Mackey – Encyclopedia Of Freemasonry Vol. 1

THE CARBONARI175France, Italy, and other States, it gave rise to numerous andvarious sects, wherein we find the men of thought and thoseof action combining for one common object-the progress,as they understood it, of human society . Carbonarism, infact, was revived about the year 1825, and some ten yearsafter combined, or rather coalesced, with the society knownas Young Italy, whose aims were identical with those of theCarbonari-the expulsion of the foreigner from Italian soil,and the unification of Italy.The Duke of Modena had for some time coquettedwith the Carbonari, in the hope of obtaining through themthe sovereignty of the minor duchies, the kingdom of Sardiniaand the Lombardo-Venetian states, and had thusencouraged Menotti, the foremost patriot of Central Italy, .in counting on his help in driving out the foreigner . When,however, he found that France, on whose co-operation he hadrelied, would disappoint him, he abandoned the Carbonariand denounced them, but they compelled the Duke to flyto Mantua . They also drove Maria Louisa, the Duchess ofParma, and widow of Napoleon I., into exile . But theirtriumph lasted only twenty-eight days. At the end of thatperiod the Duke of Modena and the Duchess of Parmma wererestored by the assistance of Austrian troops, and the Dukecaused Menotti to be hanged . From that day the prisonsof Modena were filled with Italian patriots . Count CharlesArrivabene said of them, "No words,can give an idea of thehorrors of the prisons of Modena when I saw them . . . .Excepting the infamous dens of the Papal and Neapolitanstates, there is nothing that can be compared with them ."But Carbonarism continued to be at work under the nameof Unita Italiana, whose signs and passwords were madepublic by the prosecution it underwent at Naples in 1850 .562 . Carbonarisna and the Church .-The Carbonari in theRoman States aimed at the overthrow of the papal power,and chose the moment when the pope was expected to die tocarry out their scheme . They had collected large forces andprovisions at Macerata ; but the sudden recovery of the popeput a' stop to the enterprise . The leaders were betrayedinto the hands of the government, and some of them condemnedto death and others to perpetual imprisonment,though the pope afterwards commuted the sentences (558) .,563 . Carbonarism in Northern Italy.-In Lombardy andVenetia also the Carbonari had their lodges, and their objectwas the expulsion of the foreigner, the Austrian . The mostimportant and influential was the Italian Federation . But