Garibaldi, Giuseppe

GARIBALDI, GIUSEPPE. - General, national hero, b. at Nice on 4 July 1807, d. at Caprera on 2 June 1882. Educated as a Catholic by his parents Domenico and Rosa Raimondi, very early, having undertaken the adventurous life of the sea, he came into contact with exiles and conspirators; in 1833 he was initiated by Barroult into the Saint-Simonian sect and by Mazzini into Young Italy. He enlisted in the Sardinian navy and in 1834 took part in the insurrectionary attempts at Genoa; he was tried and condemned to death. Having escaped the penalty, he moved first to France and then to America, where he took an active part, at the head of a legion of Italian volunteers, among whom the first small band of red shirts stood out, in the long war that Uruguay waged against Brazil (1839-46). Here the heroic valor and military genius of G. manifested themselves for the first time. At the announcement of the reforms granted by Pius IX, he, with an address to the nuncio Bedini, placed his sword at the disposal of the Pope; in April 1848, having returned to his homeland with 63 companions, he hurried to Lombardy, where the first war of independence against Austria was being fought, but he encountered distrust in Charles Albert. Once the Roman Republic was proclaimed, G. fought as a general against the Bourbon forces at Palestrina and Velletri, and against the French at Porta S. Pancrazio. When the Republic fell, he left Rome together with a few loyal followers (2 July 1849) and took refuge in S. Marino. Having put to sea at Cesena, he had to disembark at Migliavacca, where his wife Anita died, she who had followed him in the adventurous flight. After dramatic vicissitudes, he emigrated to the United States (July 1850), devoted himself to industry, and reappeared at Genoa on 7 May 1854, with modest savings that he invested in the purchase of half of the uncultivated island of Caprera, which little by little he succeeded in making entirely his own and improved, intensifying agriculture and sheep-rearing there.

When the war against Austria then broke out in April 1859, G., who had already received command of the Cacciatori delle Alpi, valiantly sustained fighting at Varese, at S. Fermo, and at the Stelvio. In a meeting at Milan the following August, he proposed to Victor Emmanuel II an expedition into central Italy, and the King promised his support but with delay. Mazzini and the National Society prepared the ground: G. was to invade the pontifical territory with two divisions and take the direction of the revolt. The fear of a reaction not only on the part of France, but also of the Italian states, which were not disposed to tolerate such a coup, dissuaded the King from undertaking the enterprise; he therefore ordered General Fanti to dissuade G., or at most to let him act at his own risk and peril. From a new conversation with Victor Emmanuel at Turin on 29 Oct. 1859, G. carried away the impression that the King would not at all be displeased by some such enterprise, at least to show Napoleon III how the situation in central Italy was by now untenable, all the more so since England was encouraging boldness, with lavish displays. But Napoleon III, informed that a coup by G. was being plotted in the Marches, with a threatening telegram to the King put an end to those designs. The latter then sent General Solaroli to Bologna, and G. yielded at first, but then, giving way to the insinuations of friends, he withdrew his assent, until, summoned by the King to Turin on 16 Nov., he allowed himself to be persuaded to reserve his forces for an occasion mito choose and to retire to Caprera. Having reached Nice, however, he issued a proclamation to the friends of central Italy recommending the subscription of a million rifles for the armed nation, and in a letter to the King he vindicated his own freedom of action. Convinced that Victor Emmanuel fully supported his plans, he implored him to rid himself of Cavour and to assume the dictatorship, in order to march to the liberation of Rome. On 28 Dec. he met with him again and it seems that they reached an agreement on the matter; but then Victor Emmanuel, alarmed by the possible consequences, went back on it, limiting his assent and his help of arms and money to an expedition in Sicily. Thus, in spite of Cavour, who feared at one and the same time the thunderbolts of Napoleon and the ascendancy of the republican faction, the expedition of the Thousand took place (May 1860) with prosperous success, under the auspices of the king, and with the motto: "Italy and Victor Emmanuel". The two protagonists kept in contact during the enterprise through Trecchi. But when G. was about to cross the Faro and leap upon Naples and then upon Rome, where he already deluded himself with proclaiming in the Capitol Victor Emmanuel king of Italy, both the King and Cavour, alarmed, hastened to stem the Garibaldian advance, and to keep watch through La Farina over the movement in Sicily. The fear of a strengthening of the revolutionary action, personified in G. and Mazzini, and together the fear that English influence might prevail in Italy, persuaded Napoleon to turn a blind eye to the occupation of the Marches and of Umbria, which the royal troops, commanded by the King in person, carried out under the pretext of opening a passage for themselves to penetrate into the Napoleon and to stop G. before he attacked Rome. The meeting between the king and G. took place at Teano on 26 Oct. and on 7 Nov. they entered, side by side, triumphantly into Naples. Once again there was talk between them of the occupation of Rome, but Victor Emmanuel urged G. to wait still longer. Striving by every means to limit the influence of G. and of his friends, he even denied him the lieutenancy over the Two Sicilies, so that the general, indignant and disappointed, refused emoluments and honors, and on 9 Nov., having left Naples, retired to Caprera.

Relations with Cavour, whom G. regarded, together with Napoleon, as the supreme obstacle to his daring enterprises, became ever more strained. When on 18 Apr. 1861 a proposal for the enrollment in the rolls of the Garibaldian officer corps was being discussed in the Subalpine Chamber, G., already irritated against Cavour over the cession of Nice and Savoy, assailed him with such vehemence that it is believed to have contributed to shortening his days. But with Victor Emmanuel relations soon became cordial again; with Cavour gone and Rattazzi risen to power, G. flew to Turin, welcomed by the King with much cordiality. He undertook a journey through the principal cities of upper Italy under the pretext of a propaganda campaign for marksmanship, but with the intent of consolidating the party of action and of stirring up spirits for Rome and Venice. But the King, once again threatened by the Emperor of the French, resorted to the usual dilatory method toward G.: to renounce Rome for the moment and to turn his mind to another goal. Thus came about the enterprise of the Trentino (May 1862), which, after its first successes, had to be cut short, violently repressed by the royal government, with the same Rattazzi in power, following the hostility of European diplomacy.

Having retired to Caprera, G. on 27 June 1862 set out for Sicily, began to gather people, and from Palermo launched a vibrant proclamation to the Italians, with the cry of: "Rome" death". The King at first sought to placate him; seeing, however, that he grew ever more insolent, even against him, with an edict dated 3 Aug. he outlawed him. It was the common opinion that Rattazzi was party to the game; documents published by Lazio, on the other hand, show that Rattazzi had issued orders, which were not carried out, to prevent that rash act of his. But the astonishment was not slight when on 29 Aug. G. was stopped by the royal troops at Aspromonte, and, wounded and a prisoner, was confined in the fortress of Varignano, then led back to Caprera. There was no lack of those who would have demanded that the King, to whom the responsibility for those events was traced, abdicate the crown: but everything ended with a simple cabinet crisis.

In March 1864 G. went to London and was reconciled with Mazzini, from whom his Sabbatarian loyalism had detached him. In 1866 he took part in the campaign against Austria at the head of three thousand volunteers and won successes at Monte Suello, at Condino, and at Bezzecca (4, 16 and 21 July). With the armistice, having pronounced his "I obey", he evacuated the Trentino and retired to Caprera. With Venice too reunited to Italy, there now remained only Rome with the tiny Papal State; and G., dominated by his exasperated passion, in the spring of 1867 reappeared from Caprera in the peninsula, undertook a propaganda tour, wholly anticlerical, through upper Italy, with the cry of: "war on the priests: Rome" death", and launched so harsh a campaign against the minister Ricasoli, who was hateful to him for his tendencies toward conciliation with Rome, as to provoke a crisis, which brought Rattazzi back to power. New plots against the Ecclesiastical State then resumed, and profiting from the slender force at its disposal after the withdrawal of the French garrison, following the Convention of Sept. 1864, he attempted a coup de main, concentrating bands of volunteers at the frontiers. A handful of red shirts was dispersed in the vicinity of Terni in March by the royal troops; but in the autumn, with stronger elements, he pushed as far as Sinalunga, south of Orvieto, where, stopped (24 Sept.), he was led back to the island. What agreements then existed between G., the King and Rattazzi has not yet been clarified, but there is no doubt that the latter, at least, was a secret architect of these attempts, in order to confront Europe with a fait accompli. In fact, despite apparent measures of rigor, and despite demonstrations hostile to the government, G. was acclaimed with demonstrations of sympathy, almost a plebiscite in favor of the occupation of Rome. While bands of volunteers, commanded by Nicotera and by Menotti Garibaldi, violated the papal frontiers at several points, others secretly penetrated into Rome, where within a few days clamorous episodes occurred: the attack of Monti and Tognetti on the Serristori barracks (22), those of the Cairoli brothers (23) and of the Ajani house (25 Oct.), which reveal a coordinated plan of action, such as precisely must have been in the wishes of Victor Emmanuel and of Rattazzi.

G., having secretly left Caprera, landed on 18 Oct. at Livorno, and reached his followers at Monterotondo where he had a first clash with the papal troops, who, about 2000 in number, commanded by Gen. Kanzler, and supported also by as many Frenchmen who had come up, inflicted on the Garibaldians a decisive defeat at Mentana (3-4 Nov.). G., arrested at Figline, was led back to Caprera (25 Nov.). The royal government was forced to withdraw from Viterbo to Civitavecchia, which it had occupied, and Rattazzi to resign (20 Oct.). The Foreign Minister of France then proclaimed that Italy would never go to Rome.

The occupation of Rome, following the collapse of Napoleon III, took place instead on 20 Sept. 1870 through the regular troops of General Cadorna. Precisely in those days G. landed at Marseilles (7 Oct.) to offer his arm in defense of the newborn French Republic. He took part with his customary valor in that campaign, which however concluded with little glory for him, because of the ignoble scenes of the Parliament of Bordeaux (8 March 1871). He then withdrew, disgusted, to his solitary island, where he could have led a more serene life, had he not surrounded himself with shady speculators who, abusing his inexperience, entangled him in grandiose undertakings, such as the reclamation of the countryside, the reclamation of the Tiber valley, the embankment of the Tiber, which for their execution would have required a technical preparation and a financial basis that he lacked.

These last years of his life, spent in inaction, are also the most wretched from the moral point of view. G. found nothing better to do than to vent his vexations with books in prose and verse, for the most part insipid, overflowing with vulgar insults and denigrations against the clergy and the Pope, and with bombastic declamations against a society that had the fault of not taking seriously the dreams of his mind, darkened by stale anticlericalism and by narrow-minded Masonic ideals.

Lacking a true religious formation, G. had passed through all the pseudoreligious forms of his age. He was by turns Saint-Simonian, pantheist, syncretist, and very early, together with his faithful followers, he gave himself over to Freemasonry. To counterbalance the Cavourian Masonic current, in 1862 G. was made perpetual master of the Grand Orient of Palermo, in antagonism to the Grand Orient of Turin. The IV Masonic Constituent Assembly, held in Florence in 1864, with the aim (unsuccessful) of uniting all Masonic forces into a single body, confirmed for him the title of grand master of Italian Freemasonry, and named A. Mordini deputy grand master, who in 1867 was succeeded by L. Frapolli. But G.'s work, as Valori observes, had « become almost only verbal » and literary. Long before his last hour came, and before the ashes of his body, which he wished to be cremated upon a pyre of mastic shrubs, were scattered to the wind, he was a survivor. His name served as a pretext for a sectarian anticlericalism, to embitter ever more the old rancors that divided the minds of Italians.

Nevertheless it must be noted that in him a glimmer of faith and veneration toward the Divine Redeemer never died out entirely, which surfaced in his finest hours. At the time of the fortunate expedition of the Thousand, perhaps attracted by the charm of an atmosphere steeped in Christian sentiment, he too had accents of faith and piety that seem sincere.

The Garibaldian literature is very rich, but for the most part of scant critical value; and apart from some good monographic essay, among which should be noted that of Dalle Torre cited below, little has been produced in our field. The best sources are still almost all of liberal stamp: G. Guerzoni, G., Florence 1882; A. V. Vecchi, La vita e le gesta di G. G., Bologna 1882; J. White-Mario, G. G. e i suoi tempi, Milan 1884; G. M. Trevelyan, G. e la difesa della Repubblica Romana, Bologna 1900; id., G. e i Mille, ibid. 1910; id., G. e la formazione dell'Italia, ibid. 1913; A. Luzio, G., Casour, Verdi, Turin 1924; P. Dalla Torre, L'anno di Mentana, ibid. 1928; M. Rossi, G., Bologna 1932; A. Monti, La vita di G. G. giorno per giorno, Milan 1932; A. Luzio, Alpormonte e Mentana, Florence 1935; A. Valori, G. G. (Grandi italiani, 3), Turin 1941; F. Cognasso, Vittorio Emano le II (Grandi italiani, 23), ibid. 1942.

Pietro Pirri