Builders of United Italy — Garibaldi, The Crusader Part 3

Garibaldi returned to Caprera and watched from afar the policies of the new premiers, first Ricasoli, then Rattazzi.

The latter was always suspected of French leanings, and the extremists were bitterly opposed to him.

He was a brilliant man, fated to meet disasters, as day after day passed he found that the Garibaldian problem called ever louder for solution.

He saw that Genoa, Sicily, and Naples were hotbeds of turbulence, he knew that the people of the last-named city had made a god of Garibaldi, had built altars to him, and were imploring him to lead them against the Pope, he knew that even in the Eternal City hundreds were calling to him to deliver them.

Yet Rattazzi also knew that the problem of the temporal power of the Pope was one of concern to all Europe, and that Italy was not ready to fight both France and Austria.

His final solution was this, one which must not be judged too harshly when all the circumstances are considered, to encourage Garibaldi to start a popular campaign against the Pope, and then send the royal army to arrest him as fomenting civil strife.

The plan succeeded.

In the spring of 1862 Garibaldi could restrain his eagerness no longer.

He announced to his delighted followers that he would lead them to Rome.

He was given to understand the government would not actively interfere.

So, two years after his first expedition, we find him again arriving triumphantly in Sicily, again we find men of all classes flocking to him, again by strategy he crossed the straits to Calabria and took up his northward march.

He had not gone far when he found that the royal army was marching against him.

He became convinced of this when he bivouacked on the famous hill of Aspromonte and saw the royal general, Pallavicini, camped opposite him.

The next day he tried to lead his soldiers past the other army, but they were stopped by the regular troops.

Both generals affirmed that they gave no orders to fire, but nevertheless shots were exchanged, and both Garibaldi and his son Menotti were wounded.

A truce was agreed upon, and the volunteers were placed under the charge of the royal army.

Garibaldi became a state prisoner, perhaps the most difficult prisoner any government ever had to take upon its hands.

All Italy was devoted to him, but found that it could not control him.

The government had been placed in the most embarrassing situation conceivable, it had been obliged to disarm the man who had just given the King two crowns.

Aspromonte remains one of the most unfortunate events in the great battle for Italian unity, but it was in a large measure inevitable.

Cavour might have contrived an escape from it, but Garibaldi was too big a problem for his successors to handle diplomatically.

The wounded general was taken by slow conveyances to Scylla, and thence to the fort of Varignano in the Gulf of Spezia.

The wound was painful, it was difficult to locate the bullet, for a long time he was obliged to keep to his bed and postpone further political action.

His illness, however, gave his friends a golden opportunity to show their devotion;

women of all ranks fought for the chance to nurse the hero, delegations from England, from Germany, from all parts of Italy made pilgrimages to his prison, the hotels at Spezia, the nearest town to the fortress, were continually crowded by Garibaldi worshipers.

It seemed that what he had suffered at Aspromonte had actually canonized him in the eyes of the world.

His imprisonment could not last long; October 5, 1862, the government declared an amnesty covering all participators in the late expedition against Rome except those soldiers who had left the regular army to join the volunteers.

Garibaldi was now moved to Spezia, thence after a time to Pisa.

Each city he passed greeted him tumultuously; in Pisa, the night of his arrival, the Garibaldi hymn was cheered so loudly at the theater that the manager abandoned the play and had nothing but the hymn rendered all the evening, which pleased the audience greatly.

At Pisa the bullet was extracted from Garibaldi's foot, and his recovery became more rapid.

On December 20 he started for Caprera, giving a chance for Leghorn to welcome him as he embarked for his island home.

Once there he found the rest of which he was so much in need, although visitors continually besieged his little farm.

The kindly instincts of his nature showed in full flower, he gave whatever his children or his friends asked of him, sacrificing his own comforts continually for their sake, and continually being imposed upon.

He wrote to the patriots suffering in Poland and Denmark, and wished that he might go to aid them.

Wherever men were in trouble he sympathized, he could even find it in his heart to contribute to the poor of Austria.

There were friends of the national cause who feared that the affair of Aspromonte had injured Garibaldi's prestige, and to revive it in full glory they planned his triumphal visit to England in the spring of 1863. Garibaldi had always admired the English, and there was no question but that the people of England had always zealously sided with Italy against France and Austria, no matter how strongly their government might feel that diplomacy required a middle course.

The general went from Caprera to Southampton, and thence to London, acclaimed by thousands, who rivaled the warm-spirited Neapolitans in their heights of enthusiasm.

The modest, benign-faced warrior was fêted as a national deliverer, the streets of London rang with his hymn, women adopted the famous red Garibaldi shirt as the latest fashion, aristocrats and working people fought for the opportunity of entertaining him.

Before he could take up his northern tour, however, it was announced that he was overtired and would have to leave the country for rest.

His physicians denied this, and it appears as most probable that Louis Napoleon was so much displeased and even alarmed at the popular acclaim given the general that he made his wish known to Lord Palmerston that the guest leave English shores.

Again Garibaldi proved a serious burden to diplomacy, his very fame made him the more difficult to deal with.

So rather than cause further international trouble the general bade England an affectionate farewell and returned to Caprera.

The campaign of 1866, which won Venetia for the kingdom of Victor Emmanuel, is not a glorious page in Italian history.

Venice was freed from Austria's rule because the Prussians won the battles of Sadowa and Königgratz.

What victories Italy won fell to the score of the volunteers fighting with Garibaldi in the Lakes rather than to the regular army of the new nation.

From the date of the Liberator's return from England up to the spring of 1866 he lived in comparative quiet, spending most of his time at Caprera, and only making occasional visits to the mainland.

Meanwhile events were rapidly showing that Prussia and Austria must soon fight for the supremacy in Germany, and Victor Emmanuel concluded an alliance with Berlin.

Then, in May, 1866, Garibaldi was asked by the Italian Minister of War to take command of the volunteer forces.

He accepted gladly, and, as so often before, the news that he was about to take the field was sufficient to gather innumerable patriots about him.

Unfortunately the generals of the regular army were again jealous of Garibaldi, and continual obstacles were placed in his way, even his own officers speedily formed cliques and wrought dissension in his command.

He was ordered to attack Austria from Como, and so through the Lakes rather than from Hungary as he would have preferred.

Yet, with all these obstacles the campaign started at Como with much of the old spirit.

Again the veterans of 1859 and 1860, many of the famous Thousand, many who had fought at Messala and on the Volturno, gathered, clad in red shirts, on the banks of Lake Como, and raised the Garibaldi hymn.

Scores of enthusiastic Englishmen could not keep away from the Lakes, an Englishwoman and her husband followed the general all through the campaign, carrying a cooking-stove and store of provisions for their idol.

But notwithstanding all the enthusiasm the efforts to dislodge the enemy were not very successful.

The Austrians were not as easily frightened or defeated as had been the soldiers of the King of Naples, and the people of the Tyrol did not rise and join Garibaldi's ranks as had the Sicilians and Calabrians.

The commissariat service was wretched, time and again the troops bivouacked without shelter or food, conflicting orders were given, and but for their remarkable light-heartedness and faith in their general the men would have been in very bad shape for any manner of combat.

On the first day of real fighting, at Rocca d'Anfo, Garibaldi was wounded in the thigh, and after that had to direct operations from a carriage.

Nevertheless, he lost nothing of his confidence, and planned his successive moves through the mountains and lakes with his old skill in this form of irregular warfare.

The actual military operations were of no permanent importance, the volunteers were sent down the beautiful Lake of Como to Lecco accompanied by a fleet of private boats filled with admiring friends.

From Lecco they went to Bergamo and thence to Brescia, and then for a time their headquarters were at Salò, on the Lake of Garda.

An eye-witness contrasts their informal style of marching with that of the regulars: "Some of them were lying at full length on bullock wagons, with their rifles decorated with roses at their sides, others were trudging sturdily along in the loosest manner, smoking, with their shirts open, and their rugs rolled across their bodies."

When Garibaldi had completed his plans for marching north he received word from General La Marmora to take Lonato, and turned there from Salò.

The Austrians withdrew before the Italian advance, and the latter army was free to enter the Trentino.

Their first step in this direction was to take the rocky fort of Rocca d'Anfo, and after that they marched on Darzo, which was the scene of much fighting, and then on to the fort of Ampola.

On July 16 the volunteers dragged their cannon into position on the mountains, and on the 17th the real attack began.

Ampola capitulated, and the march to Riva began through the Ledro valley.

At a village near Bizecca they were attacked early in the morning.

The Austrians opened fire from the village houses.

Chiassi, one of Garibaldi's veterans, was killed, and for a time the volunteers made little headway.

Garibaldi's two sons and his son-in-law Canzio did their utmost to encourage the men behind them, and gradually what had threatened to be a rout was turned into a victory.

Bizecca was immediately captured, and the troops had started their march to Lardaro when news came that an armistice was being arranged, and orders were brought to Garibaldi bidding him leave the Trentino.

The Italian army had met with a reverse at the battle of Custozza, but fortunately their Prussian allies had already won the two great victories of Königgratz and Sadowa and were in a position to dictate terms to Austria.

The oft-fought-over Venetian provinces became at last part of the kingdom of Italy.

Venice was added to her sister cities, which now only lacked Rome.

The Tyrol, however, was left with Austria, and so Garibaldi viewed the peace with disappointment.

He was confident that his volunteers could have won it, and found this another instance of the mistakes of statesmanship.

As after the expedition of the Thousand, so after the campaign in the Lakes, Garibaldi found that he could not rest quietly with Rome in Papal hands.

Italy was bound by agreement with France to leave Pius IX.

in temporary possession of the Eternal City, but Garibaldi cared little or nothing for his country's obligations.

He showed in a hundred ways that he was unwilling that the kingdom should have rest or a chance to recuperate until the city on the Tiber was won, and so again in 1867, as in 1862, he became a tremendously difficult problem to the government, the seat of which had been moved from Turin to Florence, and of which Rattazzi was again the head.

As soon as the French left Rome a number of revolutionary societies commenced operations in that city, and Garibaldi was asked to act in conjunction with them.

He made an electioneering tour in the spring of 1867, and was received at Venice, at Verona, and at Legnano with a veneration that partook of religious awe.

He was elected deputy in the new Parliament from four districts.

He next appeared at the meeting of the Universal Peace Congress at Geneva, and spoke against the priesthood, denouncing the Papacy with his accustomed ardor.

He then returned to Italy and in a fiery speech at the Villa Cairoli called on his countrymen to march on Rome.

He started for the Papal frontier, and the volunteers collected about him so rapidly that Rattazzi was again obliged to arrange for his arrest.

At Sinalunga he was taken prisoner, and conveyed to Alessandria, and there arrangements were made to take him to his home at Caprera and keep him virtually imprisoned there.

Unfortunately Garibaldi could not be kept quiet; even when his island was guarded by four steamers and a frigate he managed to send appeals to the mainland and keep the revolutionary party alert.

Other leaders were attacking Rome by now, Nicotera was advancing from Naples, Menotti Garibaldi was waging guerilla warfare near Tivoli, the brothers Cairoli--name famous in Italian annals--made their daring attack at the Vigna Glori.

Pius IX.

and his Secretary of State, Cardinal Antonelli, were not having a pleasant time in Rome.

Barracks were blown up, bombs were discovered, petitions were presented from his subjects urging him to call in the army of Victor Emmanuel.

Meanwhile Garibaldi planned and executed his daring escape from Caprera.

He pretended to be ill, and then one dark night set off in a small boat for Sardinia.

He lay hidden until he could get horses to take him to Porta Prudenza, and from there sailed with his son-in-law Canzio to the mainland.

A day or two later he was brazenly haranguing the people from the Loggia dei Lanzi in Florence.

The government learned that they could not control him, and now concluded to repeat the tactics of Aspromonte, and allow him to bring about his own destruction.

At Terni Garibaldi began active campaigning.

He met his troops, and planned an immediate attack on the town of Monte Rotondo, which crowns a hill overlooking the Tiber and the roads to Rome.

The hill town was hotly defended, but the volunteers finally took it.

From there, after a short stay, Garibaldi moved his army, now numbering 15,000 men, on towards the Ponte della Mentana, some four and a half miles from Rome.

It is said that an agreement had been made by which the Papal governor of the castle of St. Angelo was to surrender his post for a sum of money, and that this sum was raised by Garibaldi's English friends, but through treachery was not properly used.

This occasioned some delay, and by that time French troops had been landed and were marching to the aid of their allies, the Papal guards.

The general was obliged to retreat temporarily to Monte Rotondo, and there he issued a public address.

He relied on the fact that the Roman Republic of 1849 had made him a Roman general.

After rehearsing the facts of the Italian government's position he said, "Then will I let the world know that I alone, a Roman general, with full power, elected by the universal suffrage of the only legal government in Rome, the Republic, have the right to maintain myself armed in this, the territory under my jurisdiction; and then if these my volunteers, champions of liberty and Italian unity, wish to have Rome as the capital of Italy, fulfilling the vote of Parliament and of the nation, they must not put down their arms until Italy shall have acquired liberty of conscience and worship, built upon the ruin of Jesuitism, and until the soldiers of tyrants shall be banished from our land."

The French had now joined the Papal army, and the Italian troops were massing in Garibaldi's rear.

On November 3 he started towards Tivoli, but had to fall back on Mentana, and there occurred the battle which decided the fate of the expedition.

The volunteers fought with the greatest courage and enthusiasm, but their arms were no match for the new chassepots of the French.

Garibaldi had to fall back on Monte Rotondo, and there, on discovering that his men had scarcely a cartridge left, he was forced to order a further retreat.

The expedition was at an end, the volunteers were disbanded, and Garibaldi took train to Florence.

There he was arrested and conveyed a prisoner to the fort of Varignano.

The battle of Mentana had cost many Italian lives.

Victor Emmanuel was deeply grieved and had a message sent to the French Emperor: "The last events have suffocated every remembrance of gratitude in the heart of Italy.

It is no longer in the power of the government to maintain an alliance with France, the chassepot gun at Mentana has given it a fatal blow."

The battle therefore had the result of severing the tacit alliance between Italy and France, and henceforth the problem of Roman occupation became simpler to the King's government.

In 1870 the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war compelled Napoleon to defend his own borders, and no longer to support a Papal government in a foreign land.

When the French and Germans were fighting the question of the temporal power of the Church was quietly settled, with almost no fighting and little outside attention, by the entrance of the King of Italy into Rome.

At last Italy was united.

Garibaldi had nothing to do with this final occupation, for which he had laid plans since his early South American days.

When Napoleon was eliminated from French politics Garibaldi could no longer restrain his ardor for the republican government.

He took sword, and left Caprera to volunteer for service with France.

He was given command of the army of the Vosges, and his campaign against the Prussians at Autun and Dijon was at least as successful as that of the regular French generals.

The Prussians were too strong, the Army of the East gave way before them, and Garibaldi's brief campaign was at an end.

After the peace he was elected deputy from Paris, Dijon, and Nice, but was not allowed to sit in the Assembly on the ground that he was a foreigner.

He received the official thanks of the French government and returned home.

There remained a somewhat turbulent old age for Garibaldi.

Italy was united and rapidly growing stronger under the happy influence of continued peace.

Garibaldi, however, could not remain quiet, and when he appeared in public he was publicly worshiped and privately feared.

He became more and more ardently a republican as time went on, and his republicanism was only too apt to take the color of the last man with whom he had talked.

He was not an able original thinker, and except in military manoeuvers had always been too much inclined to lean on the advice of others.

In the elections of 1874 the general was chosen by several districts, among others the city of Rome, to sit in the Senate.

He made a triumphal progress from Caprera to the capital, and when he was sworn in as a Senator the members forgot all past and present difficulties and cheered to the echo the man who had led the Thousand from Genoa to Naples.

He went to the Quirinal to see the King, a sovereign whom he had ardently admired since the time when he had first seen him in battle.

A little later we find him a member of a committee with the King and Prince Torlonia to divert the course of the Tiber and improve the Campagna.

Meanwhile at Caprera Francesca, the devoted woman who had first gone there to nurse Garibaldi's daughter, had taken Anita's position, and become the mother of the general's youngest children, Manlio and Clelia.

In 1880 the Court of Appeal at Rome declared Garibaldi's marriage to Giuseppina Raymondi, the adventuress who had taken advantage of him long before, null and void.

Fortunately the marriage had been contracted under Austrian and not Italian jurisdiction.

Had it been otherwise the annulment would not have been allowed.

Immediately on receipt of the news Garibaldi and Francesca were married.

At Caprera Garibaldi lived like an island prince, continually receiving visits and presents from admirers of all nations.

Yet, for all his domestic happiness, the old warrior would mix in public affairs, and almost always as an opponent of the existing government.

Even when his old friend and comrade-in-arms, Benedetto Cairoli, fourth of the famous brothers, became Prime Minister, he was not content with his policies.

He embarrassed the government by continually writing ultra-radical letters to the newspapers.

Two or three times more he appeared in public, became again an active figure when his son-in-law Canzio was arrested at a turbulent meeting in Genoa, and resigned his seat in the National Chambers.

He was, however, too worn out physically to make further dangerous expeditions, and was persuaded to leave the more active part to younger men.

In 1882 he died at Caprera.

Neither the character nor the achievements of Garibaldi are difficult to estimate.

His character was simple, he was ingenuously frank and open-minded, absolutely sincere, warm-hearted, and forgiving to a fault.

His whole career is filled with instances in which his generosity was traded on, notably the case of his second marriage.

He was always frugal, unostentatious, unselfish, never did a breath of public scandal sully his name.

Although he had many opportunities to gain wealth he was always poor.

During the last days of his life he enjoyed a pension from the government, but the most of that was given to his children or dispensed in charity.

Given this true, straightforward nature, we find that from his boyhood he had above everything desired a free united Italy, with Rome as its capital.

The name Rome never failed to thrill him.

So long as the master-hand of Cavour was ready to guide him Garibaldi proceeded gloriously forward, the crusader who could lead men into battle and fill them with a great enthusiasm.

Cavour could fight against the Mazzinian theories of a republic, he had to fight hard to keep the soldier in the straight path, particularly in those early days in Naples, but he succeeded, and saw Garibaldi proudly deliver Naples and Sicily into the care of his King.

How great was Cavour's steering hand we find in later years; without that powerful mind to control him, Garibaldi fell under the influence of many different types of men, and his simple confiding nature found it easy to trust each seeming friend in turn.

The very virtue of his nature acted against him then, he became a tool for men to use, his great name a flag for any new quixotic idea.

It was only when he was fighting that he was his own commander, at other times he was ever ready to sink his own opinions in those of others.

The latter part of his life was therefore continually stormy, he had not the art to weather varying changes in national sentiment.

Almost as easy to estimate as his character were his achievements.

They were superlatively great for Italy.

Nobody can tell whether Cavour's diplomacy alone would ever have won the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.

Garibaldi started from Genoa on an expedition that seemed doomed to disaster, but which, successfully begun, carried all opposition before it.

It is true that the army of Francis II.

was poor, and that the battles, with the exception of Calatafimi in Sicily, are not to be classed as great conflicts, but Garibaldi did much more than win battles, he roused the people to a pitch of fighting spirit they had never known before.

The fame of the Thousand spread across Europe, and with it rose European admiration and interest in the Italian cause.

Foreigners joined his army, and when the great general met Victor Emmanuel and gave over the two crowns he had won the eyes of the whole world were focused on the sovereign and the hero.

The glory of that expedition could not fade, whatever Garibaldi did later could not efface the memory of those great days; even the governments that found him rebelling against the laws and treaties they had made could not but thrill at the recollection of the days of 1860 and 1861. The red shirt became an oriflamme to lovers of liberty in all lands, the Garibaldian hymn set hearts to dancing with pride and exultation, the simple soldier with his dramatic effects of life and bearing became an Italian national hero with all the mythical charm of a Cid Campeador or a William Tell.

He will take a place in Italian legendary history that was empty until his day.

This atmosphere of romance that surrounded him was of his nature.

He wrote two books, one, "The Rule of the Monk," which appeared after his imprisonment at Varignano, the other, "The Thousand," after the Vosges campaign.

They were both extravagant, artificial, as wildly eventful as any novels ever penned.

Yet in a sense they catch the flavor of his own career.

When he describes the monks he pictures them as they actually seemed to him, agents of the power which had so hounded him after the siege of Rome, and which had executed his friend Ugo Bassi.

When he writes of "The Thousand" he shows his followers as men capable of any heroism, and the expedition becomes one series of marvellous adventures.

He saw that intensely dramatic side of the struggle, and he became the symbol of that dramatic element in the eyes of the world.

His country needed that symbol, the glory of a crusader was as essential to Italian redemption as the soul-stirring fanaticism of a Mazzini, the statecraft of a Cavour, or the kingship of a Victor Emmanuel.

He was the living personification of the great fight for liberty; that was his contribution to the cause.