The Situation Called For A
Genial And Ruthless Annihilator, A Man Like Sixtus V, Who Asked For
Brigands' Heads And
Got them so plentifully that they lay "thick as
melons in the market" under the walls of Rome, while the
Castel Sant'
Angelo was tricked out like a Christmas tree with quartered corpses - a
man who told the authorities, when they complained of the insufferable
stench of the dead, that the smell of living iniquity was far worse.
Such a man was wanted. Therefore, in 1810, Murat gave carte blanche
to General Manhes, the greatest brigand-catcher of modern times, to
extirpate the ruffians, root and branch. He had just distinguished
himself during a similar errand in the Abruzzi and, on arriving in
Calabria, issued proclamations of such inhuman severity that the
inhabitants looked upon them as a joke. They were quickly undeceived.
The general seems to have considered that the end justified the means,
and that the peace and happiness of a province was not to be disturbed
year after year by the malignity of a few thousand rascals; his threats
were carried out to the letter, and, whatever may be said against his
methods, he certainly succeeded. At the end of a few months' campaign,
every single brigand, and all their friends and relations, were wiped
off the face of the earth - together with a very considerable number of
innocent persons. The high roads were lined with decapitated bandits,
the town walls decked with their heads; some villages had to be
abandoned, on account of the stench; the Crati river was swollen with
corpses, and its banks whitened with bones.
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