Castello di Milazzo
The Castello di Milazzo is a castle and citadel in Milazzo, Sicily. It is located on the summit of a hill overlooking the town, on a site first fortified in the Neolithic era; the Greeks modified it into an acropolis, it was enlarged into a castrum by the Romans and Byzantines. The Arabs built a castle, further modified and enlarged during the Medieval and Early Modern periods, it is now in good condition, open to the public. The castle was built as a result of the strategic importance of the Milazzo peninsula, which commands the Gulf of Patti, the body of water that separates Sicily from the Aeolian Islands, it commands one of Sicily's most important natural harbours. The first fortifications on the site of the Castello di Milazzo were built in around 4000 BC, during the Neolithic; the Greeks built an acropolis in the 8th or 7th centuries BC, the Romans and Byzantines modified the site into a castrum. Ancient coins, including those of the Mamertines, have been found inside the castle's perimeter.
In around 843, the Arabs began to build a castle on the ruins of the Greek and Byzantine fortifications. The castle's keep dates back to this era; the castle was enlarged by the Swabians. The castle was extensively modified during the reign of Frederick II of Hohenstaufen. In 1295, the Sicilian Parliament met here. Between 1496 and 1508, the Aragonese built walls with six semi-circular bastions, encircling the original medieval castle, they were designed by the architect Baldiri Meteli. Between 1525 and 1540, the Spanish built bastioned fortifications around the Aragonese walls and the settlement which surrounded it, expanding the castle into a citadel; the new fortifications were designed by the military engineers Pietro Antonio Tomasello and Antonio Ferramolino. In 1577 by Tibúrcio Spannocchi and in 1585 there was a reconstruction by Camillo Camilliani and after by Pietro Novelli; some outworks were added in the 17th century. Several civil buildings began to be built within the walls of the castle, including the old cathedral and various palaces.
The castle was in Habsburg hands in the first half of the 18th century, before being taken over by the Bourbons. The latter retained the castle until they lost Milazzo to Giuseppe Garibaldi in 1860; the castle was subsequently converted into a prison in 1880, underwent a number of alterations. The prison closed in 1959 and the castle remained abandoned for a couple of decades. After many years of neglect and deterioration, the castle was restored between 1991 and 2002, again between 2008 and 2010. Today, it is open to the public. Although it is called a castle, the Castello di Milazzo is more a fortified town or citadel, since it housed several public and private edifices, such as a cathedral and a Benedictine convent; the citadel is located on top of a hill, which slopes towards the town and its harbour. The south-eastern side of the castle consists of several defensive walls, while its north-western side is protected by a natural cliff-face; the keep of the castle is the Torre Saracena, the oldest part of the fortification.
It was built either by the Arabs or the Normans, but like the rest of the castle, it was modified over the years until the 16th century. The keep is surrounded by walls with protruding square-shaped towers, which were built by the Swabians; these are in turn surrounded by the Aragonese Wall. The Aragonese Wall is surrounded by the 16th century Spanish Wall, which contains the following bastions: Bastione di Santa Maria – a semi-circular bastion at the southern end of the castle, containing the main entrance, it was named after a church dedicated to St. Mary, demolished to make way for the bastion. Bastione delle Isole – an arrow-shaped bastion at the eastern end of the castle, it was designed by Antonio Ferramolino, contains a number of countermines. The walls are protected by other outworks which were built in the 17th century. A gallery with a barrel vault leads to an internal courtyard, after, the Old Duomo, built from 1607; the Benedictine convent was built during the same period. The ruins of the Palazzo dei Giurati and of the older church of Santa Maria are present.
Micale, Antonino. Il Castello di Milazzo. Milazzo: Stes
Villafranca Tirrena
Villafranca Tirrena is a comune in the Metropolitan City of Messina in the Italian region Sicily, located about 180 kilometres east of Palermo and about 12 kilometres northwest of Messina. Villafranca Tirrena borders the following municipalities: Saponara. Official website
Ancient Greek
The Ancient Greek language includes the forms of Greek used in Ancient Greece and the ancient world from around the 9th century BCE to the 6th century CE. It is roughly divided into the Archaic period, Classical period, Hellenistic period, it is succeeded by medieval Greek. Koine is regarded as a separate historical stage of its own, although in its earliest form it resembled Attic Greek and in its latest form it approaches Medieval Greek. Prior to the Koine period, Greek of the classic and earlier periods included several regional dialects. Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athenian historians and philosophers, it has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been a standard subject of study in educational institutions of the Western world since the Renaissance. This article contains information about the Epic and Classical periods of the language. Ancient Greek was a pluricentric language, divided into many dialects; the main dialect groups are Attic and Ionic, Aeolic and Doric, many of them with several subdivisions.
Some dialects are found in standardized literary forms used in literature, while others are attested only in inscriptions. There are several historical forms. Homeric Greek is a literary form of Archaic Greek used in the epic poems, the "Iliad" and "Odyssey", in poems by other authors. Homeric Greek had significant differences in grammar and pronunciation from Classical Attic and other Classical-era dialects; the origins, early form and development of the Hellenic language family are not well understood because of a lack of contemporaneous evidence. Several theories exist about what Hellenic dialect groups may have existed between the divergence of early Greek-like speech from the common Proto-Indo-European language and the Classical period, they differ in some of the detail. The only attested dialect from this period is Mycenaean Greek, but its relationship to the historical dialects and the historical circumstances of the times imply that the overall groups existed in some form. Scholars assume that major Ancient Greek period dialect groups developed not than 1120 BCE, at the time of the Dorian invasion—and that their first appearances as precise alphabetic writing began in the 8th century BCE.
The invasion would not be "Dorian" unless the invaders had some cultural relationship to the historical Dorians. The invasion is known to have displaced population to the Attic-Ionic regions, who regarded themselves as descendants of the population displaced by or contending with the Dorians; the Greeks of this period believed there were three major divisions of all Greek people—Dorians and Ionians, each with their own defining and distinctive dialects. Allowing for their oversight of Arcadian, an obscure mountain dialect, Cypriot, far from the center of Greek scholarship, this division of people and language is quite similar to the results of modern archaeological-linguistic investigation. One standard formulation for the dialects is: West vs. non-west Greek is the strongest marked and earliest division, with non-west in subsets of Ionic-Attic and Aeolic vs. Arcadocypriot, or Aeolic and Arcado-Cypriot vs. Ionic-Attic. Non-west is called East Greek. Arcadocypriot descended more from the Mycenaean Greek of the Bronze Age.
Boeotian had come under a strong Northwest Greek influence, can in some respects be considered a transitional dialect. Thessalian had come under Northwest Greek influence, though to a lesser degree. Pamphylian Greek, spoken in a small area on the southwestern coast of Anatolia and little preserved in inscriptions, may be either a fifth major dialect group, or it is Mycenaean Greek overlaid by Doric, with a non-Greek native influence. Most of the dialect sub-groups listed above had further subdivisions equivalent to a city-state and its surrounding territory, or to an island. Doric notably had several intermediate divisions as well, into Island Doric, Southern Peloponnesus Doric, Northern Peloponnesus Doric; the Lesbian dialect was Aeolic Greek. All the groups were represented by colonies beyond Greece proper as well, these colonies developed local characteristics under the influence of settlers or neighbors speaking different Greek dialects; the dialects outside the Ionic group are known from inscriptions, notable exceptions being: fragments of the works of the poet Sappho from the island of Lesbos, in Aeolian, the poems of the Boeotian poet Pindar and other lyric poets in Doric.
After the conquests of Alexander the Great in the late 4th century BCE, a new international dialect known as Koine or Common Greek developed based on Attic Greek, but with influence from other dialects. This dialect replaced most of the older dialects, although Doric dialect has survived in the Tsakonian language, spoken in the region of modern Sparta. Doric has passed down its aorist terminations into most verbs of Demotic Greek. By about the 6th century CE, the Koine had metamorphosized into Medieval Greek. Ancient Macedonian was an Indo-European language at least related to Greek, but its exact relationship is unclear because of insufficient data: a dialect of Greek; the Macedonian dialect (or l
Catania
Catania is the second largest city of Sicily after Palermo located on the east coast facing the Ionian Sea. It is the capital of the Metropolitan City of Catania, one of the ten biggest cities in Italy, the seventh largest metropolitan area in Italy; the population of the city proper is 320,000 while the population of the city's metropolitan area, Metropolitan City of Catania, stood at 1,116,168 inhabitants. Catania was destroyed by catastrophic earthquakes in 1169 and 1693, by several volcanic eruptions from the neighbouring Mount Etna, the most violent of, in 1669. Catania was founded in the 8th century BC by Chalcidians. In 1434, the first university in Sicily was founded in the city. In the 14th century and into the Renaissance period, Catania was one of Italy's most important cultural and political centres; the city is noted for its history, culture and gastronomy. Its old town, besides being one of the biggest examples of baroque architecture in Italy, is a World Heritage Site, protected by UNESCO.
Catania has been a native or adoptive homeland of some of Italy's most famous artists and writers, including composers Vincenzo Bellini and Giovanni Pacini, writers Giovanni Verga, Luigi Capuana, Federico De Roberto and Nino Martoglio. The city is the main industrial and commercial center of Sicily, it is the home of the largest in Southern Italy. The ancient indigenous population of the Sicels named their villages after geographical attributes of their location; the Sicilian word, means "grater, flaying knife, skinning place" or a "crude tool apt to pare". Other translations of the name are "harsh lands", "uneven ground", "sharp stones", or "rugged or rough soil"; the latter etymologies are justifiable since, for many centuries following an eruption, the city has always been rebuilt within its black-lava landscape. Around 729 BC, the ancient village of Katane became the Chalcidian colony of Katánē where the native population was Hellenized; the Naxian founders, coming from the adjacent coast used the name for their new settlement along the River Amenano.
Around 263 BC, the city was variously known as Catăna. The former has been used for its supposed assonance with catina, the Latin feminization of the name catinus. Catinus has two meanings: "a gulf, a basin or a bay" and "a bowl, a vessel or a trough", thanks to the city’s distinctive topography. Around 900, when Catania was part of the emirate of Sicily, it was known in Arabic as Balad al-fīl and Madinat al-fīl; the former means "The Village of the Elephant", while the latter means "The City of the Elephant". The Elephant is the lava sculpture over the fountain in Piazza Duomo. Most a prehistoric sculpture, reforged during the Byzantine Era, it appears to be a talisman, reputedly powerful enough to protect the city from enemies and to keep away misfortune, plagues, or natural calamities. Another Arab toponym was Qaṭāniyyah from the Arabic word for the "leguminous plants". Pulses like lentils, peas, broad beans, lupins were chiefly cultivated in the plains around the city well before the arrival of Aghlabids.
Afterwards, many Arabic agronomists developed these crops and the citrus orchards in the area around the city. The toponym Wadi Musa, or "Valley of Moses", was used. Catania is located at the foot of Mount Etna; as observed by Strabo, the location of Catania at the foot of Mount Etna has been both a curse and a blessing. On the one hand, violent outbursts of the volcano throughout history have destroyed large parts of the city, whilst on the other hand the volcanic ashes yield fertile soil suited for the growth of vines. Two subterranean rivers run under the city; the Köppen Climate Classification subtype for this climate is "Csa". It has one of the hottest in the whole country of Italy. Temperatures of 40 °C are surpassed every year a couple of times,Winters are mild with chilly nights. Most of precipitation is concentrated from October to March, leaving late spring and summer dry; the city receives around 500 millimetres of rain per year, although the amount can vary from year to year. During winter nights lows can go under 0 °C.
Highs under 10 °C can happen during winter. Snow, due to the presence of Etna that protects the city from the northern winds, is an uncommon occurrence, but occasional snow flurries have been seen over the recent years in the hilly districts, more substantial in the northern hinterland. More light snowfalls occurred on 9 February 2015, 6 January 2017 and 5 January 2019, but the last heavy snowfall dates back to 17 December 1988; as of January 2015, there are 315.601 people residing in Catania, of whom 47.2% are male and 52.8% are female. Minors totalled 20.50 percent of the population compared to pensioners. This compares with the Italian average of 19.94 percent. The average age of Catania residents is 41 compared to the Italian average of 42. In the five
Messina
Messina is the capital of the Italian Metropolitan City of Messina. It is the third largest city on the island of Sicily, the 13th largest city in Italy, with a population of more than 238,000 inhabitants in the city proper and about 650,000 in the Metropolitan City, it is located near the northeast corner of Sicily, at the Strait of Messina, opposite Villa San Giovanni on the mainland, has close ties with Reggio Calabria. According to Eurostat the FUA of the metropolitan area of Messina has, in 2014, 277,584 inhabitants; the city's main resources are its seaports, cruise tourism and agriculture. The city has been a Roman Catholic Archdiocese and Archimandrite seat since 1548 and is home to a locally important international fair; the city has the University of Messina, founded in 1548 by Ignatius of Loyola. Messina has a light rail system, Tranvia di Messina, opened on 3 April 2003; this line is 7.7 kilometres and links the city's central railway station with the city centre and harbour. The city is home to a significant Greek-speaking minority, rooted in its history and recognised.
Founded by Greek colonists in the 8th century BC, Messina was called Zancle, from the Greek ζάγκλον meaning "scythe" because of the shape of its natural harbour. A comune of its Metropolitan City, located at the southern entrance of the Strait of Messina, is to this day called'Scaletta Zanclea'. In the early 5th century BC, Anaxilas of Rhegium renamed it Messene in honour of the Greek city Messene; the city was sacked in 397 BC by the Carthaginians and reconquered by Dionysius I of Syracuse. In 288 BC the Mamertines seized the city by treachery, killing all the men and taking the women as their wives; the city became a base from which they ravaged the countryside, leading to a conflict with the expanding regional empire of Syracuse. Hiero II, tyrant of Syracuse, defeated the Mamertines near Mylae on the Longanus River and besieged Messina. Carthage assisted the Mamertines because of a long-standing conflict with Syracuse over dominance in Sicily; when Hiero attacked a second time in 264 BC, the Mamertines petitioned the Roman Republic for an alliance, hoping for more reliable protection.
Although reluctant to assist lest it encourage other mercenary groups to mutiny, Rome was unwilling to see Carthaginian power spread further over Sicily and encroach on Italy. Rome therefore entered into an alliance with the Mamertines. In 264 BC, Roman troops were deployed to Sicily, the first time a Roman army acted outside the Italian Peninsula. At the end of the First Punic War it was a free city. In Roman times Messina known as Messana, had an important pharos. Messana was the base of Sextus Pompeius, during his war against Octavian. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the city was successively ruled by Goths from 476 by the Byzantine Empire in 535, by the Arabs in 842, in 1061 by the Norman brothers Robert Guiscard and Roger Guiscard. In 1189 the English King Richard I stopped at Messina en route to the Holy Land for the Third Crusade and occupied the city after a dispute over the dowry of his sister, married to William the Good, King of Sicily. In 1345 Orlando d'Aragona, illegitimate son of Frederick II of Sicily was the strategos of Messina.
Messina may have been the harbour at which the Black Death entered Europe: the plague was brought by Genoese ships coming from Caffa in the Crimea. In 1548 St. Ignatius founded there the first Jesuit college in the world, which gave birth to the Studium Generale; the Christian ships that won the Battle of Lepanto left from Messina: the Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes, who took part in the battle, recovered for some time in the Grand Hospital. The city reached the peak of its splendour in the early 17th century, under Spanish domination: at the time it was one of the ten greatest cities in Europe. In 1674 the city rebelled against the foreign garrison, it managed to remain independent for some time, thanks to the help of the French king Louis XIV, but in 1678, with the Peace of Nijmegen, it was reconquered by the Spaniards and sacked: the university, the senate and all the privileges of autonomy it had enjoyed since the Roman times were abolished. A massive fortress was built by the occupants and Messina decayed steadily.
In 1743, 48,000 died of plague in the city. In 1783, an earthquake devastated much of the city, it took decades to rebuild and rekindle the cultural life of Messina. In 1847 it was one of the first cities in Italy. In 1848 it rebelled against the reigning Bourbons, but was suppressed again. Only in 1860, after the Battle of Milazzo, the Garibaldine troops occupied the city. One of the main figures of the unification of Italy, Giuseppe Mazzini, was elected deputy at Messina in the general elections of 1866. Another earthquake of less intensity damaged the city on 16 November 1894; the city was entirely destroyed by an earthquake and associated tsunami on the morning of 28 December 1908, killing about 100,000 people and destroying most of the ancient architecture. The city was rebuilt in the following year, it incurred further damage from the massive Allied air bombardments of 1943. The city was awarded a Gold Medal for Military Valour and one for Civil Valour in memory of the event and the subsequent effort
Italy
Italy the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe. Located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, Italy shares open land borders with France, Austria and the enclaved microstates San Marino and Vatican City. Italy covers an area of 301,340 km2 and has a temperate seasonal and Mediterranean climate. With around 61 million inhabitants, it is the fourth-most populous EU member state and the most populous country in Southern Europe. Due to its central geographic location in Southern Europe and the Mediterranean, Italy has been home to a myriad of peoples and cultures. In addition to the various ancient peoples dispersed throughout modern-day Italy, the most famous of which being the Indo-European Italics who gave the peninsula its name, beginning from the classical era and Carthaginians founded colonies in insular Italy and Genoa, Greeks established settlements in the so-called Magna Graecia, while Etruscans and Celts inhabited central and northern Italy respectively; the Italic tribe known as the Latins formed the Roman Kingdom in the 8th century BC, which became a republic with a government of the Senate and the People.
The Roman Republic conquered and assimilated its neighbours on the peninsula, in some cases through the establishment of federations, the Republic expanded and conquered parts of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. By the first century BC, the Roman Empire emerged as the dominant power in the Mediterranean Basin and became the leading cultural and religious centre of Western civilisation, inaugurating the Pax Romana, a period of more than 200 years during which Italy's technology, economy and literature flourished. Italy remained the metropole of the Roman Empire; the legacy of the Roman Empire endured its fall and can be observed in the global distribution of culture, governments and the Latin script. During the Early Middle Ages, Italy endured sociopolitical collapse and barbarian invasions, but by the 11th century, numerous rival city-states and maritime republics in the northern and central regions of Italy, rose to great prosperity through shipping and banking, laying the groundwork for modern capitalism.
These independent statelets served as Europe's main trading hubs with Asia and the Near East enjoying a greater degree of democracy than the larger feudal monarchies that were consolidating throughout Europe. The Renaissance began in Italy and spread to the rest of Europe, bringing a renewed interest in humanism, science and art. Italian culture flourished, producing famous scholars and polymaths such as Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and Machiavelli. During the Middle Ages, Italian explorers such as Marco Polo, Christopher Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, John Cabot and Giovanni da Verrazzano discovered new routes to the Far East and the New World, helping to usher in the European Age of Discovery. Italy's commercial and political power waned with the opening of trade routes that bypassed the Mediterranean. Centuries of infighting between the Italian city-states, such as the Italian Wars of the 15th and 16th centuries, left the region fragmented, it was subsequently conquered and further divided by European powers such as France and Austria.
By the mid-19th century, rising Italian nationalism and calls for independence from foreign control led to a period of revolutionary political upheaval. After centuries of foreign domination and political division, Italy was entirely unified in 1871, establishing the Kingdom of Italy as a great power. From the late 19th century to the early 20th century, Italy industrialised, namely in the north, acquired a colonial empire, while the south remained impoverished and excluded from industrialisation, fuelling a large and influential diaspora. Despite being one of the main victors in World War I, Italy entered a period of economic crisis and social turmoil, leading to the rise of a fascist dictatorship in 1922. Participation in World War II on the Axis side ended in military defeat, economic destruction and the Italian Civil War. Following the liberation of Italy and the rise of the resistance, the country abolished the monarchy, reinstated democracy, enjoyed a prolonged economic boom and, despite periods of sociopolitical turmoil became a developed country.
Today, Italy is considered to be one of the world's most culturally and economically advanced countries, with the sixth-largest worldwide national wealth. Its advanced economy ranks eighth-largest in the world and third in the Eurozone by nominal GDP. Italy owns the third-largest central bank gold reserve, it has a high level of human development, it stands among the top countries for life expectancy. The country plays a prominent role in regional and global economic, military and diplomatic affairs. Italy is a founding and leading member of the European Union and a member of numerous international institutions, including the UN, NATO, the OECD, the OSCE, the WTO, the G7, the G20, the Union for the Mediterranean, the Council of Europe, Uniting for Consensus, the Schengen Area and many more; as a reflection
Expedition of the Thousand
The Expedition of the Thousand was an event of the Italian Risorgimento that took place in 1860. A corps of volunteers led by Giuseppe Garibaldi sailed from Quarto, near Genoa and landed in Marsala, Sicily in order to conquer the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, ruled by the House of Bourbon-Two Sicilies; the project was an ambitious and risky venture aiming to conquer, with a thousand men, a kingdom with a larger regular army and a more powerful navy. The expedition was a success and concluded with a plebiscite that brought Naples and Sicily into the Kingdom of Sardinia, the last territorial conquest before the creation of the Kingdom of Italy on 17 March 1861; the sea venture was the only desired action, jointly decided by the "four fathers of the nation" Giuseppe Mazzini, Giuseppe Garibaldi, Victor Emmanuel II, Camillo Cavour, pursuing divergent goals. However, the Expedition was instigated by Francesco Crispi, who utilized his political influence to bolster the Italian unification project; the various groups participated in the expedition for a variety of reasons: for Garibaldi, it was to achieve a united Italy.
The events of the Expedition took place within the overall process of the unification of Italy, orchestrated by Camillo Cavour, Prime Minister of Sardinia-Piedmont, as his life's work. After the annexation of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, the Duchies of Modena and Parma and the Romagna to Piedmont in March 1860, Italian nationalists set their sights on the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, which comprised all of southern mainland Italy and Sicily, as the next step toward their dream of unification of all Italian lands. In 1860 Garibaldi the most famous Italian revolutionary leader, was in Genoa planning an expedition against Sicily and Naples, with the covert support of the United Kingdom. Sicilian leaders, among them Francesco Crispi, were discontented with Neapolitan rule over the island. Moreover, Britain was worried by the approaches of the Neapolitans towards the Russian Empire in the latter's attempt to open its way to the Mediterranean Sea, it has been suggested that British support for Garibaldi's expedition was spurred by the necessity to obtain more favourable economic conditions for Sicilian sulfur, needed in great quantities for munitions.
The Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont needed a presentable casus belli in order to attack the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. This was needed for the House of Savoy, which however never gave any declaration of war against the Bourbon kingdom, a necessary condition, since this was among the requirements presented to Cavour; the only occurrence that would have satisfied this requirement was an uprising from within. Such an event would have felt the alienation of the people to the dynasty that ruled in Naples and the inability of Francis of Bourbon, to ensure, in forms acceptable public policy in their domains. Sicily, as shown by the history of the past decades, was fertile ground, the liberal south those returning after an amnesty granted by the young King, who worked in this direction for some time. In March 1860, exile Rosolino Pilo exhorted Giuseppe Garibaldi to take charge of an expedition to liberate Southern Italy from Bourbon rule. At first, Garibaldi was against it, but agreed. By May 1860, Garibaldi had collected 1,089 volunteers for his expedition to Sicily.
The largest number of volunteers came from Lombardy, Other significant numbers of volunteers came from occupied Venetia and Tuscany. There were about 45 Sicilian volunteers and 46 Neapolitan volunteers—but only 11 from Rome and the Papal States. 33 foreigners joined the expedition, amongst them István Türr and three other Hungarians and 14 Italians from the Trentino of the Austrian Empire. The majority of the volunteers were artisans from the lower classes; the 1,089 volunteers were poorly armed with dated muskets and were dressed in a minimalist uniform—consisting of a red shirt and grey trousers. During the night of 5 May, a small group led by Nino Bixio "seized" two steamships in Genoa from the Rubattino shipping company in order to transport the volunteers to Sicily, they took the two ships, which they had renamed Il Piemonte and Il Lombardo, to the nearby rocks at Quarto dei Mille, where the volunteers embarked for Sicily. The ships landed at Marsala, on the westernmost point of Sicily, on 11 May, with the help of British ships present in the harbour to deter the Bourbon ships.
The Lombardo was attacked and sunk only after the disembarkation had been completed, while the Piemonte was captured. The landing had been preceded by the arrival of Francesco Crispi and others, who had the task of gaining the support of the locals for the volunteers. On 14 May, at Salemi, Garibaldi announced that he was assuming dictatorship over Sicily in the name of King Victor Emmanuel II of Sardinia; the Mille won a first battle at Calatafimi against around 2,000 Neapolitan troops on 15 May. The battle boosted the morale of the Mille and, at the same time, depressed the Neapolitans, who were poorly led by their corrupted higher officers, started to feel themselves abandoned. Having promised land to every male who volunteered to fight against the Bourb
.svg)
