Carlo Poerio (13 October 1803 - 28 April – 27 April 1867) was an

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...

poet, ''

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'' and 1848 Revolution activist, politician, and brother of Alessandro Poerio.

Early life

Descended from an old Calabrian family, Carlo Poerio was born on 13 October 1803 in Naples. He was the son of Baron Giuseppe Poerio, a noted lawyer of

Naples Naples (; it, Napoli ; nap, Napule ), from grc, Νεάπολις, Neápolis, lit=new city. is the regional capital of Campania and the third-largest city of Italy, after Rome and Milan, with a population of 909,048 within the city's adminis ...

who had attached himself to the cause of the

King of Naples The following is a list of rulers of the Kingdom of Naples, from its first separation from the Kingdom of Sicily to its merger with the same into the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Kingdom of Naples (1282–1501) House of Anjou In 1382, the ...

Joachim Murat Joachim Murat ( , also , ; it, Gioacchino Murati; 25 March 1767 – 13 October 1815) was a French military commander and statesman who served during the French Revolutionary Wars and Napoleonic Wars. Under the French Empire he received the ...

. Consequently, the Baron was obliged to flee in 1815, taking his sons

Alessandro Alessandro is both a given name and a surname, the Italian form of the name Alexander. Notable people with the name include: People with the given name Alessandro * Alessandro Allori (1535–1607), Italian portrait painter * Alessandro Baricco ...

and Carlo with him. They settled for a time in

Florence Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilancio demografico an ...

, but in 1818 were allowed to return to Naples.

1848 revolution

He returned to

and practised as a lawyer, and from 1837 to 1848 was frequently arrested and imprisoned, helping among others to prepare the insurrection of 1847; but, when Ferdinand II, moved by the demonstration on 27 January of the latter year, promulgated a constitution, he was made minister of education. Discovering that the monarch maintained a will to collaborate with the

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, he resigned office in April 1849, and returned to Naples to take his seat in parliament, where he led the constitutional opposition.

Imprisonment, refuge, and return

After the battle of Novara, the king was free to dissolve parliament and renounce the constitution; in the month of July 1849 Poerio was arrested, tried, and sentenced to nineteen years in prison. Chained in pairs, he and other political prisoners were confined in one small room in the

labor camp A labor camp (or labour camp, see spelling differences) or work camp is a detention facility where inmates are forced to engage in penal labor as a form of punishment. Labor camps have many common aspects with slavery and with prisons (especi ...

Nisida Nisida is a volcanic islet of the Flegrean Islands archipelago, in southern Italy. It lies at a very short distance from Cape Posillipo, just north of Naples; it is now connected to the mainland by a stone bridge. The islet is almost circular, wi ...

(the

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William Ewart Gladstone William Ewart Gladstone ( ; 29 December 1809 – 19 May 1898) was a British statesman and Liberal politician. In a career lasting over 60 years, he served for 12 years as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, spread over four non-conse ...

's report on the inhumane conditions in Neapolitan detention facilities (1851), emphasizing the case of Poerio, provoked an international uproar; nonetheless, Poerio was set free only in 1858. He and other exiles were then placed on board a ship bound for the

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, but the son of

Luigi Settembrini Luigi Settembrini (17 April 1813, Naples – 3 November 1877, Florence) was an Italian man of letters and politician. Biography Born in Naples, his paternal grandfather was an immigrant from Bollita (the actual Nova Siri), in the province of ...

(both of them on board the ship) compelled the crew to land them at

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, in the

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, after which Poerio made his way to London. In the following year he returned to Italy, and, in 1860 he was elected deputy to the

parliament In modern politics, and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: Representation (politics), representing the Election#Suffrage, electorate, making laws, and overseeing ...

Piedmont-Sardinia The Kingdom of Sardinia,The name of the state was originally Latin: , or when the kingdom was still considered to include Corsica. In Italian it is , in French , in Sardinian , and in Piedmontese . also referred to as the Kingdom of Savoy-S ...

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(the original seat of the

House of Savoy The House of Savoy ( it, Casa Savoia) was a royal dynasty that was established in 1003 in the historical Savoy region. Through gradual expansion, the family grew in power from ruling a small Alpine county north-west of Italy to absolute rule of ...

government), and was chosen the body's vice-president in 1861, when the

Kingdom of Italy The Kingdom of Italy ( it, Regno d'Italia) was a state that existed from 1861, when Victor Emmanuel II of Kingdom of Sardinia, Sardinia was proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy, proclaimed King of Italy, until 1946, when civil discontent led to ...

was proclaimed.

References

Attribution: * This article about his brother discusses Carlo in the second half. It offers the following sources: **Baldachini, ''Della Vita e de tempi di Carlo Poerio'' (1867) **

, ''Two Letters to the Earl of Aberdeen'' (1851); ''Carlo Poerio and the Neapolitan Police'' (London, 1858) ** Atto Vannucci, ''I martiri della libertà italiana'', vol. iii. (Milan, 1880) **Alessandro Imbriani, ''Poerio a Venezia'' (Naples, 1884) **Del Giudice, ''I Fratelli Poerio'' (Turin, 1899) **Countess Martinengo Cesaresco, ''Italian Characters'' (London, 1901) {{DEFAULTSORT:Poerio, Carlo 1803 births 1867 deaths Italian people of the Italian unification 19th-century Italian lawyers Barons in Italy Italian poets Italian male poets People of the Revolutions of 1848 19th-century poets 19th-century Italian male writers