The most convenient point to begin a study of the Sicilian revolution is the Palermo rising of 4 April 1860; and the first question which presents itself is, what was in the mind of those Sicilians who then rose and for a full month kept alive a flickering rebellion on their own.

It may be assumed from the start that most thinking people in the island were at one in their dislike of being ruled by the Neapolitan Bourbons. Foreign observers in Palermo were generally agreed that the revolution ‘had not its origin in any sudden fit of anger or disappointment, but in a long and deep-rooted animosity on the part of the entire people of Sicily’. Such a situation gave plenty of scope to the active revolutionaries. Any organization there was behind the movement had largely been the work of Mazzini's disciples. For some years now, Giuseppe Mazzini had been looking towards southern Italy as the probable scene of his next revolution, since his influence in the north had been growing ever smaller since Cavour's rival and more moderate programme had won its first great success in 1856. In March 1860 Mazzini's friends, Pilo and Corrao, had therefore set out from Genoa to stir up an insurrection in Sicily. Here they found an excellent field for their activity. The Bourbon government had already had cause to note with dismay how all classes there were becoming familiar with ‘popular sovereignty, universal suffrage and other extravagant notions’.