Baffled and exasperated, but determined not to be cut off from all activity, Garibaldi went to Milan, where a provisional government with republican leanings still ruled. By it he and his legionaries were hospitably received, and sent out, with a considerable body of raw recruits, to harass the Austrians along the lakes. In a few weeks, however, the main Austrian army had reconquered Lombardy, and the Garibaldians were driven to take refuge across the Swiss frontier.
Garibaldi, like a true knight-errant, now went forth in search of another chance to do battle for freedom. At Florence the republicans did him honor, but were wary of asking him to command their troops, the fact being that each district had leaders of its own, and a host of zealous aspirants, who were patriotically disinclined to make way for even the most distinguished knight-errant. At Rome, whence Pius IX had fled, the revolutionists gave him a warmer greeting, and when, in February, 1849, they set up a republic,—Garibaldi having made a motion to that effect in the Roman Assembly,—they made him second in command of their army. And now, properly speaking, the tale of Garibaldi’s European exploits begins.
We cannot follow in detail the story of the defense of Rome against the French troops sent thither by the perfidious Louis Napoleon, and their allies from Spain and Naples; yet it were well worth our while to give an hour to deeds so brilliant, so noble, so picturesque,—to pass from the Assembly Hall, where Mazzini, the indomitable dreamer, was the dictator, to the fortifications where band after band of volunteers, speaking many dialects, clothed in many costumes, were resolved to give their lives for freedom! We should see Lucian Manara, a modern knight, captain of a legion of brave men; we should see Mameli, the blond poet-soldier, a mere lad; and the brothers Dandolo, and Medici and Nino Bixio, and many another doomed to win renown by an early death there, or there to begin a career which became a necessary strand in Italy’s regeneration. But, most conspicuous of all, we should see Garibaldi, for whom the legionaries and their leaders had such a feeling as the Knights of the Round Table for Arthur their King. Call it loyalty, ’tis not enough; call it filial affection, something remains unexpressed; call it fascination, enthusiasm, sorcery,—each term helps the definition, though none singly suffices. His was, indeed, that eldest sorcery which binds the hearts of men to their hero,—that power which reveals itself as an ideal stronger than danger or hardship or disease, something to worship, to love, to die for.
During her five-and-twenty centuries, Rome had seen many strange captains, but none more original than this, her latest defender, from the pampas of South America. In person he was of middle stature; his hair and beard were of a brown inclining to red; his eyes blue, more noteworthy for their expression than for their color; his mouth, so far as it could be seen under the moustache, was firm, but capable of an irresistible smile. His soldiers, remembering his aspect in battle, spoke of his face as “leonine;” women, caught perhaps by the charm rather than the cut of his features, thought him beautiful. And as if Nature had not done enough to mark her hero, he adopted on his return to Europe the dress which he had worn in South America,—a small, plumed cap, the grayish-white cloak or poncho lined with red, the red flannel shirt, the trousers and boots of the Uruguayan herdsmen and guerrillas.
During that siege of Rome, Europe came to know Garibaldi and his red-shirted companions, who were equally bizarre in character and in costume,—a troop of poets, students, dreamers, vagabonds, and adventurers,—who, with the nucleus of the Legion from Montevideo, were capable, under their chieftain’s guidance, of splendid achievements. Their victories against the Neapolitans at Palestrina and Velletri; their stubborn defense of Rome against the overwhelming armies of France; their bravery at the Villa Pamfili; their desperate struggle to hold the Vascello, where Manara was killed; their unwilling but inevitable yielding of the outposts, and finally of the inner breastworks,—made up a tale of heroism which could be matched only at Venice in that year of waning revolution.
But Europe had declared that there should be no republic at Rome, and after nine weeks’ gallantry the city capitulated to the French, who represented the cause of reaction. Garibaldi, however, did not surrender. On the day when the French made their entry by one gate, he marched out of another, followed by nearly four thousand soldiers. He wound across the Campagna, and then for twenty-nine days he led his troop among the Apennines, evading now the French who pressed on the rear, now the Austrians, who harassed both flanks and threatened to bar the advance. The little army dwindled, but Garibaldi held his purpose to reach Venice, where the Austrian tyrants had not yet forced their return. At length, however, in the little republic of San Marino he was surrounded. All but two hundred of his followers disbanded; with the remainder he eluded the enemy’s cordon, reached the coast at Cesenatico, seized some fishing-boats, and embarked for Venice. Mid-voyage, a fleet of Austrian cruisers came upon them and opened fire. As best they could the fugitives landed, with Austrian pursuers at their heels. Garibaldi and one companion bore Anita in dying condition—she had followed the retreat on horseback all the way from Rome—to a wood-cutter’s hut, where she died. A moment later Garibaldi had to fly.
Of that retreat, and his subsequent hair-breadth escapes in being smuggled across Italy, he has left in his memoirs a thrilling account. For a second time he tasted the bitterness of exile: his first refuge was Genoa, but the Piedmontese government, timid after defeat, informed him that he must depart; he was expelled from Turin at the instigation of the French; England warned him that he must be gone from Gibraltar within a week. Only in semi-savage Morocco did he at last find shelter; thence, after a few months, he came to New York. Consider who it was that Europe thus outlawed, and what was his crime. He was a man whose life had been a long devotion to human liberty, and whose most recent guilt was to have attempted to prevent foreign despots from reënslaving his countrymen. A system is judged by the men it persecutes.
Wifeless, homeless, chagrined by the thought that Italy had waged her war of independence only to be beaten, Garibaldi began his second wanderings. A real Odyssey we may call it, with its strange happenings. For a year the hero of Rome earned a bare livelihood making candles in Meucci’s factory on Staten Island; then he shipped for Central and South America; captained a cargo of guano from Lima to Canton, and a cargo of tea back to Lima; brought a ship laden with copper, round Cape Horn to Boston; and finally, in May, 1854, he dropped anchor at Genoa, where the government no longer feared his presence. With the proceeds of his mercantile ventures, he bought Caprera,—a mere rock, which juts out of the Tuscan Sea, near the northern tip of Sardinia. There, “like some tired eagle on a crag remote,” he dwelt five years, apparently oblivious to the passing current of events, and wholly intent on coaxing a few vines and vegetables to grow on his wind-swept rock.
Early in 1859 a messenger summoned Garibaldi from his hermitage to Turin. This summons was not unexpected. For months the world had regarded war in Italy as inevitable, and now war was on the point of breaking out.
How had this come to pass? After her defeat in 1849, Piedmont, the little northwestern kingdom of four million souls, had sturdily set about reforming herself. She stood firmly by the constitutional government adopted in 1848; she strengthened her army and her navy; she took education out of the hands of the Jesuits; she encouraged commerce, industry, and agriculture. Thus she proved to Europe that Italians could govern themselves by as good a political system as then existed; to all the other Italians, groaning under Austrian, or Bourbon, or Papal tyranny, she proved that they might look to her to lead the Italian cause.