The counter-order suspending the extradition arriving too late, the political refugee is expelled on the sly. Imprisoned in the “dungeons of tyranny”, he was saved by the Revolution of 1830, and returned to Corsica in exile.
On December 4, 1828, as he was walking quietly through the streets of Ajaccio, Antonio Galotti, a Neapolitan political refugee, saw two gendarmes armed with sabers approaching him, urging him to follow him to the barracks. Galotti replies that he has nothing to do with it, the gendarmes go to seize him, but he hits one of them and runs away, before being stopped in his race. Driven to the King’s Prosecutor, Mr. Cugno, Antonio Galotti says his name is Antoine Russo of Naples. Having no papers to prove it, he was immediately taken to prison.
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On the morning of December 5, handcuffed Galotti was taken to the examining magistrate and then introduced to the public prosecutor to whom he told his true story without witnesses: “I am Galotti and not Antoine Russo, as I said. My only offense is to have proclaimed the French Constitution”, he confesses, referring to the latest events in Naples, in this case the bloody revolt in Cilento. (1 and following). On the report of the prosecutor of Ajaccio, the prosecutor general of Bastia orders the release of Galotti who intervenes on the morning of the 16th.
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However, when he leaves, Galotti learns that he was not arrested as a rebel, but as a brigand. On the 17th, in Prefect Angelier’s office, he wanted to wash his honor: “My crime is to have always had liberal sentiments, and to have proclaimed the French Constitution in the province of Salerno. Fortune having betrayed me, I fled to this hospitable land … If I am not persecuted that to have been one of the liberators of my homeland, France must protect me. “ Galotti in fact took part in 1828 in a popular uprising known as the Cilento revolt, tamed by the fierce repression of the Marquis Francesco Saverio de Carretto. The heads of those condemned to death were displayed in iron cages and taken to the squares. The village of Bosco, which had welcomed the insurgents with joy, was burned and razed to the ground with a ban on rebuilding it. A few insurgents, including Galotti, managed to escape.
Prefect Angelier gives his word to Galotti that he “would no longer be harassed,” but asks him to appear at City Hall twice a week. For four months, the refugee, integrated into the population, is forgotten. Then, abruptly, the attitude of the authorities changes: “On April 22, I introduced myself to the mayor, as usual; on leaving I found the marshal-des-logis who said to me ‘in the name of the King you are my prisoner.'” He is handcuffed and thrown in prison where the outraged residents visit him. On April 27, the gendarmes tied his arms with a rope to transfer him to Bastia. And in the evening, Galotti sleeps in a dungeon in Bocognano.
On May 2, Galotti meets Vice-Consul Lambruschini to whom he remonstrates strongly: “May I be punished,” I said, “if I am a criminal, but France cannot hand over a political outlaw. Lambruschini assured me of his protection, and it was he who meditated on my loss …” Meanwhile, lawyer Semidei is pleading Galotti’s case in Paris by sending five briefs, one to MP Tiburce Sebastiani.
Lafayette: “That we make
Galotti on the ground of France “
The lawyer Semidei imagines a way to keep Galotti in Corsica. Simulating a debt to the merchant Santelli, Galotti will sign a bill of exchange for 4,500 francs. Unable to appear in person before the commercial court, he authorizes his lawyer to act, while remaining in prison until the debt is cleared. But time is running out.
On April 22, a Neapolitan brig arrived in Bastia. “My creditor immediately sent a protest to the vice-consul, the commander of the gendarmerie and the sub-prefect Petriconi, who, full of justice, and wanting to oppose my departure, informed the prefect of Ajaccio that there was against me a judgment of the commercial court for a contracted debt. “
But with the prefect absent, the secretary general prefers to wait for the minister’s orders. Lawyer Semidei wrote to MPs and the Home Secretary to claim the effect of the conviction he had obtained in commercial court.
“My extradition had been obtained from the French government, but a counter-order was eagerly awaited in Corsica to suspend execution. It came the day after my departure! Lambruschini had sent a double report to the government via Livorno. from Naples on my arrest, and had asked that I should be taken away as soon as possible, because the brave Corsicans were working for my deliverance. “
But Prefect Angelier, canceling the Secretary-General’s order, handed Galotti over “to his executioners.” “Three days after his arrival at Bastia, the prefect, still in concert with Lambruschini, and the commander of the brick, Mr. Letterio Longo, ordered me to embark at night … If I had been embarked during the day, the people would have saved me, and they would have saved me too, if they had suspected that I had to be embarked at night … On leaving, I threw on Corsica a look that I thought was the last. “ Galotti leaves Bastia on the night of May 29. Thirty-six hours later the brig arrived in Naples. Galotti is transferred to Salerno where he is to be executed. At the Minister of Police, he finds himself face to face with Carretto, the repression orderer. After questioning, Galotti is locked in the “darkest dungeon” where he awaits his last hour.
The affair ignites the debates of the National Assembly. For Benjamin Constant, “Galotti was on our soil, the soil hitherto protective of France.” For Lafayette, “There has been an attack on French honor … Galotti must be requested again, demanded, that he be so vigorously and that he be returned to French soil.”
Embarrassed, Charles X’s government reports that he was misled, as Galotti’s crimes were presented to him as “ordinary.” However, the prefect of Corsica did “consume the extradition,” while knowing that the counter-order was to arrive the next day.
Finally, in 1830, Charles X abdicated and the July Monarchy delivered Antonio Galotti after sixteen months of detention in the “dungeons of tyranny”. On October 4, François 1is, King of Naples, commutes his death sentence to “a sentence of ten years of relegation to an island in the kingdom, then to a sentence of exile.”
Galotti finds Corsica with extreme joy. Landing in Porto-Vecchio, he was acclaimed in Ajaccio and then in Bastia. In his “Speech to the Heroes of July” published in the newspapers, he writes, lost in gratitude: “Thanks to the revolution of 1830, I live, and I am allowed to hug in my arms and on my heart these generous men who moaned about my extradition.”
(1 et seq.) Memoirs of A. Galotti written by himself. Translated by S. Vecchiarelli, Italian refugee. Paris 1831.
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