Brigandage
Historical examples of brigands (often called so by their enemies) have existed in territories of France, Greece and the Balkans, India, Italy, Mexico and Spain, as well as certain regions of the United States.
The Calabrians who fought for Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies, and the Spanish irregular levies, which maintained the national resistance against the French from 1808 to 1814, were called brigands by their enemies.
[3] In the Balkan peninsula, under Ottoman rule, the brigands (called klephts by the Greeks and hayduks or haydutzi by the Slavs) had some claim to believe themselves the representatives of their people against oppressors.
[3] The conditions which favor the development of brigandage may be summed up as bad administration[a] and to a lesser degree, terrain that permits easy escape from the incumbents.
[8] The Apennines, the mountains of Calabria, the Sierras of Spain, were the homes of the Italian banditi, and the Spanish bandoleros (member of a gang) and salteadores (raiders).
[8] England was ruled by William III, when "a fraternity of plunderers, thirty in number according to the lowest estimate, squatted near Waltham Cross under the shades of Epping Forest, and built themselves huts, from which they sallied forth with sword and pistol to bid passengers stand".
[8] The Gubbings (so called in contempt from the trimmings and refuse of fish) infested Devonshire for a generation from their headquarters near Brent Tor, on the edge of Dartmoor.
[8] In the years preceding the French Revolution, the royal government was defied by the troops of smugglers and brigands known as faux saulniers, unauthorized salt-sellers, and gangs of poachers haunted the king's preserves round Paris.
[8] David Hannay writing in the 1911 edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica stated that in "Corsica the maquis has never been without its brigand hero, because industry has been stagnant, family feuds persist, and the government has never quite succeeded in persuading the people to support the law.
Lord and Lady Muncaster were set at liberty to seek for the ransom, but the Greek government sent troops in pursuit of the brigands, and the other prisoners were then murdered.
Thus it was that Marco Sciarra of the Abruzzi, when hard pressed by the Spanish viceroy of Naples – just before and after 1600 – could cross the border of the papal states and return on a favourable opportunity.
[9] Marco Sciarra was the follower and imitator of Benedetto Mangone, who was documented to have stopped a party of travellers which included Torquato Tasso.
A fine example is The most beautiful history of the life and death of Pietro Mancino, chief of Banditi,[9] which begins: :"Io canto li ricatti, e il fiero ardire In the Kingdom of Naples, every successive revolutionary disturbance saw a recrudescence of brigandage down to the unification of 1860–1861.
In Andalusia, the Sierra Morena, and the Serrania de Ronda, have produced the bandits whose achievements form the subject of popular ballads, such as Francisco Esteban El Guapo (Francis Stephen, the Buck or Dandy), Pedranza, &c. Jose Maria, called El Tempranillo (The Early Bird), was a liberal in the rising against Ferdinand VII, 1820–1823, then a smuggler, then a bandolero.
A country gentleman named Pere 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.
[9] In relatively unsettled parts of the United States there was a considerable amount of a certain kind of brigandage, in early days, when the travel routes to the American West were infested by highwaymen.
