Romantic nationalism and conspiracy: Carbonari, Mazzini, and the German Volksgeist

Opposition to the Restoration first organized underground. Carbonarism, or the Carboneria, emerged in the Kingdom of Naples around 1806-1807, structured into secret local cells called "vendite" bound by oaths and ritual symbolism borrowed partly from Freemasonry. By around 1820 it counted several hundred thousand members in the Two Sicilies, drawn mainly from army officers, liberal professionals, and the lesser nobility, and it played a decisive role in preparing the revolutions of 1820-1821 in Naples and Piedmont and of 1831 in the central duchies — all of which were crushed by Austrian military intervention authorized under the Holy Alliance. Giuseppe Mazzini, a young Genoese Carbonaro arrested in 1830, concluded from these repeated failures that conspiratorial secrecy without a clear political program could never succeed, and in July 1831, from exile in Marseille, he founded Young Italy (Giovine Italia).