Mikhail Bakunin, having reentered Western Europe, had immediately immersed himself in the revolutionary movement.

In 1860, while still in Irkutsk, Bakunin and his political associates had been greatly impressed by Giuseppe Garibaldi and his expedition to Sicily, during which he had declared himself dictator in the name of Victor Emmanuel II.

Following his return to London, he had written to Garibaldi on January 31, 1862, asking him to participate in a movement encompassing Italians, Hungarians and South Slavs against both Austria and Turkey.

Garibaldi was then engaged in preparations for the Expedition against Rome.

By May, Bakunin's correspondence was focussing on Italian-Slavic unity and the developments in Poland.

By June, he had resolved to move to Italy, but was waiting for his wife to join him.

When he left for Italy in August, Giuseppe Mazzini had written to Maurizio Quadrio, one of his key supporters, that Bakunin was a good and dependable person.

However, with the news of the failure at Aspromonte, Bakunin hd paused in Paris where he was briefly involved with Ludwik Mierosławski.

However, Bakunin had rejected Mieroslawski's chauvinism and refusal to grant any concessions to the peasants.

Returning to England in September, he had focused on Polish affairs.

When the Polish insurrection broke out in January 1863, Bakunin had sailed to Copenhagen where he hoped to join the Polish Legion, who had planned to sail across the Baltic in the SS Ward Jackson to join the insurrection.

This attempt had failed, and Bakunin had met his wife in Stockholm before returning to London.

He now focused again on going to Italy; his friend Aurelio Saffi had written him letters of introduction for Florence, Turin and Milan.

Mazzini had written letters of commendation to Federico Campanella in Genoa and Giuseppe Dolfi in Florence.

Leaving London in November 1863, traveling by way of Brussels, Paris and Vevey (Switzerland), Bakunin had arrived in Italy on January 11, 1864.

It is here that he first began to develop his anarchist ideas.

He has conceived the plan of forming a secret organization of revolutionaries to carry on propaganda work and prepare for direct action.

He recruits Italians, Frenchmen, Scandinavians, and Slavs into the International Brotherhood, also called the Alliance of Revolutionary Socialists.

Modern scholars believe that the seeds of the Sicilian Mafia had been planted in the upheaval of Sicily's transition out of feudalism in 1812 and its later annexation by mainland Italy in 1860.

Under feudalism, the nobility had owned most of the land and enforced law and order through their private armies.

After 1812, the feudal barons had steadily sold off or rented their lands to private citizens.

Primogeniture had been abolished, land could no longer be seized to settle debts, and one fifth of the land was to become private property of the peasants.

After Italy annexed Sicily in 1860, it had redistributed a large share of public and church land to private citizens.

The result had been a huge boom in landowners: from two thousand in 1812 to twenty thousand by 1861.

The nobles had also released their private armies to let the state take over the task of law enforcement.

However, the authorities are incapable of properly enforcing property rights and contracts, largely due to their inexperience with free market capitalism.

Lack of manpower is also a problem: there are often less than 350 active policemen for the entire island.

Some towns with no permanent police force are only visited every few months by some troops to collect malcontents, leaving criminals to operate with impunity from the law in the interim.

With more property owners have come more disputes that need settling, contracts that need enforcing, and properties that need protecting.

Because the authorities are undermanned and unreliable, property owners have turned to extralegal arbitrators and protectors.

These extralegal protectors eventually organize themselves into the first Mafia clans.

Banditry is a growing problem.

Rising food prices, the loss of public and church lands, and the loss of feudal common rights push many desperate peasants to banditry.

With no police to call upon, local elites in countryside towns recruit young men into "companies-at-arms" to hunt down thieves and negotiate the return of stolen property, in exchange for a pardon for the thieves and a fee from the victims.

These companies-at-arms are often made up of former bandits and criminals, usually the most skilled and violent of them.

While this saves communities the trouble of training their own policemen, this may have made the companies-at-arms more inclined to collude with their former brethren rather than destroy them.

There is little Mafia activity in the eastern half of Sicily.

In the east, the ruling elites have been more cohesive and active during the transition from feudalism to capitalism.

They have maintained their large stables of enforcers, and have been able to absorb or suppress any emerging violent groups.

Furthermore, the land in the east is generally divided into a smaller number of large estates, so there are fewer landowners and their large estates often require full-time patrolling.

This means that guardians of such estates tend to be bound to a single employer, giving them little autonomy or leverage to demand high payments.

This does not mean there is little violence - the most violent conflicts over land take place in the east, but they do not involve mafiosi.

Mafia activity is most prevalent in the most prosperous areas of western Sicily, especially Palermo, where the dense concentrations of landowners and merchants offer ample opportunities for protection racketeering and extortion.

Here, a protector can serve multiple clients, giving him greater independence.

The greater number of clients demanding protection also allows him to charge high prices.

The landowners in this region are also frequently absent and cannot watch over their properties should the mafioso withdraw protection, further increasing his bargaining power.

The lucrative citrus orchards around Palermo are a favorite target of extortionists and protection racketeers, as they have a fragile production system that makes them quite vulnerable to sabotage.

Mafia clans force landowners to hire their members as custodians by scaring away unaffiliated applicants.

Cattle ranchers are also very vulnerable to thieves, and so they too need mafioso protection.

Marco Minghetti, an Italian moderate, negotiates a compromise solution in the September Convention of 1864, which calls for the withdrawal of French troops from Rome in exchange for an Italian pledge to respect the pope's temporal sovereignty and to remain out of Rome.

A secret clause in the agreement also binds Italy to transfer its capital from Turin to Florence, thus implicitly abandoning the Cavourian claim to Rome.

When this clause becomes known, severe riots occur on September 21-22 in Turin, leaving thirty people dead and causing the fall of the Minghetti government.

When the Second Italian War of Independence broke out in 1859 between Austria and the northern Italian kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, the Second French Empire had joined the war on the Italian side; the war had concluded with an Austrian defeat at Solferino.

In return for this intervention, Piedmont had ceded the County of Nice (which included the city of Nice and the rugged Alpine territory to its north and east) and the Duchy of Savoy.

The deputies of the first Italian Parliament had assembled in Turin on February 18, 1861.

On March 17, 1861, the Parliament had proclaimed Victor Emmanuel II King of Italy, and on March 27, 1861, Rome had been declared the capital of the Kingdom of Italy.

However, the Italian Government could not take its seat in Rome because a French garrison (which had overthrown the Roman Republic) is defending Pope Pius IX, maintained here by Napoleon III of France and commanded by general Christophe Léon Louis Juchault de Lamoricière.

Niccolò Turrisi Colonna, leader of the Palermo National Guard, had written in 1864 of a "sect of thieves" that operates across Sicily.

This "sect" is mostly rural, composed of cattle thieves, smugglers, wealthy farmers and their guards.

The sect makes "affiliates every day of the brightest young people coming from the rural class, of the guardians of the fields in the Palermitan countryside, and of the large number of smugglers; a sect which gives and receives protection to and from certain men who make a living on traffic and internal commerce. It is a sect with little or no fear of public bodies, because its members believe that they can easily elude this." (Paoli, Letizia (2003). Mafia Brotherhoods: Organized Crime, Italian Style, New York: Oxford University Press; p. 33.)

Colonna seems to know what he is talking about, as there is widespread suspicion that he is the protector of some important Mafiosi in Palermo.

It has special signals to recognize each other, offers protection services, scorns the law and has a code of loyalty and non-interaction with the police known as umirtà ("humility").

Colonna had warned in his report that the Italian government's brutal and clumsy attempts to crush unlawfulness had only made the problem worse by alienating the populace.

An 1865 dispatch from the prefect of Palermo to Rome first officially describes the phenomenon as a "Mafia".

The seat of Italy’s government is moved from Turin to Florence in 1865 following the signing of the September Convention.

Separatist revolts occur in Palermo in 1866.

The outbreak of war between Austria and Prussia in June 1866 diverts attention from Rome to Venice.

The Italian government under Alfonso La Marmora, taking advantage of Vienna's problems elsewhere, attacks Austrian-held Venetia, only to be defeated on land at Custoza on June 25.

The Austrian fleet under Wilhelm von Tegetthoff meets the Italian fleet of Carlo di Persano Italians in the Battle of Lissa on July 20.

Tegetthoff had been appointed commander of the Austrian battle fleet on May 9, 1866, shortly before the war began.

Although the Italian fleet is larger and more powerful, Tegetthoff had decided to engage it after a successful reconnaissance of the Italian base of Ancona on June 27, 1866.

With their army suffering defeats against the Austrians during the first week of the war from June 20 to 27, 1866, the Italians had sought a victory over the Austrian navy by sending their fleet against the Austrian naval base at Lissa, off the coast of Dalmatia near Spàlato (Split) on July 16, 1866.

Encountering the Italian fleet early on the morning of July 20, Tegetthoff had sailed straight for the center of the Italian fleet, hoping to ram the ships to make up for his own fleet's lack of firepower (Rammstosstaktik).

The smoke from the Italian ships made visibility very poor, however, and the Austrians had missed the Italian fleet completely.

Swinging around, Tegetthoff again charged, this time setting two Italian armored ships on fire and damaging several more.

After Tegetthoff's flagship, the Erzherzog Ferdinand Max, rams and sinks the armored Italian frigate Re d'Italia, the Italian fleet retreats the next day.

Tegetthoff returns in triumph to his base at Pola.

Nevertheless, his victory does not materially affect the outcome of the war, as Italy's alliance with Prussia ensures an advantageous peace.

Tegetthoff is immediately promoted, by telegraph, to Vizeadmiral (Vice Admiral).

He receives congratulatory telegrams from Ferdinand Maximilian, the embattled Emperor of Mexico, and Vizeadmiral Hans Birch Dahlerup, former Oberkommandant der Marine (High Commandant of the Navy).

Tegetthoff is decorated with the Commander's Cross of the Military Order of Maria Theresa and made honorary citizen of Vienna.

His counterpart, Persano, will be condemned for incapacity, and discharged.

A few Garibaldian volunteers operating in the Trento area are the sole Italians to achieve some moderate success.

Garibaldi's "Hunters of the Alps" defeats the Austrians at the Battle of Bezzecca, on July 21, conquer the lower part of Trentino, and move towards Trento.

Prussian peace with Austria forces the Italian government to seek an armistice with Austria, on August 12.