When honour sets sail: Southern European constitutional revolution and Guglielmo Pepe’s political trips towards Iberian Peninsula during Liberal Triennium (1820–1823)

Abstract

This article aims to frame Neapoltan general Guglielmo Pepe’s presence in Spain and Portugal after the deep revolutionary wave in Southern Europe in 1820–1. It was a conjunction, which was influenced by a positive perception towards soldiers and military elements, marked by the memory of Napoleonic Wars. First, the national honourable soldier-citizen image, which was forged since the 1790s, will be analysed. After Waterloo, political trips by the members of the “Liberal International” were continuous before, during and after revolutions inspired by the Cadiz Constitution, which in the Spanish and Portuguese cases lasted until 1823. These Iberian countries acted as crucial refuges for political émigrés and their subsequent exiles. Pepe was the most important revolutionary reference which visited them, fleeing from Naples, and trying to defend and expand European liberal-constitutional systems. His activity founding secret societies will be another focus of this article.