Paolo Avitabile

The young Avitabile served in the local levies of the Kingdom of Naples between 1807 and 1809, when he joined the artillery of the regular army. As a part of the Imperial Army, Avitabile served under Murat on several campaigns. In these campaigns he earned the rank of Lieutenant, as well as the command of the 15th Battery. After the fall of Napoleon and the defeat of Murat at Tolentino, Naples was restored to Ferdinand I of Sicily. Avitabile retained his rank and command and joined the army of the new Kingdom of Two Sicilies, where he joined the siege of Gaeta under the command of the Austrian general Delaver.

During this siege, he displayed great bravery and was wounded twice. The general recommended him for a promotion and a decoration, but was not heard. Avitabile was transferred instead to a position of lieutenant in a regiment of light infantry. It is said he quit in disgust over this treatment. His European career had come to an end.

Having quit the army in Naples, Avitabile set his eyes on a career abroad. His initial idea was to, as many of his countrymen, seek fortune in America but this ended in a shipwreck off Marseille. Instead, he was advised to seek employment to the east. In Constantinople he was approached by an agent of the Persian Shah Fath Ali Shah recruiting European officers; in 1820, Avitabile took service with the Persian Shah. He remained in this employment for six years, during which period he rose to the rank of khan and a grade of colonel in the Persian army. Here he also met Claude August Court who would later accompany him on the travel to Punjab. Avitabile was rewarded for his services by two of Persia's highest decorations as Grand Commander of The Lion and Sun and of The Two Lions and Crown, but found the pay lacking. When he heard favourable notice from Jean-Baptiste Ventura of his employment in Punjab, Ventura again broke up to travel further to the east.

Together with Court, Avitabile arrived in Lahore in 1827 and was hired by Maharaja Ranjit Singh. He was given a position with the artillery and put in charge of the arsenal and gun foundries. He was also given a civilian position as governor of Wazirabad. It would seem he was an able administrator, as he held the position for the next seven years and as a result, Wazirabad prospered.^[2]

 

In 1834 he was appointed governor of Peshawar, an area the Maharaja had conquered from the Afghans the previous year.

Whereas his rule of Wazirabad is described as just and rigorous, his governorship of Peshawar is depicted as a rule of "gallows and gibbets". Avitabile boasted:

"When I marched into Peshawar, I sent on in advance a number of wooden posts which my men erected around the walls of the city. The men scoffed at them and laughed at the madness of the feringhee [a disparaging local language term for Westerners], and harder still when my men came in and laid coils of rope at the foot of the posts...However, when my preparations were completed and they found one fine morning dangling from these posts, fifty of the worse characters in Peshawar, they thought different. And I repeated the exhibition every day till I had made a scarcity of brigands and murderers. Then I had to deal with the liars and tale bearers. My method with them was to cut out their tongues. When a surgeon appeared and professed to be able to restore their speech, I sent for him and cut out his tongue also. After that there was peace".^[3]

With a ruthless, at times brutal, style of government, Avitabile established order in the province where he became known as Abu Tabela. Summary executions became usual, and it is said that he would have people executed by throwing them from the top of Mahabat Khan Mosque. The American adventurer Alexander Gardner wrote about Avitabile's rule in Peshawar: "Under his rule small pains are taken to distinguish between innocence and guilt, and many a man, ignorant of the alleged crime, pays for it with his life".^[3] While this brutality was shocking to visiting Europeans (in the words of Sir Henry Lawrence: he acts like a savage among savage men, instead of showing them that a Christian can wield the iron sceptre without staining it by needless cruelty), it proved both successful in maintaining order and even popular among the peaceful inhabitants.

His iron-fist rule over Peshawar has made a place for him in local folklore. Even today unruly children in the city are brought to control by invoking Abu Tabela's name. In times of unrest, law-abiding citizens send a small wish for the return of an Abu Tabela to finally re-impose law and order.

 

The control of this strategic position brought him in contact with the British army during the First Anglo-Afghan War (1839–42), where he was able to render vital assistance. As governor of Peshawar, Avitabile controlled the southern entrance to the Khyber Pass, although the Maharaja did not allow for the British to move through the Sikh Empire to reach the Khyber pass, he ordered Avitabile to assist the British through the pass itself, into Afghanistan. During Elphinstone's advance in 1839, the British were well received in Peshawar and their officers received a princely treatment. Captain Havelock spent a month in Peshawar, and describes the splendour of Avitabile's court in his memoirs. He also gives a favourable characterisation of the governor: "He is, moreover, a frank, gay, and good-humoured person, as well as an excellent and skilful officer."

Avitabile was also a scholar and an engineer, who worked very closely with Lehna Singh Majithia, a great Sikh engineer of his time.

When the British returned in 1842, to avenge the defeat of Elphinstone, they were given every possible assistance by Avitabile's government, while he was still in the employ of the Sikh Empire as the Afghans had been a longtime enemy of the Sikhs.

Avitabile remained in the position of Governor during the First Anglo-Afghan War until he left in 1843. Having secured his retirement in Europe, he resigned his position to return home.

 

As one of the few European adventurers in the area, he succeeded in building a fortune and getting away with it. He returned to Naples, where he built a grand home in San Lazzaro (Agerola). He obtained in 1844 that his place of birth, Agerola, was separated from Amalfi and united to the "Provincia di Napoli". He died in "strange" circumstances soon after marrying a local girl: Enrichetta Coccia. The following legal battle over his inheritance, and the many distant relatives asserting their claims, made Avitabile's cousin something of a byword in Italy.

Avitabile is a minor character in Flashman, a 1969 novel by George MacDonald Fraser. The narrator describes him as a "great, grey-bearded ox of a man... the Sikhs and Afghans were more scared of him than of the Devil himself."^[4]

 

Avitabile won honours in every country he served. The inscription on his tomb at Agerola lists:^[5]

• Chevalier of the Legion of Honour
• Order of Merit of San Ferdinand of Naples
• Order of the Durrani Empire Afghanistan
• Grand Cordon of the Lion and the Sun
• Two Lions and Crown of Persia
• Auspicious Star of the Punjab

• Jean-Baptiste Ventura
• Fauj-i-Khas

• Major Pearse, Hugh; Ranjit Singh and his white officers. In Gardner, Alexander (1999) [1898]. The Fall of Sikh Empire. Delhi, India: National Book Shop. ISBN 81-7116-231-2.
• Malatesta, Stefano (2002). Il napoletano che domò gli afghani. Vicenza, Italy: Neri Pozza. ISBN 88-7305-875-2.
• Nicola Forte: "Viaggio nella memoria persa del Regno delle Due Sicilie", ed. imagaenaria, p. 156, 2008, ISBN 88-89144-77-7, ISBN 978-88-89144-77-0.
• Antonio Lusardi, "Myth and reality of Paolo Avitabile, the last European Free Lancer in India", La Révolution française [En ligne], 8 | 2015, mis en ligne le 24 juin 2015, Consulté le 22 juillet 2017. URL: [1]

• Avitabile Archived 2010-02-02 at the Wayback Machine
• Avitabile's term as governor in Peshawar, India 1838-1842