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...an unequivocal social revolution, from which the reactionary class
of seigneurs emerged triumphant. The nobility had won for years to
come...
Fernand Braudel, “Le Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen”
SURPRISINGLY, THE CITY had experienced a genuine people’s revolt well over a hundred years before the French Revolution. Admittedly, it did not begin there. But in 1647 the initially successful rising at Naples led by Masaniello, the ‘Fisherman King’, had spread like wildfire all over Apulia, inspiring popular anti-Spanish and anti-feudal revolts of the same sort. They included a particularly serious one at Bari.
As the seventeenth century went by, life had become increasingly difficult for the Baresi of every class, especially for the poor. Like the rest of the Mediterranean, trade was suffering from Atlantic competition while at the same time there was a long running agricultural depression. All this was made worse by Spanish taxation. Fighting to keep their dominion over Western Europe, the Spaniards had run out of money and were draining dry what should have been the richest kingdom in their empire. During the later stages of the Thirty Years’ War Spanish troops were paid almost entirely from Southern Italian revenues.
The Regno’s public debt was astronomical, and everybody in Bari was in debt too: city, nobility and borghesi. So were the barons in the countryside of the Terra di Bari. The value of agricultural land, a large part of the capital of even Baresi merchants, fell steadily. However, the burden of taxation was born by the poorer classes.
The little city was governed by its nobles from the Palazzo dei Sedile in Piazza Maggiore. The sociable Abate Pacichelli carefully records some of their names: Affaitati, Boccapianoli, Cassamassimi, Doppoli, Gerundi, Izzinosi and Taurisani, “& altri”. They were largely exempt from taxation or service in the Spanish army, and often owned their own bakeries, avoiding the levies on public ba-keries. Despite the recession, life cannot have been too bad for most of them in their small but imposing palazzi – there were excellent shops where they could buy luxuries.
In contrast, crushing taxation on food was making life almost intolerable for the poor. An added misery was the press-ganging of young men for the Spanish armies while, at the same time, there was constant friction with the castle’s underpaid Spanish garrison, always prone to rob and rape. In 1641 riots had broken out in Bari against conscription, followed by riots against the price of food, mobs marching through the narrow streets and assaulting the better off. During the summer of 1647 it became clear that there was going to be a very bad harvest, which meant still higher prices for bread, at a moment when new taxes on food had just been introduced.
Even a hundred and fifty years later, the poorer Baresi normally lived in a single, smoke-filled basement room dug out of the rock, whose only light came from a small window at street level or from the door through which one stepped down, a dwelling shared with hens and a pig or sheep, sometimes with a horse or donkey as well. It was people inhabiting dens like these who bore most of the tax burden. The majority worked in the surrounding countryside beyond the walls, but this was becoming a very dangerous place indeed, since the barons were employing brigands as enforcers, and they were getting out of hand, robbing all and sundry.
To a limited extent the Baresi poor looked to the borghesi, who also had to pay swingeing taxes, for leadership. The borghesi had their own piazza or assembly of commoners, who argued endlessly with the nobles in Piazza Maggiore. But the nobles stayed in control of the city – for the moment. Meanwhile, the viceroy’s authority was collapsing. Some of the great magnates toyed with the idea of inviting the French to invade the Regno and free them from the by now detested Spanish regime. But then, sparked off by yet another new tax, on fruit, Masaniello’s rebellion broke out at Naples in July 1647.
Within days, a revolt had broken out at Bari. Led by a sailor called Paolo di Ribeco, mobs surged through the streets, attacking the palazzi of nobles and rich merchants, looting and setting fire to them. The Spanish garrison did nothing and within a short time Ribeco and the people were masters of the entire city save for the castle. They insisted on being represented in the assemblies of nobles and borghesi, and on the abolition of the most hated taxes. Al-though, as at Naples, the revolt was as much against the nobles and their privileges as against the Spaniards, the attack on Bari’s nobility seems to have been fairly restrained. It was different outside the city walls. There, the collapse of authority came just after an explosion of brigandage throughout the Terra di Bari and the peas-ants, driven beyond endurance, rose up savagely against brigands and barons.
In response, the Apulian nobles quickly forgot their resentment of Spanish rule, rallying to the viceroy. They were lucky in possessing two formidable soldiers in Giangirolamo, Count of Conversano and Fra’ Giovan Battista Caracciolo, Prior of the Knights of Malta at Bari. Within weeks their army of Spanish troops and baronial levies routed the main body of Apulian rebels near Foggia, though not without some vicious fighting. Meanwhile, borghesi who had supported the revolt at Bari lost their nerve amid the an-archy and bloodshed, surrendering the city to government forces as soon as they heard of the defeat at Foggia. Paolo di Ribeco died on the gallows.
Not much is known about what really happened inside Bari during the revolt (despite the efforts of that magnificent historian Rosario Villari). Even so, it seems obvious that the revolt never had any hope of succeeding. What we know for certain is that taxes were re-imposed at the old level, and that the city’s nobles regained their privileges.
The story of Paolo di Ribeco and his forgotten rising ought to be remembered by anyone who wants to understand the Baresi. They have always been rebels by temperament, as they would show again and again, not just in 1799, but in 1922 and in 1943.