The Life of General Garibaldi / Translated from his private papers; with the history of his splendid exploits in Rome, Lombardy, Sicily and Naples, to the present time.

by Giuseppe Garibaldi

Ancona was soon after besieged, blockaded, bombarded, and captured. The Sardinian navy and army displayed great skill as well as discipline and courage in this operation. The particulars of this must be omitted, as well as most others connected with the march of Victor Emanuel on his triumphant course toward Naples.

The city of Spoleto was besieged and soon taken. The besieged had three guns, two on a platform above, overlooking the town, and one below, placed in an embrasure on the left of the outer gate of the enceinte, so as to command the road leading up to it. They were iron guns of no great range, but still serviceable. The smallest of the three, in the embrasure by the gate, was the only one that did any execution.

The Piedmontese arrived at Spoleto in the morning. They were between two thousand and three thousand strong, and had one battery of field artillery, consisting of six guns. The fact is, that the whole thing was a farce; there was very little attack, and still less defence. The report of the commandant of Spoleto is an enormous exaggeration.

The Piedmontese, on their part, did not press the siege with much vigor. The Italians were positively disaffected, and threatened their foreign comrades to blow up the powder magazine if they did not give in. Most of the Irish asked nothing better than to escape from the service and from the country, and the rest of the garrison—the motley crew of German, French, Swiss, and Belgians—they were few in number and of little worth. The whole loss of the Piedmontese was, according to the evidence afterward obtained, under one hundred men. The loss of the garrison is stated at three killed and ten wounded.

Nothing, certainly, says a visitor, could be more complete or miserable than the failure and break-down of the Irish contingent to the Pope's harlequin army. It would be very unjust, however, to consider this to be in any degree a stain on the gallant Irish nation, whose impetuous courage and many excellent military qualities, every one must recognize and admire. The same ignominious disasters might, and no doubt would, have fallen to the lot of any body of men, no matter of what nation, similarly recruited, and deceived, and neglected, and sent into the field without the training and education which make the soldier. The shame falls not on Ireland, but on those who insnared unwilling recruits to prop a bad cause.

Perugia, which was the scene of an inhuman butchery last year, committed by some of the horde of foreign wretches who formed the Pope's army, was now held by about three thousand of them, who made a strong resistance. The garrison had raised barricades in all parts of the town, and occupied the houses, from which they fired upon the Sardinians. Every street was the scene of a conflict; but the assistance afforded to General Fanti by the inhabitants made the struggle much shorter than it would otherwise have been. A considerable portion of the Pontifical carbineers contrived to escape out of the town—the others retired to the citadel, which could not hold out long. Toward evening the fort capitulated, and the whole of the garrison, consisting of 1,600 men, were made prisoners, as well as General Schmidt, who commanded them. He was the worthy chief of the adventurers whom the Italians so cordially detested. Switzerland refused to acknowledge him. He was one of the heroes of that impious war of the Sonderbund, which caused much bloodshed in the Swiss cantons. He was subsequently exiled.

Victor Emanuel's address to the people of Southern Italy, dated at Ancona, October 9th, 1860, concludes thus:

"People of Southern Europe: My troops are advancing among you to establish order. I do not come to impose upon you my will, but to cause yours to be respected. You will be able to manifest it freely. Providence, which protects just causes, will inspire the vote which you will deposit in the urn. Whatever be the gravity of events, I wait tranquilly the judgment of civilized Europe and that of history, because I have the consciousness of having fulfilled my duty as king and Italian. In Europe my policy will not be useless in reconciling the progress of the people with the stability of monarchies. In Italy I know that I terminate the era of revolutions.

"Victor Emanuel.

"Farini.