Brigandage was an endemic scourge of the Papal States as well as of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies; between 1860 and 1870 the phenomenon took on a strong anti-unification character, not so much out of an attachment to the old regimes, but rather as a reaction against a State that portended to be centralist, bureaucratic, and repressive toward the lower classes. The clash between the outlaw bands
