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44 VIOLENCE AND THE LABOR MOVEMENT
old chateau of Castel del Monte, which had been chosen
as the rendezvous. "Many hundreds of conspirators,"
Malatesta recounts, "had promised to meet at Castel del
Monte. I arrived, but of all those who had sworn to be
there we found ourselves six. No matter. We opened
the box of arms and found it was filled with old percussion
guns, but that made no difference. We armed
ourselves and declared war on the Italian army. We
roamed the country for some days, trying to gain over
the peasants, but meeting with no response. The second
on us and
day we met eight carabinieri, who opened
fire
imagined that we were very numerous. Three days
later we discovered that we were surrounded by soldiers.
There remained only one thing to do. We buried the
guns and decided to disperse. I hid myself in a load of
hay, and thus succeeded in escaping from the dangerous
region." (24) An attempt at insurrection also took
place in Romagna, but it appears to have 'been limited
to cutting the telegraph wires between Bologna and
Imola.
Back of all the Italian riots lay a serious economic
condition. The peasants were in very deep distress, and
it was not difficult for the Bakouninists to stir them to
revolt. The Bulletin of the Jura Federation of August
16 informs us: "During the last two years there have
been about sixty riots produced by hunger ; but the rioters,
in their ignorance, only bore a grudge against the
immediate monopolists, and did not know how to discern
the fundamental causes of their misery." (25) This is
all too plainly shown in the events of 1874. Beyond giving
the Bakouninists a chance to play at revolution, there
is little significance in the Italian uprisings of that year.
The failure of the various insurrections in France,
Spain, and Italy was, naturally enough, discouraging to