Costituzione, repressione, sequestro e confisca: il 1848 a Napoli e la vicenda di Eugenio de Riso

The study aims to analyze the historical and legal background, which seems to base the application of sequestrations and confiscations against the victims of political persecutions ongoing in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies since the second half of 1848, in the context of the reaction to the events occurred in Naples and the Calabrie in the same year. The main purpose is to clarify the existence, the essence and the application of these measures, which are often mentioned by both the contemporaries and the later historians as persecutory instruments used by the authorities (particularly by police) against political defendants and condemned, especially when they escaped abroad. First, the 1848 events are going to be examined, i.e. the concession of the Constitution, the famous facts of the 15th of May in Naples and the Calabrian insurrections in June and July; then, a special attention will be paid to a particular individual, marquis Eugenio de Riso from Catanzaro, a Calabrian revolutionary sentenced to death and political refugee abroad. Due to several reasons and despite the poor notoriety of de Riso, his story probably constitutes an emblematic case of the use of both sequestrations and (according to historiography) confiscations, against revolutionaries involved in 1848 facts.