Great Men as Prophets of a New Era

by Newell Dwight Hillis

When the servant asked Garibaldi whether he had money for his dinner, the youth pulled out his purse. "Since I am going to be either hung or shot, I may as well have one good meal before I die!" He then asked two or three strangers who were in the inn to join him in his last dinner, and extended that invitation until there were fifteen or twenty about the table, singing, telling stories, and relating incidents of adventure. When Garibaldi saw that the time had come for his arrest, since a group of soldiers had appeared at the door, he arose, and looking out upon his new friends, said, "Well, the landlord, who is an officer of the government, has sent for these soldiers to arrest me. It seems I have committed treason. I wanted to have a republic in Italy. So I joined Mazzini's society." One by one the inmates of the inn rose. One looked toward the landlord and said, "Is this true? Are you going to imprison and shoot this man? Why, this Garibaldi is a great man, and a good man; I never saw him before to-night, but before you arrest him you will have to arrest me." Another shouted, "Before you shoot Garibaldi, you will have to shoot me!" A moment later, the whole company had joined to form a bodyguard around the brave young stranger. They lifted Garibaldi to their shoulders. They dared the officers to arrest him. They carried him out to the stable behind the inn, filled his pockets with copper and silver, and paid the driver to set him twenty miles beyond the frontier. Four of them rode with him as a guard to protect him. . . .

Condemned to death, he escaped to South America, where he plunged at once into the struggle for liberty there. The story of the happiness and prosperity of the people of the United States under a free government had spread all over the Southern continent. Unfortunately there were still many men who believed in autocracy and in the absolutism of an hereditary despot. Garibaldi at once took sides. He fought on the sea. He began as a private sailor, but soon became commander of the fleet. He fought on the land. He began as a private soldier, but he ended as a general. Once he was captured and beaten within an inch of his life. Once he was taken from a prison and hung by his hands from a beam. During those two hours, he tells us, he suffered the anguish of a hundred deaths.

Then came the dramatic meeting with Anita. One of his soldiers told Garibaldi about the beauty, bravery and self-sacrifice of a daughter of a certain rich man. Hearing that this girl, Anita, had gone to visit a friend in the village, Garibaldi, with several of his men, rode to the little store. Drawing rein before the door of the shop, he sent one of his men into the store to buy some trifle. In the upper window stood Anita. Garibaldi turned his horse and rode close to the door. Looking up, he met the eyes of Anita, and for a full minute, without saying a word, the two looked each into the soul of the other. Suddenly Garibaldi said, "Señorita! I have never seen you before. I do not know your name, but you belong to me! Sooner or later you will come to me." Anita arose. She leaned out of the window. In a low voice she said, "Shall I come now?" And Garibaldi answered, "I will ride up the street and return within a moment. Be ready at this spot." There was just time for Anita to grasp a cloak and a few articles of clothing. A moment later, down the street on a gallop came Garibaldi, followed by his soldiers. Anita was standing on the stone step. As Garibaldi dashed by, he put out his right arm, swept her against his horse and up to the front of the saddle and dashed away for a ten mile gallop to a little church whose frightened priest refused to perform the marriage ceremony without publishing the banns for the next two Sundays. Anita's father was of the other political party and the soldier knew that the consent would never be given. Garibaldi laid two revolvers upon the altar and said quietly, "Father, the service will proceed immediately."

So they were married. Anita was well educated as well as brave and very beautiful. In a fit of anger and hate, her father organized a group of conspirators who were to receive a rich reward for killing Garibaldi. It was Anita who discovered the plot and fired the pistol that led the conspirators to believe that they had been discovered. Later, a drunken mob discovered that she was alone in a little house. The leader of the despot organized a group at midnight, all of them crazed with liquor. They set fire to the house and then rushed in, only to find that Garibaldi had not yet returned home. And when these drunken brigands had beaten Anita down and knocked her into unconsciousness Garibaldi returned unarmed save for his dagger. One by one he took these eight men who were standing about the unconscious girl, and one by one they went down before him.

His life in South America, extending over a period of fourteen years, was one long struggle against tyranny and oppression. Fighting first in the revolt against Brazil, then joining the patriots of Uruguay, he formed the Italian Legion, and in the spring of 1846 won the battles of Cerro and Sant'Antonio, assuring the freedom of Uruguay. Refusing all honours and recompense he returned to Italy, having heard of the incipient struggle for liberty at home. He landed at Nice in 1848 and, forming a volunteer army of 3,000, plunged at once into the struggle against the French. His troops were largely students, mere lads, many of them never before under fire, and the troops of the enemy included the legions of France, Austria and Spain. The climax of the struggle came with his wonderful retreat through central Italy toward Venice, pursued by four armies. Only his consummate generalship and the matchless loyalty of his men saved them all from annihilation. During this retreat, Garibaldi was accompanied by his wife, Anita, who had cut off her hair and mounted a horse, and who wore men's clothing to avoid observation. Realizing at length that the struggle was hopeless, Garibaldi issued an order, releasing his soldiers, and bidding them return to their homes. And leaving Anita hidden at the house of a friend, he himself took refuge in a cave in the hills, after the fashion of David the Fugitive and Robert Bruce—a hiding-place from which he continued to send forth his military orders.

Among the many wonder tales of this period, many of which are traditional and perhaps untrustworthy, there is one that bears the stamp of reality. One night Garibaldi was asleep in the cave. A faithful soldier was on guard. Suddenly the soldier saw a torch waving in the blackness of the valley below. The torch was spelling a signal, but the guard was ignorant of its significance. He hurried into the cave and wakened his leader. Garibaldi knew the signal—it told of the approaching death of Anita. With instant decision, he started down the mountainside; made his way to the house of a peasant, and, despatching a man in advance, found and mounted a horse for the long ride to the village where Anita lay dying. Ahead of him, the galloping rider warned the countryside, shouting that Garibaldi was coming and commanding every man to go into his house and close the door, that no man might see the face of the fugitive, for whose person a reward had long been offered. The hurrying hero changed horses, and when the day was nearly done, rode into the village to the house where his beloved wife lay dying. In the night, wrestling with the death angel, Garibaldi was defeated, and left desolate. When the morning came, he wrapped Anita's body in the flag of the new republic, and buried her in the corner of the garden. That night he rode back to his handful of fugitives, hidden in a defile of the mountains.

It was about the year 1850 that, once more a fugitive, Garibaldi sailed for America, and coming to New York, settled as a chandler on Staten Island. He had a brother living in New York, and the brother had never tired of writing letters about the wonderful opportunities in the United States. It was an era of candles. Kerosene oil was but little used, while gas and electricity were unknown. As a cattle drover in the Argentine Republic, Garibaldi had seen the great herds on the ranches, the tanneries filled with hides, the great stores of tallow in the warehouses. He entered into an agreement with a friend in South America to keep him supplied with tallow, and over at St. George he started his little candle factory. Later, he became a trading skipper and in 1854 was able to return to Italy with funds sufficient to purchase the tiny island of Caprera, and build the house which thenceforth was to be his home.

Throughout the four years in America and on the sea, he had never once ceased to dream his dream of liberty and a republic to be set up in Italy. In 1851, while he was living here, Louis Kossuth, the Hungarian patriot, had landed in New York and received an ovation. While here, Kossuth had perfected the constitution for the republic he proposed to set up in Hungary, and had announced his plans for the overthrow of the royal family, and the enthronement of a president. Garibaldi kept in touch with every such new movement. He read the daily papers of New York; met the political leaders of the city and everywhere heard discussions as to Washington and Franklin, Hamilton and Webster. The fire burned ever more fiercely in his heart. He wrote a friend saying: "Whenever they are ready, the people of Italy can shake off the old tyranny that has come down from the middle ages, just as a peasant in the forest shakes the fallen leaves from his coat."

And during his trading days, while on a voyage to Hong Kong, he dreamed another dream, of a different kind. Half-way across the ocean, he dreamed that he saw his mother kneeling at the foot of a white cross. He fell upon his knees beside it and heard her say: "Fight only for liberty, my son! Fight only for liberty!" It was his birthday, the fifth of May. Months later, he discovered that on that very night his mother had passed away in the little house in Nice. From that hour he dedicated the remainder of his life to the liberation of his native land.

One day, while he was following the plow on his little island farm near the coast of Sardinia, a messenger brought word that an Austrian regiment had landed on the shore of Sardinia and seized the island for Austria. Once more, Garibaldi plunged into the struggle. For a year he fought at the head of Italian volunteers under Victor Emmanuel, against the Austrians, liberating the Alpine territory as far as the frontier of Tyrol. Then, in retirement at Genoa, came another summons—a letter telling the story of the sufferings of the liberal leaders in Naples. King Francis, the tyrant of Naples, had been arresting by wholesale men suspected of sympathy with free institutions. The despot filled the dungeons, crowded the upper cells, packed the corridors between the rows of cells, until there was not room for men even to lie down upon the floor. Without any warning whatsoever, the soldiers would appear at the home of some citizen. Without any hearing, much less a trial, men were sent to the royal prison and jammed into corridors already filled to suffocation with murderers, brigands, thieves, forgers. The under-cells dripped with filth. There was no sanitation. Vermin, rats, every form of vice and uncleanliness were there. In the stifling heat some smothered to death.