Builders of United Italy

by Rupert Sargent Holland

Very early, on a voyage to Russia, a young Ligurian mate told the youth something of the plans of the scattered Italian patriots, and, once conscious that there was a movement on foot to liberate his beloved country, Garibaldi sought all people and writings which could enlighten him on that score. Thus he came almost immediately under the influence of Mazzini’s work and joined his new movement of “Young Italy.” From the moment of this association his life held the single purpose, he was ready to make any sacrifice in this cause. In 1834 he joined in the ill-fated expedition to Savoy, and as a consequence found himself on February 5, of that year, flying from Genoa as a proscript. A few days later he learned from a newspaper that he had been condemned to death by the government. Shortly afterwards he sailed from Marseilles for Brazil.

For the next fourteen years Garibaldi led the life of a guerilla leader, fighting the battles of Montevideo, and taking a chief part in the innumerable wars for independence which served to keep the South American states in constant upheaval during the first half of the Nineteenth Century. The various states were full of French, Spanish, and Italian adventurers, and Garibaldi contrived, with that intuitive insight into character which was one of the chief characteristics of his genius, to choose certain of the Italians who were as intense partisans of liberty as he, and form them into a legion, destined to be the nucleus of that famous Italian “Legion” which was later to win its victories on the other side of the world. The South American adventures of the young general read like a story from the romantic pages of a novelist, they are a perpetual record of battles, sieges, and alarms. Through their turbulent course Garibaldi learned experience of rough, irregular fighting, which was later to prove invaluable. To add to the romance of these years Garibaldi met at a small town in the district of Laguna, in Brazil, the woman who so charmed him at first sight that he immediately wooed her and won her for his wife, the dearly beloved Anita who accompanied him afterwards on all his military expeditions, both by land and sea, and proved herself the equal of any of his men in devotion and the most intrepid courage in the face of extreme peril.

In 1847 Pius IX., the new Pontiff, stirred all Italian patriots with the brave words he uttered in behalf of a new and free Italy. To men who had waited long for a leader who should unite all the small states the Pope appeared as a real deliverer, and for a few short months he did indeed stand at the head of a movement closely allied to the Guelphic policies of the Middle Ages. The news of the Pope’s call to all Italians reached Garibaldi and his friends in Montevideo, and immediately the former and his friend, Colonel Anzani, wrote to Pius IX. tendering him their allegiance, and offering the assistance of their swords. Lines throughout the letter show the self-abnegating, single-hearted devotion of Garibaldi to Italy’s cause, the one sacred service of his life. “If then to-day our arms, which are not strangers to fighting, are acceptable to your Holiness, we need not say how willingly we shall offer them in the service of one who has done so much for our country and our church. We shall count ourselves happy if we can but come to aid Pius IX. in his work of redemption.... We shall consider ourselves privileged if we are allowed to show our devotedness by offering our blood.” Unfortunately the Pope was not made of the same heroic fiber as the South American soldier. No answer was made to the letter, but Garibaldi was so eager to be on the scene of action and learn conditions for himself that he immediately sailed, although still under sentence of death, for Italy with fifty members of his Legion.

They landed at Nice on June 24, 1848. Already they had learned at Alicante the stirring events of that memorable spring, and were burning to take the field against the Austrians. The leader and his handful of men hastened to Lombardy to offer their services to the Sardinian King, Charles Albert. The King received the offer very coldly, but, his ardor undaunted, Garibaldi pushed on to Milan. The latter city had learned of his many battles in South America and hailed him with great enthusiasm. From the country volunteers came pouring to his standard, and in an incredibly short time at least 30,000 men had joined the remnant of the legion. They were most of them wild with the desire to drive the Austrians from Lombardy. Charles Albert was defeated and signed an armistice by which Milan was given back to the Empire, but the Garibaldian army paid no heed to the formal terms of peace, and continued a guerilla warfare wherever white-coated Austrians were to be found.

An eye-witness, Giulio Dandolo, thus describes the appearance of Garibaldi’s troops: “Picture to yourself,” he says, “an incongruous assemblage of individuals of all descriptions, boys of twelve or fourteen, veteran soldiers attracted by the fame of the celebrated chieftain of Montevideo, some stimulated by ambition, others seeking for impunity and license in the confusion of war, yet so restrained by the inflexible severity of their leader that courage and daring alone could find a vent, whilst more lawless passions were curbed beneath his will. The general and his staff all rode on American saddles, wore scarlet blouses, with hats of every possible form, without distinction of any kind, or pretension to military ornament.... Garibaldi, if the encampment was far from the scene of danger, would stretch himself under his tent; if on the contrary the enemy were near at hand he remained constantly on horseback giving orders and visiting the outposts. Often disguised as a peasant, he risked his own safety in daring reconnaissances, but most frequently, seated on some commanding elevation, he would pass whole hours examining the surrounding country with his telescope. When the general’s trumpet gave the signal to prepare for departure lassoes secured the horses which had been left to graze in the meadows. The order of march was always arranged on the preceding day, and the corps set out without so much as knowing where the evening would find them. Owing to this patriarchal simplicity, pushed sometimes too far, Garibaldi appeared more like the chief of a tribe of Indians than a general, but at the approach of danger and in the heat of combat, his presence of mind was admirable; and then by the astonishing rapidity of his movements he made up in a great measure for his deficiency in those qualities which are generally supposed to be absolutely essential to a military commander.”

Speed and audacity constituted the two main elements of the leader’s tactics. One day when on Lake Maggiore Garibaldi managed to take two Austrian steamers by surprise, and placing 1500 men upon them, suddenly appeared at Luino. From there he planned an attack on 10,000 Austrians encamped nearby, but news of his intentions reached the enemy, and he was obliged to scatter his small force in a skilfully contrived retreat. The actual result of such a campaign was small, but the extreme skill of his sudden advances and retreats won him a European prestige as a master of light warfare, and continually brought soldiers to his standard. When the regular armies ceased fighting ardent patriots turned to Garibaldi as the last remaining hope.

While in Switzerland he was seized with marsh fever and became dangerously ill. When he recovered he joined his family at Nice and there spent the autumn. Charles Albert had by now repented his cold treatment of the young man’s offer of service and tendered him a high rank in the Sardinian army. Garibaldi, however, wished more immediate action than such a position offered, and had moreover been fired with hope at the reports of Daniel Manin’s heroic defense of Venice against the Austrians. He determined to go to Venice, and started with two hundred and fifty volunteer companions. At Ravenna he learned of the revolution at Rome, and then, as always in his life, could not resist the call of the Eternal City. He changed his course towards Rome, and as he traveled his followers increased to 1500 men. With this band he approached the city, which had been deserted by that Pope of noble impulses but timid resolution to whom Garibaldi had written offering his services the previous year.

Pius IX. executed a complete volte-face. Terrified at the assassination of his Prime Minister Rossi, and worked on by his clerical ministers of State and foreign diplomatists, he withdrew the liberal concessions he had just granted his Roman subjects, declared the notoriously vicious King Bomba of Naples a model monarch and fled to Gaeta, leaving Rome to the revolutionists. At the same time Mazzini the arch idealist appeared among them, and he and Garibaldi, both hailed as pre-eminent leaders in their respective fields, were elected members of the new Roman Assembly. Mazzini was in charge of the civil government, Garibaldi of the army now rapidly gathering from all parts of Italy. He took his position on the frontier menaced by the Neapolitan army, and fortified the stronghold of Rieti.

Meanwhile in northern Italy Charles Albert had again taken the field, had lost the battle of Novara, and had abdicated. The Roman Republic immediately found itself beset by great European Powers, Austria, Spain, and Naples, eager to restore the Pontiff and teach his audacious subjects a salutary lesson. As Manin in Venice, so Mazzini in Rome looked to France for succor, or at least to uphold the policy of non-intervention. Did not the constitution of the then existing French Republic specifically state that that nation “would never employ her arms against the liberty of any people”? Acting on this assumption the Roman Assembly voted for the perpetual abolition of the temporal power of the Pope, and on April 18, 1849, addressed a manifesto to the governments of England and France, setting forth “that the Roman people had the right to give themselves the form of government which pleased them, that they had sanctioned the independence and free exercise of the spiritual authority of the Pope, and that they trusted that England and France would not assist in restoring a government irreconcilable by its nature with liberty and civilization, and morally destitute of all authority for many years past, and materially so during the previous five months.”