COUNTER-REVOLUTION 125
Modena and Ferrara ; Brescia and Verona ; Verona and
Mantua ; Florence, Pisa and Siena ; Casale, Alessandria
and Mortara. If Grosseto, where the fascio was powerless,
was the objective, four experienced fascists were first sent
from Florence to encourage and train the local fascists.
The expedition was then prepared and the secretary of the
Siena Jascio'1 c ordered two cars to take the mobilization
order to the fasci along the Siena-Chiusi line for a joint
attack on Grosseto/ But the workers of this town laid in
wait for the fascists in the country outside. When these
arrived their first car was stopped, and after a fight they
were forced to retreat, leaving one dead behind them.
Meanwhile other squads were arriving and surrounding the
town, which was still unapproachable. Reinforcements
collected from all directions, even from Florence and
Perugia, at least a hundred kilometres away, and the
entrance to the town was forced during the night. So
Grosseto, where there were hardly any fascists, was occupied
and passed under their control. When the Milan fascists
wanted to make an expedition to Greco Milanese, a com-
munist centre in the suburbs of the town, they called in the
fasci of Emilia and Tuscany, who sent several squads. This
co-operation increased, snowball fashion, and by extending
the field of action helped to reach distant objectives and
cover whole regions. How did the fascist occupation absorb
the whole of Umbria between March and April 1921 ?
The flood spread from Florence, Arezzo, Siena, over
Perugia ; swollen with Perugian reinforcements it flowed
on to Foligno, Todi, Umberti ; from these to Assisi and
Spoleto, until it swept over Terni, the last socialist strong-
hold, all in a few weeks. The fasci had immense capacity
for concentrating and spreading their influence. When a
new fascio was formed, especially in districts as yet un-
conquered, representatives from many other fasci9 sometimes
from far off, would come and assist at the ceremony, and this
in itself sometimes gave rise to incidents and expeditions.
For instance, at Casale Monteferrato there were delegates
from. Turin, Biella, Vercelli, Milan and Genoa. As another
example of the wide range of the operations, the Pisa fascio
1 Ghiurco himself, author of fa&Ifistoiy of the Fascist Revolution. .