When he was in South America he heard that the Italians were rising against their foreign masters and were planning to fight for freedom. He sailed for home instantly, and no sooner did he land than he was leading a company of friends to join the Italian army. He was fearless, generous, and as open-hearted as a child; wherever he went men flocked to his command; within a few months the young man was virtually general of an army, and fighting and winning battle after battle in the Alps. At the end of a year his fame had crossed Europe.
The freedom of Italy, however, was not won in a single campaign. Although Garibaldi's troops were victorious, some of the other Italian armies were not, and before long that first war of independence came to an end. For a time the Austrians' hold over the cities of Italy seemed stronger than ever, and Garibaldi and many of his friends were forced to leave their homes and seek refuge in other countries. Again Garibaldi crossed the Atlantic Ocean, and this time he went to New York, and took up the trade of candle-maker, living in a small frame house on Staten Island. He liked Americans; they understood him and his burning desire for Italian freedom better than any other foreigners he met.
He stayed on Staten Island until the chance came for him to go to sea again as captain of a merchantman, and after that it was only a short time before he was again in the Alps, his sword drawn, his devoted volunteers behind him.
It was long before the dream of Italian patriots came true and Rome became the capital of a united country, but during those years Garibaldi led crusade after crusade. He wore the simple costume of an Italian peasant, with a red shirt which was copied by all his men. This red-shirted army swept the enemy out of Sicily and Naples, drove them back through the Alps, won so continually that the superstitious Neapolitans believed that their leader must be in league with the Evil One. But the people of Italy worshiped this general beyond all their other heroes.
Even their praises could not spoil the simplicity of Garibaldi's nature. When his work was done he went home to live quietly with his family. The friends of his boyhood found him very little changed, the same lover of Italy and the sea, the same adventurous, generous spirit he had been as a youth in Nice.
In those youthful days his boy friends had followed him without question, now the whole of Italy looked to him as their leader; he had succeeded in doing what hundreds of other men had dreamed of doing, driving the Austrians permanently out of the peninsula, and restoring to his countrymen the ancient liberty of Italy. Yet whether as a boy upon the Mediterranean or as the liberator of a nation he was always the same frank, straightforward, high-minded Giuseppe Garibaldi.