Sunday, 11th.
The National Festival Day. Postponed for a week on
account of the death of Garibaldi.
We have been to the Piazza Castello, to see the review of soldiers, who
defiled before the commandant of the army corps, between two vast lines
of people. As they marched past to the sound of flourishes from trumpets
and bands, my father pointed out to me the Corps and the glories of the
banners. First, the pupils of the Academy, those who will become
officers in the Engineers and the Artillery, about three hundred in
number, dressed in black, passed with the bold and easy elegance of
students and soldiers. After them defiled the infantry, the brigade of
Aosta, which fought at Goito and at San Martino, and the Bergamo
brigade, which fought at Castelfidardo, four regiments of them, company
after company, thousands of red aiguillettes, which seemed like so many
double and very long garlands of blood-colored flowers, extended and
agitated from the two ends, and borne athwart the crowd. After the
infantry, the soldiers of the Mining Corps advanced,--the workingmen of
war, with their plumes of black horse-tails, and their crimson bands;
and while these were passing, we beheld advancing behind them hundreds
of long, straight plumes, which rose above the heads of the spectators;
they were the mountaineers, the defenders of the portals of Italy, all
tall, rosy, and stalwart, with hats of Calabrian fashion, and revers of
a beautiful, bright green, the color of the grass on their native
mountains. The mountaineers were still marching past, when a quiver ran
through the crowd, and the _bersaglieri_, the old twelfth battalion, the
first who entered Rome through the breach at the Porta Pia, bronzed,
alert, brisk, with fluttering plumes, passed like a wave in a sea of
black, making the piazza ring with the shrill blasts of their trumpets,
which seemed shouts of joy. But their trumpeting was drowned by a broken
and hollow rumble, which announced the field artillery; and then the
latter passed in triumph, seated on their lofty caissons, drawn by three
hundred pairs of fiery horses,--those fine soldiers with yellow lacings,
and their long cannons of brass and steel gleaming on the light
carriages, as they jolted and resounded, and made the earth tremble.
And then came the mountain artillery, slowly, gravely, beautiful in its
laborious and rude semblance, with its large soldiers, with its
powerful mules--that mountain artillery which carries dismay and death
wherever man can set his foot. And last of all, the fine regiment of the
Genoese cavalry, which had wheeled down like a whirlwind on ten fields
of battle, from Santa Lucia to Villafranca, passed at a gallop, with
their helmets glittering in the sun, their lances erect, their pennons
floating in the air, sparkling with gold and silver, filling the air
with jingling and neighing.
"How beautiful it is!" I exclaimed. My father almost reproved me for
these words, and said to me:--
"You are not to regard the army as a fine spectacle. All these young
men, so full of strength and hope, may be called upon any day to defend
our country, and fall in a few hours, crushed to fragments by bullets
and grape-shot. Every time that you hear the cry, at a feast, 'Hurrah
for the army! hurrah for Italy!' picture to yourself, behind the
regiments which are passing, a plain covered with corpses, and inundated
with blood, and then the greeting to the army will proceed from the very
depths of your heart, and the image of Italy will appear to you more
severe and grand."