10 Grana - Ferdinando II

The 1848 date on this series carries particular weight. Ferdinando II faced revolution in January of that year — among the first in a cascade of uprisings that swept Europe — and made short-lived constitutional concessions before reversing course entirely by May. His subsequent bombardment of Messina earned him the nickname "Re Bomba" across liberal Europe, and the coins struck through the remaining decade of his reign circulated under an increasingly isolated, reactionary government. He died in 1859, the kingdom surviving him by barely two years before Garibaldi's Expedition of the Thousand ended Bourbon rule in the south permanently.