BRIGANDAGE. The brigand is the outlaw who con ducts warfare by skirmishes and surprises; who makes the war support itself by plunder, by extorting blackmail, by capturing prisoners and holding them to ransom ; who enforces his demands by violence, and kills the prisoners who cannot pay. Brigandage may be, and not infrequently has been, the last resource of a people subject to invasion. Italy and Spain suffered for a long time from the disorder developed out of the popular resistance to the Napoleonic invasions. Numbers of guerilla warriors of both countries, who in normal conditions might have been honest, had acquired a preference for living by brigandage, which they could not resign when the enemy had retired, The conditions which favour the development of brigandage may be easily summed up. They are : first, bad administration; and, in a less degree, the possession of convenient hiding-places. But no forest, thicket nor mountain is a lasting protection against a good police, used with intelligence by the Government, and supported by the law-abiding part of the community. The great haunts of brigands in Europe have been central and southern Italy and the worst administered parts of Spain, except those which fell into the hands of the Moors. Such curable evils as the highwaymen of England, and their like in the United States, are not to be compared with the "1?corcheurs," or Skinners, of France in the 15th century, or the "Chauffeurs" of the revolution ary epoch. The first were large bands of discharged mercenary soldiers who pillaged the country. The second were ruffians who forced their victims to pay ransom by holding their feet in fires. Both flourished because the Government was for the time dis organized by foreign invasion or by revolution.
The brigandage of Greece, southern Italy, Corsica and Spain had deep roots, and has never been quite suppressed. All f our countries are well provided with natural hiding-places. In all the Administration has been bad, the law and its officers have been regarded as dangers, if not as deliberate enemies, so that they have found little native help, and, what is not the least important cause of the persistence of brigandage, there have generally been local potentates who found it to their interest to protect the brigand. In 1870 an English party, consisting of Lord and Lady Muncaster, Mr. Vyner, Mr. Lloyd, Mr. Herbert and Count de Boyl, was captured at Oropos, near Marathon, and a ransom of L25,000 was demanded. Lord and Lady Muncaster were set at liberty to seek for ransom, but the Greek Govern ment sent troops in pursuit of the brigands, and the other prison ers were then murdered. The scoundrels were hunted down, caught and executed. In Aug. 1928 two former Greek deputies, M. M. Meles and Milonas, were captured by brigands in Epirus and ransomed for a considerable sum. In the Balkans, under Turk ish rule, brigandage continued to exist in connection with the Chris tian revolt against the Turk, and the race conflicts of Albanians, Walachians, Pomuks, Bulgarians and Greeks. In Corsica the "maquis" has never been without its brigand hero, because in dustry has been stagnant, family feuds persist, and the Govern ment has never quite succeeded in persuading the people to support the law. The brigand is always a hero to at least one faction of Corsicans.
The conditions which favour brigandage have been more prev alent, and for longer, in Italy than elsewhere in western Europe, with the standing exception of Corsica, which is Italian in all but political allegiance. Until the middle of the i9th century Italy was divided into small States, so that the brigand who was closely pursued in one could flee to another. Thus it was that Marco Sciarra of the Abruzzi, when hard-pressed by the Spanish viceroy of Naples—just before and after i600—could cross the border of the papal States and return on a favourable opportunity. When Pope and viceroy combined against him, he took service with Venice, whence he could communicate with his friends at home, and pay them occasional visits. On one such visit he was led into a trap and slain. Marco Sciarra had terrorized the country far and wide at the head of 600 men. He was the follower and imitator of Benedetto Mangone, of whom it is recorded that, having stopped a party of travellers which included Torquato Tasso, he allowed them to pass unharmed out of his reverence for poets and poetry. Mangone was finally taken, and beaten to death with hammers at Naples. He and his like are the heroes of much popular verse, written in ottava rims and beginning with the traditional epic invocation to the muse.
In Naples the Bourbon dynasty reduced brigandage very much, and secured order on the main high-roads. But it was not ex tinguished, and it revived during the French invasion. When Ferdinand was restored on the fall of Napoleon, he employed an English officer, Gen. Sir Richard Church, to suppress the brigands. Gen. Church, who kept good order among his soldiers, and who made them pay for everything, gained the confidence of the peasantry, and restored a fair measure of security. It was he who finally brought to justice the villainous Don Ciro Anicchi arico—priest and brigand—who declared at his trial with offhand indifference that he supposed he had murdered about 7o people.
Every successive revolutionary disturbance in Naples saw a recrudescence of brigandage down to the unification of 186o-61, and then it was years before the Italian Government rooted it out. The source of the trouble was the support the brigands received from various kinds of manutengoli (maintainers)—great men, corrupt officials, political parties, and peasants who were terrorized, or who profited by selling the brigands food and clothes. What is true of Naples is true of other parts of Italy mutatis mutandis.
The history of brigandage in Spain is very similar. It may be said to have been endemic in and south of the Sierra Morena. In the north it has flourished when Government was weak, and after foreign invasion and civil wars. But it has always been put down easily by a capable Administration. It reached its greatest heights in Catalonia, where it began in the strife of the peasants against the feudal exactions of the landlords. It had its traditional hero, Roque Guinart, who figures in the second part of Don Quixote. The revolt against the house of Austria in 164o, and the War of the Succession (r 7 oo-14), gave a great stimulus to Catalan brigandage. But it was then put down in a way for which Italy offers no precedent. A country gentleman named Pedro Veciana, hereditary balio (military and civil lieutenant) of the archbishop of Tarragona in the town of Valls, armed his farm-servants, and resisted the attacks of the brigands. With the help of neighbouring country gentlemen he formed a strong band, known as the Mozos (Boys) of Veciana. The brigands combined to get rid of him by making an attack on the town of Valls, but were repulsed with great loss. The Government of Philip V. then commissioned Veciana to raise a special corps of police, the "escuadra de Cataluna." Since the organization of the excellent constabulary called "La Guardia Civil" by the Duke of Ahumada, about 1844, brigandage has been well kept down. More sympathy is felt for "bandoleros" in the south, and there also they find Spanish equivalents for the manutengoli of Italy.
On Oct. 8 1927 two French children were kidnapped by Moroc can brigands and their parents murdered. This outrage was followed a fortnight later by the capture of four French subjects, one of whom, M. Yves Steeg, was a nephew of the resident general of Morocco. The prisoners were only released on the payment of a considerable ransom on Nov. 17.
The "dacoits" or brigands of India were of the same stamp as their European colleagues. The Pindaris were more than brigands, and the Thugs (q.v.) were a religious sect.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.--The literature of brigandage, apart from pure Bibliography.--The literature of brigandage, apart from pure romances or official reports of trials, is naturally extensive. Mr. McFarlane's Lives and Exploits of Banditti and Robbers (1837) is a useful introduction to the subject. The author saw a part of what he wrote about, and included in his work many references, particularly for Italy. A good bibliography of Spanish brigandage will be found in Eugenio de la Iglesia's Resena Historica de la Guardia Civil (1898) . For actual pictures of the life, nothing is better than W. J. C. Moens' English Travellers and Italian Brigands (1866), and S. Soteropoulos' The Brigands of the Morea, translated by the Rev. J. O. Bagdon (r868).