Les réformes de la police en Lombardie au 18. siècle

This essay analyzes the ways and means used in the XVIIIth century to police and control the territory of the State of Milan. The first observation is that the government’s possibility and ability to organize armed police corps really efficiently and such as to be able to fight crime and maintain order, were severely impaired by old ingrained habits, the concession of special privileges and mechanisms of grace and pacts. Such resistences are examined one by one: the system of milizia, the presence of corps based on the licence to carry arms, the special corps directly dependent from the private systems (Ferme) working for the government to collect commercial taxes, the “Esecutori di giustizia”, dependent from the Justice Palace. But this was not all. The fragmentation of the police corps went much further, for example even charging of police tasks the guards (campari camerali) whose task was to maintain in good order the rivers and canals.