cotugno and Elisabetta Blasucci. They are clearly posing after having been captured. A more realistic photo is this one of Maria Capitanio, said to have been taken just after she was captured. She is wearing male clothes and she is clearly shocked and in distress. 

Finally, there was Michelina de Cesare. She may have been a real brigantessa, but she looks like a fashion model. 

She wears a beautiful dress while carrying a shotgun (a "scupetta"), a revolver, and a dagger. She is clearly posing, showing an appropriately truculent expression. Somehow, she doesn't look like a real brigantessa. She is too perfect, she has too many weapons. But there is more: a picture of her in death. 

This image is sad enough in itself, but if you search on the Web, you can find the full picture of Michelina stripped naked after having been killed. But something is wrong, here. 

The army report that we have about the death of Michelina says that in 1868 she was found by a Piedmontese patrol while she was trying to hide in the woods with her husband, Francesco Guerra. He was immediately killed in the ensuing fight. She was wounded but she ran away, and was shot dead shortly afterwards by another Piedmontese patrol. The report does not say what happened of her body.

You see what is the problem, here. If she was killed in the woods, who took the pictures of her posing as a brigantessa? Were they taken before she was captured? But would Michelina leave her refuge in the wood to risk posing for a Piedmontese photographer? Could it be that she was killed much later after being captured, and that there was time to pose and photograph her? At least unlikely, because she was reported to have been wounded, and she doesn't look sick or wounded in the photos. And, finally, is the dead woman really the same woman who poses with her weapons in the pictures of Michelina? Could be, but it is impossible to say that with certainty. 

My personal impression from what I could read is that there really was a historical Michelina de Cesare who married the brigand Francesco Guerra and was killed with him in the woods in 1868. And the dead woman in the picture is really her -- stripped naked and humiliated after death. But the yielding woman of the pictures is not Michelina. She is just someone who vaguely looks like the dead woman of the picture and who was hired to pose as Michelina. Possibly, it was an attempt to hide something that would not have been good for the image of the Piedmontese government, despite the necrophiliac tastes of the Northern Italian public. Or, more simply, it was a scam to make a little money on the brisk market of brigand pictures. 

We will never know for sure. But, whatever it happened, Michelina de Cesare was a brave fighter who died for something she believed was true and just. And we can remember her in this way. There is even a modern song in honor of Michelina. Her memory deserves nothing less than that.