for Mazzini, the agitator and author, and for Cavour, the statesman,
but the common people have kept the first place in their heart for
Garibaldi, the soldier, and hero. Mazzini was the John the Baptist of
the movement, who descended upon the political ills and wrongs of his
time, carrying a torch in one hand and a sword in the other. Cavour
was the statesman of the movement, a most skillful diplomat, who
organized political and moral forces against the foul wrongs found in
the prisons of Naples and the palaces of Rome. But it was Garibaldi
who captured the imagination of the Italian people, who turned mobs
into regiments, overthrew the citadels of iniquity, and made possible
the realization of the visions of Mazzini and the reforms of Cavour.
Unlike the other great men whose stories fill the pages of this
little book, Garibaldi was not a man of universal genius; he wrote no
enduring history nor philosophy, he created no body of laws. In terms
of intellect his gifts were modest. No pamphlet, no great speech
survives his death. He was one of the common people. But he was born
with the gift of surrender, and he knew how to dedicate himself to a
great cause. Early in his career Garibaldi allied himself with an
unpopular movement, in the interests of the poor and the oppressed,
and thereby opened the doors of hope to all men of modest gifts, who
are ambitious to serve their fellows.
The career of this soldier, Garibaldi, forms one of the most dramatic
and fascinating tales in history. It is a story so unique and
unexplainable that many Italians speak of the miraculous note in it,
the note of mystery. Garibaldi's mother was a remarkable woman, who
believed that her son had a call from God to do a great piece of work,
and she filled the soul of the child with the firm belief that he
could not be killed by any sword or bullet or cannon-ball. This
supreme conviction explains, in part, deliverances that his
biographers tell us were "miraculous." With words of matchless
simplicity, the apostle Paul tells us the number of times he was
stoned and mobbed, flogged and imprisoned; but the perils of
Garibaldi in the wilderness, in the city and the sea were scarcely
less dramatic. In his boyhood his father was the captain of a sailing
vessel, who owned and commanded his own ship and made the ports
between Nice and Constantinople. At fifteen years of age the boy went
to sea; learned to build a sailing-vessel, to rig the masts, to sail
the boat against opposing winds, and to fight the pirates who were
still occasionally found upon the seas. And he was barely twenty when,
under the influence of Mazzini, he surrendered his soul to the spirit
of Washington and Hamilton and dreamed the dream of a second republic.
From that moment, when, heart and soul, he threw himself into the
cause of liberty, his life was one long chapter of thrilling
adventures and miraculous escapes.
His biography teems with striking incidents. Once, after enlisting on
the side of the revolutionists, he was on a small vessel going up the
La Plata River. Rounding a bend in the stream, Garibaldi's little boat
was attacked by two large vessels, that opened fire, cut down the
masts, carried away the sails, and covered the decks with killed and
wounded. As captain of the boat, Garibaldi wore his red shirt, and so
became the target of the gunners. When several of his men tried to
drag him below, he answered, "I can't be killed!" A few minutes later
a shot struck his neck and cut a part of the jugular vein. Now, many
surgeons say that if the jugular vein be severed it cannot be healed,
because it is always throbbing and throbbing with each pulse beat,
just as it is said that a shot through the heart is fatal. A little
later the boat struck a sandbar, and the battle swept to another part
of the river. The physician told Garibaldi that his wound was fatal,
and asked what word he wished to send home. Garibaldi answered, "Tell
my mother I shall live to be seventy-six."
On another occasion, his place of hiding was surrounded by a company
of soldiers, who opened fire upon the house. Garibaldi awakened, flung
open the door, took his sword in one hand and his dagger in the
other--his ammunition was exhausted--and rushed forth against the
enemy. From their ambush these enemies saw his red shirt. They had
heard that no bullet could kill him, and armed as they were, they fled
in every direction, across fields and into the woods.
At the very outset of his career, Garibaldi's life was threatened by
the State and a price put upon his head. Under the influence of
Mazzini, he had joined a secret society and been made acquainted with
the plans for a revolution in Italy. The plot was betrayed by a spy,
and in the disguise of a peasant trying to buy sheep, Garibaldi was
forced to flee across the line into France. Once on French territory,
he abandoned caution and entered a village inn. "I must have something
to eat," he told the landlord, "I am starving." His host was
suspicious and asked Garibaldi if he was not a fugitive, to which the
youth replied with open truthfulness, "Yes, I am an Italian! I fled
from soldiers who would have shot or hung me, had they been quick
enough." . . . "What have you done?" asked the landlord. Garibaldi
answered: "I met Mazzini. He told me about the republic in the United
States. He said that the American colonists threw off the yoke of a
tyrant and made a constitution for themselves, and asked whether the
people of Italy could not break their own fetters. I answered that
Italy should become a republic."
After that bold statement, the landlord signalled to one of his men,
who put his hand upon Garibaldi's shoulder, saying, "I am an officer
of the French government. Under the treaty with Italy I am sworn to
arrest all those accused of treason who flee across the frontier." . . .
"Very well," said Garibaldi. "And now that is settled, give me
something to eat!"
When the servant asked Garibaldi whether he had money for his dinner,
the youth pulled out his purse. "Since I am going to be either hung or
shot, I may as well have one good meal before I die!" He then asked
two or three strangers who were in the inn to join him in his last
dinner, and extended that invitation until there were fifteen or
twenty about the table, singing, telling stories, and relating
incidents of adventure. When Garibaldi saw that the time had come for
his arrest, since a group of soldiers had appeared at the door, he
arose, and looking out upon his new friends, said, "Well, the
landlord, who is an officer of the government, has sent for these
soldiers to arrest me. It seems I have committed treason. I wanted to
have a republic in Italy. So I joined Mazzini's society." One by one
the inmates of the inn rose. One looked toward the landlord and said,
"Is this true? Are you going to imprison and shoot this man? Why, this
Garibaldi is a great man, and a good man; I never saw him before
to-night, but before you arrest him you will have to arrest me."
Another shouted, "Before you shoot Garibaldi, you will have to shoot
me!" A moment later, the whole company had joined to form a bodyguard
around the brave young stranger. They lifted Garibaldi to their
shoulders. They dared the officers to arrest him. They carried him out
to the stable behind the inn, filled his pockets with copper and
silver, and paid the driver to set him twenty miles beyond the
frontier. Four of them rode with him as a guard to protect him. . . .
Condemned to death, he escaped to South America, where he plunged at
once into the struggle for liberty there. The story of the happiness
and prosperity of the people of the United States under a free
government had spread all over the Southern continent. Unfortunately
there were still many men who believed in autocracy and in the
absolutism of an hereditary despot. Garibaldi at once took sides. He
fought on the sea. He began as a private sailor, but soon became
commander of the fleet. He fought on the land. He began as a private
soldier, but he ended as a general. Once he was captured and beaten
within an inch of his life. Once he was taken from a prison and hung
by his hands from a beam. During those two hours, he tells us, he
suffered the anguish of a hundred deaths.
Then came the dramatic meeting with Anita. One of his soldiers told
Garibaldi about the beauty, bravery and self-sacrifice of a daughter
of a certain rich man. Hearing that this girl, Anita, had gone to
visit a friend in the village, Garibaldi, with several of his men,
rode to the little store. Drawing rein before the door of the shop, he
sent one of his men into the store to buy some trifle. In the upper
window stood Anita. Garibaldi turned his horse and rode close to the
door. Looking up, he met the eyes of Anita, and for a full minute,
without saying a word, the two looked each into the soul of the other.
Suddenly Garibaldi said, "Señorita! I have never seen you before. I do
not know your name, but you belong to me! Sooner or later you will
come to me." Anita arose. She leaned out of the window. In a low voice
she said, "Shall I come now?" And Garibaldi answered, "I will ride up
the street and return within a moment. Be ready at this spot." There
was just time for Anita to grasp a cloak and a few articles of
clothing. A moment later, down the street on a gallop came Garibaldi,
followed by his soldiers. Anita was standing on the stone step. As
Garibaldi dashed by, he put out his right arm, swept her against his
horse and up to the front of the saddle and dashed away for a ten
mile gallop to a little church whose frightened priest refused to
perform the marriage ceremony without publishing the banns for the
next two Sundays. Anita's father was of the other political party and
the soldier knew that the consent would never be given. Garibaldi laid
two revolvers upon the altar and said quietly, "Father, the service
will proceed immediately."
So they were married. Anita was well educated as well as brave and
very beautiful. In a fit of anger and hate, her father organized a
group of conspirators who were to receive a rich reward for killing
Garibaldi. It was Anita who discovered the plot and fired the pistol
that led the conspirators to believe that they had been discovered.
Later, a drunken mob discovered that she was alone in a little house.
The leader of the despot organized a group at midnight, all of them
crazed with liquor. They set fire to the house and then rushed in,
only to find that Garibaldi had not yet returned home. And when these
drunken brigands had beaten Anita down and knocked her into
unconsciousness Garibaldi returned unarmed save for his dagger. One by
one he took these eight men who were standing about the unconscious
girl, and one by one they went down before him.
His life in South America, extending over a period of fourteen years,
was one long struggle against tyranny and oppression. Fighting first
in the revolt against Brazil, then joining the patriots of Uruguay, he
formed the Italian Legion, and in the spring of 1846 won the battles
of Cerro and Sant'Antonio, assuring the freedom of Uruguay. Refusing
all honours and recompense he returned to Italy, having heard of the
incipient struggle for liberty at home. He landed at Nice in 1848 and,
forming a volunteer army of 3,000, plunged at once into the struggle
against the French. His troops were largely students, mere lads, many
of them never before under fire, and the troops of the enemy included
the legions of France, Austria and Spain. The climax of the struggle
came with his wonderful retreat through central Italy toward Venice,
pursued by four armies. Only his consummate generalship and the
matchless loyalty of his men saved them all from annihilation. During
this retreat, Garibaldi was accompanied by his wife, Anita, who had
cut off her hair and mounted a horse, and who wore men's clothing to
avoid observation. Realizing at length that the struggle was hopeless,
Garibaldi issued an order, releasing his soldiers, and bidding them
return to their homes. And leaving Anita hidden at the house of a
friend, he himself took refuge in a cave in the hills, after the
fashion of David the Fugitive and Robert Bruce--a hiding-place from
which he continued to send forth his military orders.
Among the many wonder tales of this period, many of which are
traditional and perhaps untrustworthy, there is one that bears the
stamp of reality. One night Garibaldi was asleep in the cave. A
faithful soldier was on guard. Suddenly the soldier saw a torch waving
in the blackness of the valley below. The torch was spelling a signal,
but the guard was ignorant of its significance. He hurried into the
cave and wakened his leader. Garibaldi knew the signal--it told of the
approaching death of Anita. With instant decision, he started down the
mountainside; made his way to the house of a peasant, and, despatching
a man in advance, found and mounted a horse for the long ride to the
village where Anita lay dying. Ahead of him, the galloping rider
warned the countryside, shouting that Garibaldi was coming and
commanding every man to go into his house and close the door, that no
man might see the face of the fugitive, for whose person a reward had
long been offered. The hurrying hero changed horses, and when the day
was nearly done, rode into the village to the house where his beloved
wife lay dying. In the night, wrestling with the death angel,
Garibaldi was defeated, and left desolate. When the morning came, he
wrapped Anita's body in the flag of the new republic, and buried her
in the corner of the garden. That night he rode back to his handful of
fugitives, hidden in a defile of the mountains.
It was about the year 1850 that, once more a fugitive, Garibaldi
sailed for America, and coming to New York, settled as a chandler on
Staten Island. He had a brother living in New York, and the brother
had never tired of writing letters about the wonderful opportunities
in the United States. It was an era of candles. Kerosene oil was but
little used, while gas and electricity were unknown. As a cattle
drover in the Argentine Republic, Garibaldi had seen the great herds
on the ranches, the tanneries filled with hides, the great stores of
tallow in the warehouses. He entered into an agreement with a friend
in South America to keep him supplied with tallow, and over at St.
George he started his little candle factory. Later, he became a
trading skipper and in 1854 was able to return to Italy with funds
sufficient to purchase the tiny island of Caprera, and build the
house which thenceforth was to be his home.
Throughout the four years in America and on the sea, he had never once
ceased to dream his dream of liberty and a republic to be set up in
Italy. In 1851, while he was living here, Louis Kossuth, the Hungarian
patriot, had landed in New York and received an ovation. While here,
Kossuth had perfected the constitution for the republic he proposed to
set up in Hungary, and had announced his plans for the overthrow of
the royal family, and the enthronement of a president. Garibaldi kept
in touch with every such new movement. He read the daily papers of New
York; met the political leaders of the city and everywhere heard
discussions as to Washington and Franklin, Hamilton and Webster. The
fire burned ever more fiercely in his heart. He wrote a friend saying:
"Whenever they are ready, the people of Italy can shake off the old
tyranny that has come down from the middle ages, just as a peasant in
the forest shakes the fallen leaves from his coat."
And during his trading days, while on a voyage to Hong Kong, he
dreamed another dream, of a different kind. Half-way across the ocean,
he dreamed that he saw his mother kneeling at the foot of a white
cross. He fell upon his knees beside it and heard her say: "Fight
only for liberty, my son! Fight only for liberty!" It was his
birthday, the fifth of May. Months later, he discovered that on that
very night his mother had passed away in the little house in Nice.
From that hour he dedicated the remainder of his life to the
liberation of his native land.
One day, while he was following the plow on his little island farm near
the coast of Sardinia, a messenger brought word that an Austrian
regiment had landed on the shore of Sardinia and seized the island for
Austria. Once more, Garibaldi plunged into the struggle. For a year he
fought at the head of Italian volunteers under Victor Emmanuel, against
the Austrians, liberating the Alpine territory as far as the frontier of
Tyrol. Then, in retirement at Genoa, came another summons--a letter
telling the story of the sufferings of the liberal leaders in Naples.
King Francis, the tyrant of Naples, had been arresting by wholesale men
suspected of sympathy with free institutions. The despot filled the
dungeons, crowded the upper cells, packed the corridors between the rows
of cells, until there was not room for men even to lie down upon the
floor. Without any warning whatsoever, the soldiers would appear at the
home of some citizen. Without any hearing, much less a trial, men were
sent to the royal prison and jammed into corridors already filled to
suffocation with murderers, brigands, thieves, forgers. The under-cells
dripped with filth. There was no sanitation. Vermin, rats, every form of
vice and uncleanliness were there. In the stifling heat some smothered
to death.
Gladstone was at this time in Italy. One day he reached Naples, en
route for Pompeii and Herculaneum. Calling upon the British Consul, he
was told about these prisons, that were death-traps. He hurried back
to London. He used his official position as a statesman under Queen
Victoria to address a letter to the civilized peoples of the world. A
wave of indignation and horror swept over the capitals of Europe. The
hour had struck for Italy. Garibaldi headed a tiny army and started
south to the attack. Naples was besieged. After weeks of fighting, and
oft wounded, one day with clothes covered with blood he addressed a
handful of citizens: "Soldiers, what I have to offer you is
this--hunger, thirst, cold, heat, no pay, no barracks, no rations,
frequent alarms, forced marches, charges at the point of the bayonet.
Whoever loves honour and fatherland, follow me!" Ah, Garibaldi knew
that there is a latent instinct of heroism in every human heart. Why
are there few boys going into the ministry to-day? Because the task
has become too easy. Here are the young fisherman, John; the young
physician, Luke; the young rabbi, Paul;--offer them stones, scourges,
blows, fagot-fires, martyrdom, and they will leap into the breach.
After that appeal of Garibaldi four thousand men followed their leader
to battle. Soon the bloody tyrant of Naples was driven from his city.
Then came the long campaigns in the south, with Garibaldi's entrance
into the city of Palermo; the struggle in Sicily, the siege of the
fortress at Massina, the triumphal march through Calabria, his victory
at Naples, culminating with that great day, September 7th, 1860, when
he handed over a fleet and an army to Victor Emmanuel. Having endured
every form of peril, hunger, and cold, with loss of blood through many
wounds, the citizens of Naples, after the expulsion of their recreant
King, turned with one heart and offered him the throne for his
leverage, and the palace for his home. But Garibaldi refused the
throne, because he believed in the republic, and no bribe nor
blandishment could swerve him a hair's breadth from his conviction
that the fairest, stablest form of government was self-government.
On the day of his entrance, the people went out and carried him into
the city upon their shoulders. All along the central street he was
welcomed with the words, "Secundo Washington"--"Second Washington."
For what Lincoln did for the three million slaves, and what Washington
did for the three million colonists, Garibaldi had wrought for three
million downtrodden Italian peasants. But having freed the people from
cruel oppression, he sent for Victor Emmanuel, the ruler who had
insulted him, and said, looking toward his army and the captains of
his navy, "I have not been trained for civil government! I therefore
abdicate my position as commander-in-chief of the army and navy, and I
turn these instruments of defense and offense over to you." History
holds the story of no sublimer act of disinterested patriotism. That
deed insured a united Italy, the chief aim of Garibaldi's life.
From that hour his fame, his place in the history of Italy were fully
established. During the next few years many honours and offices were
offered Garibaldi, all of which he consistently declined. He was the
last hero of the heroic age of the new Italy, the most popular, the
most legendary, in the sense that he resembled a hero of old romance.
A faithful soldier, who might have been a king; a hero always a hero,
even to his own servants and amid sordid circumstances; unspoiled by
the admiration of the world and the adulation of his friends; a
warrior with hands unstained by plunder, cruelty or the useless
shedding of blood, he remained to the end one of the few characters
for whom neither wealth nor rank ever offered temptation. Michelet,
the French historian, wrote of him, "There is one hero in all
Europe--one! I do not know a second. All his life is a romance; and
since he had the greatest reasons for hatred to France, who had stolen
his Nice, caused him to be fired upon at Aspromonte, fought against
him at Mentana, you guess that it was this man who flew (during the
Franco-German War) to immolate himself for France. And how modestly,
withal! Nothing mattered it to him that he was placed in obscure posts
quite unworthy of him. Grand man, my Garibaldi! My single hero! Always
loftier than fortune! How sublimely does his memory rise and swell
toward the future!"
In retrospect, strategists tell us that Garibaldi knew little and
cared less about the usual military tactics, or the plans of
organization and transport taught in military schools. His wonderful
career, with its many and brilliant victories, is explained by the
supreme influence which his person exercised. Knowing neither danger
nor fear, rushing into the most perilous spots, his very daring
fascinated and inspired his followers. "He had all the instincts of
the lion; not merely the headlong courage, but the far nobler
qualities of magnanimity, placability, self-denial. His impulses were
all generous, his motives invariably upright, his conscience
unerring." The most loving among great leaders, the least hating among
great soldiers, he was devoid of all personal ambition, as he was
devoid of all rancour and malice. He was one of the most picturesque
leaders, one of the most dramatic figures in all history. "None could
fail to admire or be inspired by the sight of him on the field of
battle, as with clear, ringing silver voice, his lion-like face, his
plain red shirt and grey trousers, he sat his horse with perfect ease
and calm, guiding his soldiers by plunging into the thick of the enemy
and trusting his troops to follow."
Garibaldi's moral courage was always the equal of his physical
bravery. During the siege of Rome, when he was defending the city
against the forces of Austria and of France, the enemy located the
house from which he was directing the defense. Cannonball, smashing
through the roof, carried away his flag; bullets aimed with unerring
accuracy entered the windows, and buried themselves in the walls.
While the others ran to the cellar, Garibaldi walked out the front
door, stood on the steps, and calmly supervised the carrying to a
place of safety of all the important military papers. That night the
Roman leaders sent messengers to Garibaldi, and insisted upon
surrender. At last Garibaldi exclaimed, "Is it not enough that I must
fight our enemies? Has it come to this, that with equal strength I
must oppose my friends?" And then, he lifted his broken sword, and
exclaimed: "On my monument write these words, 'A man who never
surrendered to the enemies of human freedom!'"