A British newspaper article dated  1848.

A sort of "tobacco and snuff " riot approaching a revolution has occurred at Milan.           To annoy the Austrian government, the people had generally discontinued the use of these articles; and those who persisted in smoking, were stopped in the streets, and compelled by the mob to throw away their cigars.   Seeing this, the military authorities sent out soldiers to parade the streets, each supplied with a cigar in his mouth and a sword by his side.  About 700 gathered together indiscriminately on the Corso St. Francesco, without a single officer to enforce any authority over them; and the crowd beginning to pass jokes upon the charging of pipes and the firing of meerschaums; the soldiers drew their swords, and rushed pell-mell upon the people, cutting down everyone that came in their way.  Several people were killed, and numbers wounded.   Among the former is the imperial and royal councillor, Manganini.

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I have been looking this up on the internet to try and  understand what it was all about.  Every story that I read contradicts each other. There is a nice print on Bing showing soldiers with cigars in their mouths swinging swords around, but it is  a nightmare to understand what was going on at the time.

Pretty strange story…

So it was Pipes vs Cigars, did I get that much right?

If you look on Wikipedia there is an article mentioning this riot under the heading of   “Five Days of Milan.”

There is also an entry for a comedy film with a similar name.   Ignore that.

I cannot explain it better than the Wikipedia article, but in a nutshell, it seems that this is the start of The First War of Independence in Italy,    an anti Austrian Campaign.

It is strange that it is not better known.  I would have thought that an Italian War of Independence would have been better known generally, and have been familiar to snuffhouse readers with Italian connections.

I am still trying to puzzle it out for myself.

Anyone proud to be an Italian or descendants of such on this forum, please put us out of our misery and give us the abridged story of your history.

All I know that in 1848 what we know as modern Italy was basically comprised of following duchies, states, or kingdoms: in the southern Italian peninsula and the island of Sicily was the Kingdom of Sicily in the central Italian peninsula was the Papal State in the north were the three Duchies of Parma, Tuscony and Modena, in the northwest was the Kingdom of Sardenia. They were all under control of Austria and smoking and snuffing in particular was seen as “Austiran” not so much Italian so its more of a nationalist ideal i believe, when King Charles Albert tried to unite Italy and revolt against ruling Austria,  just a guess, and i may be wrong.

by the way in new here, but i love the history stuff @artchoo. Thank you!