Henty writes of Brescia as a Garibaldian town, that is to say, a town
garrisoned by volunteers, and after being there for some days gaining
knowledge of these patriots, he takes advantage of the occasion to
attempt some description of their state.
At one time he found the station crowded as if the whole population had
assembled, and he explains the reason of the unusual scene. A train of
enormous length had just entered the station crammed with red-shirted
volunteers, who were being received with tremendous cheers, which they
responded to as lustily. Then ensued an affecting scene, for numbers of
the regiment had friends and relations in the town who were searching
eagerly from carriage to carriage enquiring if they were safe.
The train was only to stop for ten minutes, and the men were not
supposed to alight; but no orders could keep them in, and a scene of
wild embracing, handshaking, and kissing ensued, mingled with eager
enquiries after relatives in other regiments, good wishes, and
farewells. Then the station bell rang and the train moved on, the
soldiers waiting till the last moment and then jumping on as it was in
motion, so that as it moved out of the station it presented an
extraordinary aspect, men in scarlet shirts leaning out of every window
and standing on the foot-board the whole length as closely as they
could, while others were even on the roofs, and all waving their hands
and cheering. He heard afterwards that some of the men in their
enthusiasm and excitement rode the whole of their journey upon the
steps, while three or four in the various trains were killed from
leaning too far out and striking their heads against the abutments of
bridges.
The commissariat arrangements, into which as a matter of course he would
be prone to enquire, were, he declares, vile. In fact, he says the
arrangements for feeding these poor fellows were, like all other matters
connected with the volunteers, shamefully bad. Some of them, in a three
days' journey, had no food but bread and cheese and a little wine.
At another town he found the place crowded with Garibaldians, who had
taken possession bodily of the inn he reached. Tables were spread out
in the court-yard, at which parties were sitting; upstairs and down the
inn was thronged. The landlady and waiters received their English
visitors with an air of languid indifference very different from their
customary manner. At the first complaint Henty was assured that for
three days and nights they had not rested, and that as fast as one
regiment of the volunteers went off another took its place. The men
were all famished by long fasting in the train, and only too glad to sit
down to a regular meal again.
Here he found that although the Garibaldians were better clad than when
he first encountered them, for they had all got red shirts, and caps of
some shape or other, many of them were sadly neglected. Some were
almost shoeless, others had only just previously received their arms.
Moreover, with the exception of the Bersaglieri regiments, which had ten
rounds of ball cartridge each, no ammunition whatever had been supplied.
They were in a melancholy slate for an active force just taking the
field--no shelter tents, so that they had to sleep in the open air, and
most of them had only one blanket to serve as a cloak in the daytime and
a cover at night.
Some of them had not even this poor protection, and had to sleep on the
ground, however wet the night, with no other protection than their red
shirts and trousers. Fortunately for them, they had patriotic faith and
enthusiasm; but there was no ambulance train or any accommodation
whatever for the wounded, and, speaking generally, the commissariat
arrangements were so bad that it was no unusual thing for a regiment to
go all day without food.
The result was indignation on the part of the volunteers at the
scandalous treatment they were receiving; but this only made them still
more desirous to get at the enemy and show that, ill-used though they
were, when it came to fighting they could do as well as the line. For
it seemed that there was considerable jealousy and ill-feeling between
the two services, the Garibaldians believing firmly that the treatment
they were receiving was caused by those in authority, and when the news
came of a disastrous defeat of the regular troops, it was received by
the volunteers with something like satisfaction and a full belief that
they would do better when their turn came.
"Indeed," says Henty, "it must be owned that they had very much more
than a sufficiently good opinion of themselves, for they firmly believed
that they could defeat anything like an equal number of Austrians, even
though the latter were provided with artillery, as they would be."
Henty learned from the plucky fellows that they did not believe much in
the value of ball cartridges, but pinned their faith entirely on the
bayonet, against which weapon he did not believe that they would be able
to stand for an instant. His opinion was that if the Garibaldians came
upon a body of the well-drilled Austrians in a steep place, or where
they were in confusion, the volunteers' impetuous onslaught would be
irresistible; but on the other hand, he could not believe that out on
the plain disorderly rushes could ever break the Austrians' steady steel
lines.
At this time a battery of mountain artillery was attached to Garibaldi's
command; but the guns were so clumsy and the carriages so primitive that
Henty believed they were not likely to prove of much assistance, and,
continuing his remarks about the uniformity and aspect of the
Garibaldian troops, he grimly notes that consequent upon sleeping upon
the wet ground, the red shirts were beginning to lose their original
brilliancy of colour. He has, though, a few words of praise for the
volunteer cavalry, the Guides, who were extremely useful as vedettes.
Their grey-blue uniform with black cord braiding, natty scarlet caps and
high boots, gave them a very soldierlike appearance, while for night
duty they had very long cloaks of the same colour as the uniform, and
lined with scarlet.
Henty had always words of praise for the unquenchable pluck of the
Garibaldians, the indomitable determination that, in spite of bad
drilling, clumsy discipline, and bad leading, finally led them to
success. Garibaldi himself, however, came in for criticism, for he
declares, after recording a wound that the general had received, that it
was greatly to be regretted that he should expose himself to danger, and
that his young officers should be so eager to do the fighting themselves
instead of steadying their men and leading them.
Then again he attacks the commissariat in his customary, vigorous way,
while reporting after one of the fights the wantonness which could send
three thousand men from a town to march twenty-five miles without
breakfast to begin with or supper to finish with, this being only a
common specimen of the commissariat arrangements. "Certainly," he seems
to growl, in a quotation, "somebody ought to be hanged; I do not know
who it is, nor do I care, but such mismanagement has, I believe, never
been equalled. All the same," he says, "the volunteers take it with
wonderful good temper."
Picturesque, he says, as was the appearance of the Garibaldian camp, so
bright and gay with the scarlet shirts of the soldiery and the green
arbours, that it looked like a gigantic military picnic, it was the
abode of as badly a fed set of men as were to be found in Europe. A
little bread or biscuit and soup, doled out at the most uncertain
intervals, with occasionally meat and frequently nothing at all, was the
food which the government of Italy bestowed upon her volunteers, many of
whom had left luxurious homes to fight her battles; and in some cases
the men were so reduced from weakness that at certain stations many of
them had to be taken into hospital. The poor fellows were fed, when fed
at all, with a mixture with bread swimming in it which was called soup,
but which was utterly innocent of meat in its composition, and tasted
simply of tepid water; a sort of raw sausage, flavoured strongly with
garlic, and a mess of either rice or macaroni, with something called
meat in it, but utterly untastable; and yet this same food was at one
time, while Henty was with the volunteer army, all that he could depend
upon for himself--that or nothing. Campaigning with the Garibaldians
was sorry work, but, soldierlike, Henty tightened his belt and fought
his way on with the volunteers in expectation until they won.
Still with the head-quarters of Garibaldi, and in the midst of the heat
of an Italian July, Henty writes again in the midst of warfare, with all
day long the boom of cannon and the sharp crack of musketry sounding in
his ears. And as he writes, he says, the confusion outside, the talking
of innumerable Garibaldians under the window of the humble room of which
he thinks himself fortunate to call himself master for the time, the
rumbling of carts, the shouting of the drivers, and the occasional call
of the bugle, all remind him that he is in the midst of war on a large
scale.
The heat has been terrible; not a breath of wind stirring, and the
cicadas in the vineyards which line the roads through which he has
passed have been in the full tide of song. "The noise," he says, "that
these insects make on a hot day is something astounding. It is a
continued succession of sharp shrill sounds such as might be made by a
child upon a little whistle." He asks his reader to imagine an army of
children, thousands strong, lining the road and all blowing upon these
whistles, "and you will have an idea of the prodigious thrill of sound
produced by myriads of these creatures."
"Zeno," he says, "the old Greek philosopher who was mated to a shrew, is
reported to have exclaimed: `Happy the lives of the cicadas, since they
all have voiceless wives.' But I think that it is equally fortunate for
humanity in general, for if the female cicadae were in any way as
voluble as the males, it would be impossible to exist in the
neighbourhood of the vineyards at all without losing one's sense of
hearing."
But insects, the boom of cannon, the rumble of tumbrels, and the crackle
of musketry notwithstanding, the war correspondent's communications had
to be written, and two of his most interesting pieces of news, which are
rather ominous in sound, are that the general's son, Ricciotti
Garibaldi, who is serving as a private in the Guides, is at present ill,
though nothing serious is apprehended, while Garibaldi's wound still
causes him great pain and inconvenience. He can do nothing for himself,
but he is the enthusiastic general still, even though he has to be
lifted from the sofa upon which he lies all day, and carried by four men
to his carriage, the anxiety he feels at the state of affairs greatly
retarding his recovery.