The carbonarism (for Italy) or charbonnery (for France) is an initiatory company and secret, with strong political connotation, which had an important occult role under the French revolution, and which contributed effectively to the unification of the Italy.

Charbonnerie draws its name of the rites from initiation of the foresters ( Rituels foresters ) manufacturing the Charcoal in the the Jura in the beginning and in Franche-Comté.

These companies of Bons coal cousins are very former political phenomenon of the Italian carbonarism and French charbonnery. These associations, resulting from the old corporation of the trade of coalman, used of secret signs of recognition and hospitality and the mutual aid supported. Each local section of a company of the Bons cousins is called a Sale.

The first large wave of liberal agitation against the Congrès of Vienna took place in Europe with the beginning of the year 1820, thanks to a certain number of secret societies (there was not an other political means of expression because of repression) like Carbonari or Charbonnerie.

The political and insurrectionary phenomenon of Charbonnerie was before any Italian with ramifications, thereafter, in France. It is the French revolutionist Pierre-Joseph Briot, itself Franc-maçon of the Rite of Misraïm and Bon coal cousin of the rite of the Large Alexandre of the confidence , which imported this very Christian rite in Naples, at the end of 1809. It undoubtedly took part in the secret unification of the various Italian groups under the aegis of the Carbonaria .

The concern of the capacity with respect to this movement shows through in several passages of Lucien Leuwen of Stendhal. To the claim of a liberal constitutional monarchy came to be added the will of unit and national independence.

After 1817, the carbonarism maintained an endemic agitation in the peninsula. It begin with rising from Macerata, in the pontifical Marches (1817), and it culminated in the vague revolutionist of 1820-1821, with Naples and in Piedmont where Charles-Albert of Savoy-Carignan, heir to the throne, had encouraged the conspirators.

In July 1820, an insurrection with Naples was organized by the Carbonaria and was directed by the general Gabriel Pepe, who requested from Ferdinand IV a constitution. In March 1821, an insurrection in Piedmont was organized by Carbonari and was directed by the officer Santorre di Santarosa, who obtained the Abdication of the sovereign and the accession with the throne of liberal king Charles-Albert. In both cases, the sovereign granted a Constitution. In both cases, the Austrian troops intervened to restore the Absolutisme within the framework of the policy of the Congresses: Congress of Troppau in October 1820 and Laybach in January 1821. In both cases, the constitution was then repealed and wild repression.

The failure of these movements started a repression, in the form of lawsuit, in the States of the Church and in Lombardy-Venezia. Judgments, then the sufferings, in the dungeons of the Spielberg, of Silvio Pellico and Piero Maroncelli (1820), of Federico Confalonieri and Pallavicino (1823-1824) sensitized the European opinion with the Italian cause.

It is of Carbonarisme that the movement Giovine Italia left (Young Italy), created with Marseilles in 1831 by of Carbonari in exile, and directed by Giuseppe Mazzini.

The French charbonnery, of political type, will be very active of 1820 with 1823.La military conspiracy fails and announces in particular at the time of the business of the Four sergeants of the La Rochelle.