Masaniello's Naples Revolt

1647

A Neapolitan fishmonger named Tommaso Aniello, nicknamed Masaniello, led a tax riot that spiraled into a ten-day popular revolution against Spanish rule. He was murdered by his own lieutenants. The revolt was crushed, but it revealed the fragility of Habsburg rule in southern Italy and inspired later revolutionary imaginations, from Bourbon reformers to Risorgimento nationalists who saw in Masaniello a proto-democratic hero.