Fra Diavolo

For other uses, see Fra Diavolo (disambiguation).
Michele Pezza
Born(1771-04-07)7 April 1771
Itri, Kingdom of Naples
Died11 November 1806(1806-11-11) (aged 35)
Naples, Kingdom of Naples
Other namesFra Diavolo
OrganizationSanfedismo

Fra Diavolo (lit. Brother Devil; 7 April 1771–11 November 1806), is the popular name given to Michele Pezza, a guerrilla leader who resisted the French occupation of Naples, proving an "inspirational practitioner of popular insurrection".[1] Pezza figures prominently in folk lore and fiction. He appears in several works of Alexandre Dumas, including The Last Cavalier: Being the Adventures of Count Sainte-hermine in the Age of Napoleon, not published until 2007[2] and in Washington Irving's short story "The Inn at Terracina".[3]

  1. ^ Piero Pieri, Storia militare del Risorgimento (Torino: Einaudi, 1962), p. 18. The short accounts in Pieri and Tommaso Argiolas' Storia dell'Esercito Borbonico (Napoli: ESI, 1970), provide succinct treatments of the Neapolitan insurrection of 1799; Milton Finley's The Most Monstrous of Wars: The Neapolitan Guerrilla War in Southern Italy, 1806–1811 (Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina, 1994), provides an account of the second Neapolitan insurgency against the French.
  2. ^ Alexandre Dumas, The Last Cavalier: Being the Adventures of Count Sainte-hermine in the Age of Napoleon (New York: Pegasus, 2007)
  3. ^ Washington Irving, Tales of a Traveler, Vol. III, pp. 8–33