Garibaldi's defence of the Roman Republic

Front matter

CORNELL

UNIVERSITY

LIBRARY

Preface

This year is the centenary of Garibaldi's birth, which took place on July 4, 1807. It is not on this account that the present volume has been written and published, but the coincidence may be an additional reason why some EngUshmen should be curious to read about the man for whom their fathers entertained a passionate enthusiasm, pure of all taint of materiahsm and self-interest. On the occasion of his famous visit to our country in 1864, the ovation which he received was so universal and so overwhelming that there was nothing in the nineteenth century Uke it, except perhaps the Jubilee procession of the Queen herself. The feeling for Garibaldi had by no means become xmiversal among the Enghsh in 1849, the year with which this book is concerned, but even then ItaUan S57mpathies were stronger here than anywhere else in Europe.

We Enghsh retain to this day the Uon's share of Italy's gratitude. Nor is the reason far to seek. Though England was not the country which actually accomphshed most for Italian freedom and unity, it was the country in Europe where the passion for that cause was, beyond aU comparison, strongest and most disinterested, and where it will be for ever connected with such names as Byron and Shelley, Palmerston and Gladstone, Browning and Swinburne.

The attachment of our fathers to Garibaldi grew out of their ItaUan S57mpathies, but it grew also out of something in his personality pecuharly captivating to the English, viii GARIBALDI'S DEFENCE OF ROME

who saw in him the rover of great spaces of land and sea, the fighter against desperate odds, the champion of the oppressed, the patriot, the humane and generous man, all in one. He touched a chord of poetry and romance still latent in the heart of our city populations, so far removed in their surroundings and opportunities from the scenes and actions of his life. Whether his memory will now appeal to the English of a generation yet further removed from nature, and said to be at once more sophisticated and less idealist than the Victorian, I do not know. But I doubt whether we have really changed so much.

Certainly the help and encouragement in my task which I have received from English people leads me to suppose that the name of Garibaldi can still stir many hearts in this island. Foremost among them I must thank Lord Carhsle; then Mrs. Hamilton King; Mr. A. L. Smith, of Balliol; Dr. Spence Watson; Mr. Hubert Hall of the Record Office ; the editor of the ' Illustrated London News ; ' Mr. Brand, the Librarian of the Admiralty ; Dr. F. S. Arnold ; Mr. J. A. Bruce ; the Rev. F. W. Ragg ; Mr. Bolton King ; Mrs. Humphry Ward, and many others, some of whom are mentioned by name in the notes of this book. Three persons have read the proofs of the whole book at a cost of time to themselves from which I have greatly profited — Mr. Hilton Young, my companion on the last part of the ' Retreat ' ; my wife ; and Count Ugo Balzani.

Count Balzani, whose time has been lavished upon me with a kindness which I can never forget, not only aided me in a hundred ways himself, but introduced me to many of my now numerous Italian friends ; for their work on my behalf I am all the more grateful because it was largely inspired by an enthusiasm which we have in common. Without trying to distinguish between the various services which they have each rendered me, I will merely name Signon

PREFACE

IX

Carlo Segre, G. Guerrazzi, and G. Stiavelli of Rome ; Sign. Pier Breschi and General Canzio himself of Genoa; Sign. Luigi Torre of Casale Monferrato; Sign. Cantoni of the Museo Civico, Bologna ; Count Alessandro Guaccimanni of Ravenna ; Sign. Ermanno Loevinson (the author of Garibaldi e la sua Legione) and Cav. Ernesto Ovidi of the Archivio di Stato, Rome ; Sign. Mario Menghini of the Bib. Vitt. Em. ; Captain Carlo Paganelli of the Ufficio Storico ; Major Eugenio de' Rossi of the Bersaglieri ; and Lt .-General Saletta, Chief of the Staff of the Itahan army ; the family and friends of Nino Costa ; Count and Countess Pasolini and Count Pasolino PasoUni ; and the Signorina Dobelli of London.

I do not know whether to thank my friend Mr. Nelson Gay more for putting his splendid Risorgimento library at my disposal, or for giving me so much of his valuable student's time, which he spends with such zeal on behalf of Italy.

I am indebted to Mr. R. M. Johnston of Harvard for a correspondence which has been to me both pleasant and useful.

I heartily thank Commandant Weil of Paris for his friendly offices, and the French Ministry of War for a liberaHty of which I am most sensible. I trust they will not think that I have abused their kindness ; no one is more aware than the author of this book of the courage, discipline, and humanity of the French troops in 1849, or of the immense debt that Italy owes to the First Napoleon, and, in spite of Rome and Mentana, to the Third.

G. M. Trevelyan.

Chelsea : March 1907.

Contents

PAGE

INTRODUCTION I

Part I Preliminary Chapter

I. THE TRAINING OF GARIBALDI 7

II. ANITA — THE LIFE IN SOUTH AMERICA AND THE

RETURN TO ITALY 26

III. Italy's failure in 1848 . . . . . -42

- IV. CONDITION OF THE ROMAN STATES UNDER THE PAPACY, 1815-46 — PIO NONO AND THE REFORM MOVEMENTS, 1846-48 5 1

V. THE DEMOCRATIC PROTEST IN CENTRAL ITALY, OCTOBER 1848-FEBRUARY 1849 — ^MURDER OF ROSSI — FORMATION OF GARIBALDl'S LEGION — THE ROMAN REPUBLIC 7O

VI. THE REPUBLIC, MAZZINI, AND THE POWERS — OUDINOT

ADVANCES ON ROME . . . . . . . 93

Part II The Defence Of Rome

VII. THE THIRTIETH OF APRIL II4

VIII. GARIBALDI IN THE NEAPOLITAN CAMPAIGN — PALES-

TRINA AND VELLETRI, MAY 1849 . . . .135

IX. THE THIRD OF JUNE — ^VILLA CORSINI . . . 161

-J X. THE SIEGE OF ROME, JUNE 4-29 . . . -194

l\ XI. THE LAST ASSAULT, JUNE 30 — FALL OF ROME —

^ DEPARTURE OF GARIBALDI 217

V^

PAGB xii GARIBALDI'S DEFENCE OF ROME

Part III Garibaldi's Retreat And Escape

CHAPTER

XII. THE RETREAT, I. — ROME TO AREZZO — ESCAPE FROM

THE FRENCH, SPANIARDS, AND NEAPOLITANS. . 237

XIII. THE RETREAT, II. — FROM TUSCANY TO THE BORDERS

OF SAN MARINO — THROUGH THE AUSTRIAN ARMIES 258

XIV. SAN MARINO AND CESENATICO, JULY 3I-AUGUST I . 273 XV. THE DEATH OF ANITA ' 288

XVI. THE ESCAPE OF GARIBALDI 300

XVII. THE EMBARKATION— SEPTEMBER 2, 1849 • • ■ 3^7

EPILOGUE 322

LIST OF SOME OF THE OFFICERS WHO DEFENDED ROME IN

1849 323

-A. DRESS AND APPEARANCE OF GARIBALDI IN 1849 ■ • 32S

B NUMBER OF TROOPS ENGAGED ON APRIL 30 . . . 326

C CAPTURE OF THE FRENCH PRISONERS, APRIL 30 . . 327

D TREATMENT OF FRENCH PRISONERS ON APRIL 30 . ' . 330

E THE COMMAND-IN-CHIEF AND THE VELLETRI EXPEDITION 332

F I THE FIRST STRUGGLES FOR THE PAMFILI AND CORSINI,

BEFORE garibaldi's ARRIVAL ..... 333

F 2 STRUCTURE OF THE VILLA CORSINI ..... 334

G garibaldi's USE OF THE BERSAGLIERI ON JUNE 3 . . 335

H DEATH OF MASINA 337

I NUMBERS OF THE ROMAN ARMY DURING THE SIEGE . . 339 J DAMAGE DONE BY THE BOMBARDMENT INCIDENTAL TO

THE SIEGE OF ROME 34I

K THE NUMBERS OF THE KILLED AND WOUNDED . . . 342

L OUDINOT'S GOOD FAITH 344

LIST OF PRINTED MATTER AND MSS. CONSULTED BY THE

LIST OF PLATES

GARIBALDI

Frontispiece

4e , PAGE

*ONE OF THE ORIGINAL RED SHIRTS.' GARIBALDl's OR

ITALIAN LEGION OF MONTEVIDEO, 1846 . . facing 35

*MONTEVIDEAN SOLDIER WITH ' PONCHO ' (CLOAK) .

GAUCHO CAVALRYMAN IN SERVICE OF MONTEVIDEO 1846

STATUE OF UGO BASSI, BOLOGNA . tSCENE IN ROME, WINTER, 1848-49 GIUSEPPE MAZZINI ....

From a Picture by Madame Venturis jrom a Photograph hy Messrs. Mault dr* Fox^ iZ-ja Piccadilly.

JTYPES of THE DEFENDERS OF ROME, 1849.

JORDERLY OF GARIBALDI IN ROME, 1849

GARIBALDI IN 1849

From a Contemporary Print.

JGARIBALDI'S LEGION IN ROME

t ' BOMBA ' AT DINNER, MAY 1849

tCARICATURE OF A NEAPOLITAN SOLDIER

JPORTA SAN PANCRAZIO FROM INSIDE ON JUNE 3, 1849 •

THE DEATH ANGLE

From Werner {ff.v. p. 363, below).

VILLA COESINI (QUATTRO VENTI)

Frofti Werner,

t ' BOMBA ' TEACHING PIO NONO TO BOMBARD HIS SUBJECTS

35 36

100 100 117

118 142 157 173 179

186 196

* From Rear-Admiral Winnington-Ingram's Hearts 0/ Oak, from original slcetches on the

by the author, t From the original pencil drawings for the famotis Don Pirlone cartoons, which drawings are now in the possession of Mr. A. L. Smith of Balliol, who kindly lent them to me. All these our pictures appeared in the newspaper ; see Don Pirlone, Jan. 15, sSt Ma^ 21, 29, 1849.

X From the Illustrated London News of May- July 1849, with kind permission and assistance of the present editor. The pictures facing p. 100 were made from actual sketches of particular individuals.

xiv GARIBALDI'S DEFENCE OF ROME

PAGE

THE VASCELLO DURING THE SIEGE .... fiZCmg 200

From iVemer.

VILLA SAVORELLI AND BATTERY IN THE CASA MER-

LUZZO BASTION ). 202

From Werner.

REAR OF SECOND ROMAN LINE OF DEFENCE,

THE VASCELLO IN I906 „ 213

From a Photograph by Miss Dorothy Ward.

INSIDE THE VASCELLO, I906 , 213

From a Photograph by Miss Dorothy Ward.

CASA MERLUZZO AND BREACH OF BASTION, STORMED

From Werner.

VILLA SPADA, DEFENDED BY MANARA'S BERSAGLIERI,

From Werner.

CAPTURED ROMAN BATTERY ON THE AURELIAN WALL . ,, 228 From Werner.

A TOWER OF SAN MARINO AND VIEW OF SEAWARD

PLAIN BELOW PRECIPICE ,^ 264

From a Photograph by Mr. Hilton Young.

MONASTERY OF CITERNA, WITH EDGE OF ANITA' S

BOWER 264

From a Photograph hy Mr. Hilton Young.

ST. ANGELO IN VADO ^ 26q

From a Photograph by Mr. Hilton Young.

CITERNA ON THE HILL ^^ 360

From a Photograph by Mr. Hilton Young.

MACERATA FELTRIA .... oto

From a Photograph by Mr. Hilton Young.

CITADEL OF SAN MARINO, ON EDGE OF PRECIPICE . „ 272

From a Photograph by Mr. Hilton Young.

CAPPUCCINI MONASTERY, SAN MARINO . o»c

From a Photograph by Mr. Hilton Young.

LIST OF PLATES

XV

GATE OF SAN MARINO facing 275

From a Photograph ty Mr. Hilton Youtig.

MAIN STREET OF CESENATICO „ 283

From a Photograph by Mr. Hilton Young.

A ' BARAGOZZO ' BETWEEN CESENATICO AND THE

MOLE AT THE HARBOUR ENTRANCE . . . . „ 283

From a Photograph iy Mr. Hilton Young.

LIST OF MAPS

PAGE

ITALY, SPRING 1848 AND AUTUMN 1849 • facing 9

For Chaps. I. and III.

PART OF SOUTH AMERICA „ 21

For Chaps. I. and II.

For Chaps. VII.-XI.

ENVIRONS OF ROME „ I4I

For Chaps. VIII and XII

BATTLE OF VILLA CORSINI, JUNE 3, AND FIRST PART

OF SIEGE, JUNE 4-2I „ I72

For Chaps. IX. and X.

SECOND PART OF THE SIEGE OF ROME, JUNE 22-3O „ 2IO For Chaps. X. and XI.

CENTRAL ITALY, 1848-9 „ 364

For Chaps. IV.-VI. and XII.- XVII.

GARIBALDI'S DEFENCE

OF THE

ROMAN REPUBLIC

Introduction

Most of us, when we visit Rome, go up on the morning after our arrival to the heights of the Janiculum, and, standing on the terrace in front of San Pietro in Montorio, look back across the Tiber at the city spread beneath our feet, in all its mellow tints of white, and red, and brown, broken here and there by masses of dark green pine and C37press, and by shining cupolas raised to the sun. There it all Hes beneath us, the heart of Europe and the living chronicle of man's long march to civilisation ; for there, we know,, are the well-proportioned piazzas with their ancient colmnns and their fountains splashing in shade and sun aroimd the sculptured water-gods of the Renaissance ; the Fortmi won back by the spade ; and the first monuments of the Christian Conquest. There rise the naked hulks of giant ruins stripped of their imperial grandeur long ago by hungry generations of Papal architects ; and there, on the outskirts of the town, is the Pyramid that keeps watch over the graves. As we look down we feel the presence of all the centuries of European history, a score of civihsations dead and l3dng in state one beside the other ; and in the midst of their eternal monuments mankind still swarms and labours, after all its strange and varied experience, still intent to live, still busily weaving the remote future out of the immemorial past.

And then, raising our eyes to the far horizon, we see the weU-known shapes of those hiUs of great name, shapes moulded by the chance spasms of volcanoes, as they sank namelessly to rest long ago, leaving against the sky ridges and peaks to which in after days Consuls, Emperors, and Popes of Rome looked every morning as on familiar faces. There, to the north, is the spine of Soracte, famous for no reason except that Horace saw it from Rome — and yet so famous ; to the east, grey, gaunt Lucretilis pointing at the blue sky and hiding the valley of his Digentian farm ; to the south, the Alban Mount itself, the shape of which, never long out of sight, is like the presiding genius of the city — Alba haunting us still ' — as it haunted Romulus and those who left its wooded slopes to colonise the Tiber bank, and Garibaldi as he ordered the battle day by day for a summer month on this very Mount Janiculum.

Across the fifteen miles that Me between the roofs of the capital and this great semi-circle of sacred hills, rolls sea-hke the Campagna in waves of bare, open country. Over it, from the day when the Consul Aulus led out his host to the Porcian height yonder, to the day when Italy entered Rome under Victor Emmanuel, the armies of many nations, in many ages, for many causes, have come and gone, and each could have been seen slowly crawling over the vast plain. In the solemn hush of the distance on which we gaze, through the clear morning air, it seems as if that semi-circle of mountains were the seats of a Greek theatre whereon some audience of patient gods were watching an endless play, as if Rome were the stage on which their looks were centred from the distant hills to north and east and south, while behind, in the west, meet sea and sky, a background before which the short-lived actors move. It was in this, the greatest theatre in the world, the Eternal City, ' Sul teatro delle maggiori grandezze del mondo, neW Urie,^ as Garibaldi called it,^ that the most significant and moving scene of the Risorgimento was played out.

' See Clough's Amours de Voyage, end of Canto I, written during the Siege, 1849. « Mem. 223.

INTRODUCTION 3

' And yet among the English visitors who go on from the

platform of San Pietro in Montorio to view the colossal

equestrian figure of Garibaldi which holds the Janiculan

sky-line, not many are aware how very close to this statue

raged some of the fiercest fights in which he ever took part.

For his sake, or for Italy's, turn aside a few steps to the

Porta San Pancrazio. Standing under its archway we

look out of Rome westward, up a country road, which runs

straight for two hundred yards, and then splits off to right

and left. At the forking of the ways our view from the

city gate is blocked by the entrance to a beautiful garden,

the groimds of the Pamlili-Doria. Inside that garden we see

a slope of grass, with a path running up it to an ornamental

arch, which now stands where the Villa Corsini once stood.

Between the Porta San Pancrazio and this other archway

on the hill top, some four hundred paces away, Italy poured

out her best blood. On that narrow white road, and up

that green slope, and in the old battered Villa Vascello on

the right of the roadway (still left like Hougoumont in

honourable ruin) were mowed down the chosen youth of

Italy, the men who would have been called to make her

laws and lead her armies, and write her songs and history,

when her day came, but that they judged it necessary

to die here in order that her day should come. It

was here that Italy bought Rome, at the price of their

blood — ^here at the San Pancrazio Gate, in 1849, that

her claim on Rome was staked out and paid for ;

twenty-one years passed, and then, in 1870, the debt was

acquitted.

That there should ever have been a time when Mazzini ruled Rome and Garibaldi defended her walls, sounds like a poet's dream. In this book I wish to record the facts that gave shape to that dream, to tell the story of the Siege of Rome, than which there is no more moving incident in modern history ; and, in the last six chapters, to narrate the events that followed as an epilogue to the siege— the Retreat and Escape of Garibaldi, a story no less poetical and no less dear to Italy's heart,, though more neglected

B 2 by English writers, because of its smaller political importance. These later events are the march of Garibaldi across Italy, hunted by the French, Spanish and Neapolitan forces through Umbria and Tuscany, into a network of four armies of Austrians spread over northern Umbria and the Romagna; the extraordinary feats of skill and energy with which the greatest of guerilla chiefs again and again disentangled his little band of followers from surrounding hosts, and carried them across the Apennine watershed to the Adriatic sea-board ; the final htmting of them into the territories of the Republic of San Marino, by Austrians, close on their heels, cruel as the dragoons of Claverhouse, killing or torturing all those whom they caught. Then the disbanding of the bulk of the Roman forces on the friendly neutral territory of the hill Republic, and Garibaldi's rush to the coast, through the enemy's cordon, with the last two hundred, who would not, merely to save their lives, give up the sacred war so long as Venice held out ; their midnight embarkation in the fishing boats at Cesenatico ; their fatal meeting, on the way to Venice, with the Austrian gun-boats ; the re-landing, among the lagoons north of Ravenna, of Garibaldi with his dying wife in his arms, and Ugo Bassi, Ciceruacchio and a dozen more comrades, all to perish within a few days, except (strangest fortune !) Garibaldi and one other. I shall tell how the man of destiny, wandering in the marshes and the pineforest of Ravenna, among regiments of soldiers seeking for his life as for the prize of the war, was preserved by the strange working of chance, by the iron courage and endurance of the worn Odysseus himself, and by the craft, energy, and devotion of the Romagnuols, who guarded him at peril of their lives, as the West countrymen after Worcester fight guarded a less precious treasure.

All this, and his escape back across the breadth of Italy to the Western sea, and embarkation in the Tuscan Maremma for lands of refuge where he could await his great day, will, together with the siege of Rome, form the principal theme of the book. The first half-dozen chapters

INTRODUCTION 5

must serve to introduce the subject to those who are not familiar with the history of Italy and of Garibaldi.

I have concealed nothing prosaic and nothing discreditable—neither Garibaldi's mistakes during the siege, nor the misconduct of some of his associates, nor the hostility with which part of the rural population regarded the red-shirts.

Hoping to make the story of the defence of Rome, of the retreat of the Garibaldians and the escape of their chief stand out in aU its details of place and colouring, I have not only visited the scenes in the capital and near it, but have walked along the whole route traversed by Garibaldi's column from the gate of Rome to Cesenatico on the Adriatic, and have visited the scenes of his adventures near Comacchio and Ravenna. It would, perhaps, be impossible to find in all Europe a district more enchanting to the eye by its shapes, its colours, its atmosphere, or one more filled with famous towns, rivers and mountains, than the valleys of Tiber, Nar, Clanis, Metaurus and Rubicon, across which they marched. Through this land of old beauty I have followed on foot their track of pain and death, with such a knowledge of where they went, and how they fared each day, as is not often the fortune of pilgrims who trace the steps of heroes.' To come, in solitary places, upon the very wayside foimtains at which, as the survivors have recorded, they slaked their raging thirst, and at other turns of the road upon springs where they found no water that terrible July ; to stand on the hiU whence they last saw the dome of St. Peter's, and that other hill where the face of Garibaldi brightened at sight of the Adriatic ; to traverse the oak woods through which they marched under the stars ; or where they slept through the long Italian noonday ; to draw breath in the quiet monastery gardens, perched high over hiUs of olive and plains of vine, wherein they tasted brief hours of green coohiess and repose ; to scale the bare mountains up which they dragged their Httle piece of cannon, and descend the gorge where at the last they

' This extremely detailed knowledge we owe, mainly, to two men, Hoffitetter and Belluzzi. (See Bibliography below.)

let it lie when the Austrians were hard upon them ; to see the streets and piazzas in which the citizens held last festivals of the tricolor in honour of their passage, and the villages where the rearguard fought, and where the laggards were killed by the pursuers ; to hear the waves breaking on the mole whence the last of the army put to sea in the midnight storm ; to stand on the lonely beach and sand-dunes where Garibaldi waded ashore with his Anita in his arms, and in the room of the farmhouse where he watched her die, while the Austrians might at any moment have been knocking at the door ; to see these places and to find that the story is very dear to rich and poor, learned and ignorant, in a progressive and a free country, conscious that it owes progress and freedom to these heroes, both those who perished and those who survived — ^this has taught me what cannot be clearly learnt from the pages of Ruskin or Ssmionds, or any other of Italy's melodious mourners, that she is not dead but risen, that she contains not only ruins but men, that she is not the home of ghosts, but the land which the hving share with their immortal ancestors.

Chapter I The Training Of Garibaldi

And other spirits there are standing apart

Upon the forehead of the age to come ; These, these will give the world another heart,

And other pulses. Hear ye not the hum Of mighty workings ? —

Listen awhile, ye nations, and be dumb. — Keats (1817).

In these words one who never lived to see it prophesied the new world. It was two years after Waterloo, a time of disillusion and of fainting by the way, when Europe, bled white by the man who was to have been her saviour, was again prisoner to kings whom she no longer reverenced. But, in fact, as Keats' instinct told him truly, the fields were ready for sowing, and the sowers were there unseen. The long unpelding sod had been broken up by the Revolutionary ploughshare, and now that the all too efficient ploughman was at last under lock and key, ' great spirits ' already ' on earth ' were ' sojourning,' each destined to cast seed of his own into the tumbled soil. If we think whom the young generation contained undistinguished in its ranks when Keats published these lines in 1817, we shall see that he was speaking more truly than even he, in his poet's ardour and optimism, could have dared to hope. In England alone, where Shelley's genius was on tip-toe for its flight, there were at that moment, unknown to the world, and unknown to themselves, Darwin, Carlyle, Mill, Newman, Gladstone, Macaulay, Cobden, Dickens, Tennyson and Browning. The work of aU these men taken together was to give our Enghsh world ' another heart and other pulses.'

Nor would it be hard to draw up such a list for Continental Europe, headed by Heine, Victor Hugo and Wagner. But the strangest, if not the richest, handful of fate's hidden treasures was ripening beneath the ItaUan sky. In the year that Keats wrote there might have been seen in the harbour of Nice (then the ItaUan city of Nizza) a sailor's boy of ten years old, playing amid the cordage of his father's vessel— by name Giuseppe Garibaldi. A hundred miles further along the Riviera, in a doctor's house, in one of those narrow, picturesque alleys that crowd the hillside above the busy port of Genoa, was another boy of twelve, Giuseppe Mazzini. These two Josephs, whom neither birth nor favour had placed above their brethren, were destined to place themselves among the great Four who Uberated Italy. And it was these two sons of the people who were to make that liberation worthy of the Muse, raising the story of Italian freedom to a pinnacle of history far above common nationahst struggles, which after a few centuries are forgotten by all save students. The sailor's and the doctor's sons made the history of Italy's Resurrection a part of the imperishable and international poetry of the European races. And, as regards their effect upon their own time, if they did not actually create, at least they ennobled and intensified, the liberal forces which it was given to one wiser and more cunning to wield. For there was already in the world, in 1817, another boy, a nobleman's son, by name Camillo Cavour. The fourth of the great liberators, the man whom these three were between them to make King of Italy, was not yet bom.

So Keats prophesied, and shortly after died in Rome. And still, over the plains and mountain roads of Italy, the Austrians in their white coats and shakos moved unceasingly, on their fruitless, mechanical task of repression ; stared at with a vague but growing antipathy by the common people, with horror by Shelley, and with disgust by Byron ; ^

' Byron to John Murray, Ravenna, February i6, 1821. ' As for news, the Barbarians are marching on Naples, and if they lose a single battle, all Italy will be up, . . . Letters opened! — to be sure they are, and that's the reason why I iiiiar Passit

■s. A/U STRIA

ITALY

Spring 1848 and Autumn 1849

English Miles o 20 40 60 80 100

THE BIRTH OF GARIBALDI 9

while the other army of invaders, the English ' milords,' swelling with the pride of Waterloo, each with his carriage, family, footman and ' Quarterly Review ' complete, looked with an indifferent contempt on Austrians and ItaUans, priests and patriots, and with hostile inquisitiveness at the rebel poets of their own race and caste. In such a world, Mazzini, Garibaldi, and Cavour grew up, each among his fellows.

Giuseppe Garibaldi was bom at Nice, in a house by the sea shore, on July 4, 1807, as a subject of the great Emperor. On Napoleon's fall he became, as did Mazzini in Genoa, a subject of the restored royal house of Piedmont, which afterwards condemned him to death for treason in 1834, was obliged to hand over his native province to France in i860, and in the same year received Sicily and Naples at his hands. The inhabitants of Nice were in part French and in part Italian by race. But Garibaldi's family was pure Italian,' having come from Chiavari beyond Genoa, about thirty years before he was bom. During his boyhood, Nice had not yet been completely captured by the invalids and the wealthy of all countries,^ but still belonged to the natives, and Giuseppe's father, Domenico, an honest and simple merchant captain, owning the Uttle vessel in which he traded, was t37piccil of the best sort of native, though himself an immigrant from Chiavari. Like Hans Luther, Domenico Garibaldi gave his son a better education than his slender means could well afford. But he was buying costly seed for a stony soil, and it was with difficulty that Giuseppe's parents and masters managed, until he was fifteen, to keep him intermittently at his desk. For there were the mountains behind the town, where he roamed tmant,

always put in my opinion of the German and Austrian scoundrels : there is not an Italian who loathes them more than I do.'—{Bj/ri>n, v. 245.)

' If, as the name is held to indicate, one of his remote ancestors was sprung from the Teuton conquerors in the dark ages, he was none the less an Italian than a man of the name of Beaucbamp is, for that, less an Englishman. For details about his family see Guerzoni, i. S-lo; Mario, Supp. 2-8.

sometimes far afield, with a cousin, a borrowed gun and a game pouch ; there was the harbour with the ships and the sailors from far countries, whose presence there and daily business were to youth a standing recommendation of romance as the common and natural avocation of man ; and above all there was the sea, always before his eyes, always in his thoughts, calling its child to its bosom.