Amilcare Cipriani

Amilcare Cipriani (18 October 1844 in Anzio – 30 April 1918 in Paris) was an Italian socialist, anarchist and patriot.

Biography Cipriani was born in Anzio in a family that was originally from Rimini. In June 1859, at the age of 15, he fought with Giuseppe Garibaldi alongside Piedmontese troops at the Battle of Solferino during the Second Italian War of Independence. In 1860, he deserted to join Garibaldi's Expedition of the Thousand in Sicily; it conquered the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, which was then ruled by the Bourbons. After joining the First International in 1867, Cipriani participated in the defence of the Paris Commune in 1871 for which he was condemned to death but was instead exiled to the French penal colony of New Caledonia along with 7,000 others.

After the 1879 amnesty, Cipriani returned to France in 1880 but was quickly expelled. Arrested in Italy in January 1881 for "conspiracies", he served 7 years of a 20-year sentence before a popular campaign secured his release in 1888. At the Zürich Congress of the Second International in 1893, Cipriani resigned his mandate in solidarity with Rosa Luxemburg and the anarchists who were excluded from the proceedings.

In 1897, he volunteered in the Garibaldi Legion and went with Garibaldi's son, Ricciotti Garibaldi, and the former leaders of the Fasci Siciliani, Nicola Barbato and Giuseppe De Felice Giuffrida, to Greece to fight during the Greco-Turkish War and sustained wounds before being re-imprisoned in Italy for a further three years on 30 July 1898.

He was elected as a deputy to the Chamber of Deputies and subsequently re-elected eight times

He wrote for Le Plébéien and other anarchist periodicals and died in a Paris hospital on 30 April 1918, at the age of 73.

The parents of the future Fascist Italian dictator Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) made one of their son's middle names "Amilcare" in honour of Cipriani, along with his other middle name honoring fellow Italian socialist Andrea Costa.