In January of 1848, a mysterious poster appeared on the walls of Palermo announcing a revolution set to coincide with the king’s birthday. In fact, no insurrection had been planned, but the curious crowds that descended on the central squares to catch a glimpse of one provided the conditions for an actual uprising as troops moved in to clear public spaces.
Here as elsewhere the old regime was not completely unprepared: If the Spanish Bourbon king Ferdinand II was unpopular, he had plenty of ships, cannons and soldiers to make up for it. “The strangest thing about the uprising,” writes the Cambridge historian Christopher Clark in his new book, “Revolutionary Spring,” “is that it was ultimately successful.” The breadth of social resistance — from Palermitan gentry and liberal lawyers to armed artisans and peasant squadre — made a purely military solution impracticable. As protests spread to Naples, Ferdinand appeared to retreat, promising a constitution.