Insurgents, Raiders, and Bandits (16 page)

In the beginning Mazzini was clearly the man in charge, Garibaldi the obedient recruit. So when asked to infiltrate the Sardinian navy—the kingdom included the island of Sardinia and the coastal territory and Alpine foothills of the Piedmont—then foment mutiny and take over the warship in which he was serving, Garibaldi agreed immediately. Mazzini’s idea was to topple the French-leaning monarchy in this part of northern Italy with a guerrilla campaign launched from Switzerland that would culminate in a popular rising and a siege of the key city of Genoa. Garibaldi was to captain the seized ship and use it to bombard the great port from the seaward side.

It was a grand plan that floundered from its outset in February 1834. Mazzini had recruited a retired general to lead the popular army, which amounted at the beginning to a thousand men. The old general promptly ran off with the money that Young Italy had given him to purchase arms and equipment. Half the force was intercepted by Swiss border patrols, the other half soon scattered. As for Garibaldi, after the betrayal of his plot he narrowly escaped capture. He was thus put on the run, assuming a new identity and moving from one ship crew to another. He was tried in absentia and sentenced to death. It was a dark time.

At this point Mazzini temporarily gave up on this early version of what in the twentieth century would come to be called “people’s war.” Well aware that a period of rebuilding was needed, he did his best to guide and inspire his surviving cadres, and to recruit new members. As many old
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had fled to South America, Mazzini encouraged Garibaldi to go there and reach out to them. On this advice, Garibaldi sailed to Brazil, arriving at Rio de Janeiro on New Year’s Day, 1836. About the same time that Abd el-Kader was at the height of his success in Algeria, Garibaldi was at one of his lowest points.

But things began to brighten for him as he made his way in the maritime trade and soon had a vessel of his own. In this way he both eked out a living and made many connections with the Italian diaspora in Brazil and Uruguay. Still, he was restless for action. And when an opportunity arose to support a rebellion against the newly formed “empire” of Brazil, which had won its independence from Portugal just ten years earlier, Garibaldi eagerly accepted a naval command in the service of the “free republic” of Rio Grande do Sul. All he could hope to do at sea was engage in commerce raiding, the age-old weapon of those with weaker naval forces.

Garibaldi enjoyed some small successes but was eventually hunted down and cornered in a running fight. He fled up the Rio de la Plata, his ship being interned in neutral Argentina. Garibaldi himself landed in a hospital, as he had taken a bullet in the neck during the battle. It was the first of several serious wounds he would suffer over the course of his long life as an insurgent leader. Eight months later he was well enough to make his way back to Rio Grande do Sul, where he was greeted as a hero and given command of the republic’s small regular navy of coastal and riverine craft.

Over the next few years Garibaldi fought numerous small-scale battles in coastal waters and often went upriver to support the army of the republic with his cannons. In some respects his actions resemble those of Lord Cochrane, who occasionally provided support of this kind to insurgents during the Napoleonic occupation of Spain. But even this was not enough action for Garibaldi; from his crews he formed mounted raiding parties that went out between naval actions to harass the advancing Brazilian forces. It turned out that Garibaldi was a magnificent natural horseman in addition to being a superb sailor.

The cause of Rio Grande do Sul, however, was a losing one. Not only were the Brazilians more numerous, they were better led, and they further benefited from the attractiveness of their young emperor’s (and his regent’s) lenient reconciliation policy toward the rebels, which prompted many defections. But as the end neared in Rio Grande, another small republic, Santa Catherina, declared its independence. Rio Grande could spare no troops, but Garibaldi was sent with some gunboats to help these new allies at sea.

It was in the course of sea and land operations on behalf of Santa Catherina that Garibaldi met Anita, the woman who would leave her quiet, comfortable life—and the wealthy older man to whom she was at least betrothed, more likely already married—to live with and bear the children of the insurgent leader. She proved the perfect match for him. As Garibaldi noted in his memoirs, with some assistance from his editor, Alexandre Dumas, she “looked upon battles as a pleasure, and the hardships of camp life as a pleasant pastime.”
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Anita rode and fought at Garibaldi’s side even when pregnant. By this time his little navy had been lost and Garibaldi had become a leader of irregular cavalry, fighting and then constantly shifting locations to avoid the pursuing imperial forces.

When the couple’s first son was born in September 1840, the cause of the two rebel republics was already nearly lost. For all the gallantry of the guerrilla forces, the combination of Brazilian blandishments and brute force simply could not be overcome. Garibaldi and Anita left the battle and settled in the remaining free republic, Uruguay. There they sought domesticity and married in March 1842, when they received word that Anita’s husband might have passed away.
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They were not destined to live peacefully. Uruguay soon came under attack from Argentina, whose dictator Juan Manuel Rosas had grand designs for enlarging his territorial holdings. Rosas had interned Garibaldi early on in his career as a privateer, in the wake of the battle in the Rio de la Plata. Now the former sea raider was to show the dictator his skills as a leader of irregular forces. In 1843, after Rosas had destroyed the regular Uruguayan army, Garibaldi formed an Italian Legion from among the large expatriate community living in Montevideo. Over the course of the next five years he would lead a vigorous defense of the great Uruguayan city, closing breaches made by the forces of Rosas, raiding the enemy at the most unexpected times and places.

Anita bore him three more children during these years, and Garibaldi became famous throughout the world as a freedom fighter, thanks partly to Mazzini’s energetic publicizing of his achievements. During this time Garibaldi also began to cultivate his own particular “brand,” the red shirt that he and all his fighters wore in battle. The origin of the Redshirts was a burnt-down warehouse from which the only significant salvage was a huge amount of rough red cloth. But Garibaldi’s mystique had to do with more than just color. He had also become renowned for his skillful guerrilla tactics, which relied on speed and stealth, minimal firepower, and the maximum shock of an assault at close quarters. These doctrinal trademarks grew in part from chronic deficiencies in arms and ammunition; but they also conformed closely to Garibaldi’s character, which in its essence was a combination of cleverness and ferocity.

Another reason for his global popularity was his personification of the ideals of individual and national freedom. In Garibaldi people could see in practice something that all might strive for. Even in defeat he fought on and, by persisting, gave hope of victory. Certainly this was the case in his long defense of Montevideo, where the thwarting of Rosas’s design for conquest for just long enough finally led Britain, France, and even Brazil to call for an end to the fighting and formal recognition of the Republic of Uruguay. By the time this was formalized, Garibaldi had left with his family for Nice, where he arrived in June 1848, at a moment when Europe seethed with social revolution.

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Garibaldi had returned at Mazzini’s urging, with sixty of his most loyal fighters from the Italian Legion and several black slaves whom he had freed. One of them, named Aguyar, a masterful horseman, always rode a black horse immediately behind Garibaldi, following him like a familiar spirit. He too became a part of the brand. As to the conviction and death sentence that had been pending for fifteen years, both were quietly forgotten by the authorities, as the Piedmontese populace would never have stood for their hero’s arrest. The growing feeling that this was the time to strike for Italy’s freedom from foreign rule now reached as far as their king, Charles Albert.

Garibaldi’s Struggle to Unify Italy

A hastily formed expedition was soon planned in support of the newly declared Republic of Milan, whose people had risen up and ejected the local Austrian occupying force. But the threat of retaliation loomed, and Charles Albert, Mazzini, Garibaldi, and other volunteers from as far away as Rome all converged on Milan. It was the first time that Mazzini and Garibaldi has seen each other in fourteen years, and each showed some signs of wariness toward the other. Charles Albert had little respect for either of them and made sure that Garibaldi held a very subordinate command. The tension was unhealthy.

Thus when the Austrians did return during that summer of 1848, Garibaldi was off in the country organizing a new legion of guerrilla fighters while King Charles Albert’s regular army was being demolished at the Battle of Custoza. The king quickly sued for peace, which enraged Garibaldi, who led his irregulars on a fighting retreat to and across the Swiss border. Mazzini was with him, and this latest defeat somehow served to remind them both of their old bond that had been born in such adversity. For these two, the question now was not of giving up the struggle but, as Garibaldi asked Mazzini, “Where do we fight next?”
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The answer, as it turned out, was Rome. When some of the men who had traveled up to fight with the Milanese returned, in defeat and frustration, they began to agitate for more democratic rule in the papal states. They also demanded that Pope Pius IX, who in this era exercised both great spiritual authority and temporal power, declare war on the Austrians. Given that Pius seemed to harbor pro-Austrian feelings, this was hardly likely. Tensions rose during the autumn of 1848, stoked in large part by the arrival of Mazzini, who openly called for the declaration of an independent republic. In November the pope fled.

In the following months the Romans drafted a democratic constitution with a triple executive, the “triumvirs,” an echo of ancient Rome. By April 1849 Mazzini was ensconced as the dominant executive, with Saffi and Armellini subservient to him. But the enemies of the republic had not been idle. Pius, who was sheltering in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies under the protection of Ferdinand II—also know as “Bomba” for his relentless shelling of Sicilian rebels—was whipping up Catholic fervor in Spain, France, and Austria for a military expedition to restore him to power. France got off the mark first. The newly elected French president, Louis Napoleon, acted with great energy. He may have been dilatory about releasing Abd el-Kader into exile, but when it came to fighting the republicans in Rome he showed no hesitation.

Mazzini knew that he needed Garibaldi for the coming fight, and summoned him to Rome, where he arrived with some five hundred fighters, now known as the Garibaldini. More volunteers were coming in to serve under him every day, among them about three hundred art students. What they lacked in training they hoped to make up in zeal. But even with their ranks swelling, the defenders of Rome were outnumbered by General Oudinot, who arrived at the end of April in command of more than seven thousand French solders.

Instead of waiting passively behind the walls for the siege to commence, Garibaldi took the offensive with his much smaller force, catching the French completely by surprise. The bitterest fighting took place in the Corsini Gardens, among flowerbeds and rows of cypresses. The French numerical advantage meant less on a battlefield broken up by trees, hedges, and watercourses; after six hours of heavy fighting, Oudinot’s forces broke. Garibaldi had won the Battle Among the Roses but had taken a bullet in the side. It hardly slowed him. But French operations came to a complete halt. Rome was safe for the time being.

The republic’s respite was short, however, as Ferdinand had finally gotten his force of ten thousand men under way from Naples. Garibaldi surged out of Rome with his men and immediately harassed Ferdinand’s army with constant raids. At Palestrina the Garibaldini caught a large portion of the enemy in a disadvantageous position and hit them hard. At this juncture Louis Napoleon sent an emissary, Ferdinand de Lesseps—who would go on to build the Suez Canal—to treat for peace with Mazzini. Negotiations went so well that Mazzini released the entire Republican Army to join up with Garibaldi against Ferdinand. They soon drove him from the war, but meanwhile the French were readying a new offensive—in complete violation of the treaty just negotiated.

Garibaldi barely made it back to Rome in time to engage the now massive French force, which exceeded thirty thousand troops. He suffered heavy losses and a sharp tactical defeat; but strategically he had prevented a French
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capture of Rome. The war now settled down to a siege, which Garibaldi resisted with all the skills he had honed in the defense of Montevideo. His red shirt was seen everywhere. As the historian George Macaulay Trevelyan described it, Garibaldi “constantly went the rounds, visiting the places where the fire was hottest, and restoring the enthusiasm of the defenders, now by a word of personal sympathy, now by standing like a statue above his prostrate companions while a shell was bursting in their midst.”
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