by Lucy Riall
The lengthened form of his face, his pale complexion, sharply defined and somewhat curved nose, well formed lips, and deep set, dark eyes, with an expressive glance, black hair, and the peculiarly sonorous sound of a clear breast voice, all marked him as an Italian. He was dressed in a simple, dark blue uniform, armed with sword and pistols, and wearing on his head a marine hat, in the form of a shallop … which displayed the same green, red, and white cockade, that he had worn in Savoy.
When Barigaldi catches sight of his friend Ormur, he greets him by pressing him to his breast, ‘while the eyes of both appeared to become moist, and their lips to quiver with the emotions that pervaded their manly hearts’.86 Barigaldi is here an archetypal Italian patriot: a man whose face, voice and clothes all ‘marked him’ as Italian, and a romantic bandit hero (‘armed with swords and pistols’) who is distinguished, sexual and sensitive all at the same time.
During 1847, Mazzinians and journalists sympathetic to Mazzini were able to take advantage of the relaxation of press censorship in the Papal States, Tuscany and Piedmont to write even more openly and explicitly about Garibaldi.87 In April, Mazzini wrote to Cuneo asking him for a ‘short historical outline’ of the legion, ‘from its formation onwards, with the fine deeds … without great words, and documented as much as possible’.88 In the event, Cuneo went further and published the most complete and detailed account of Garibaldi and the legion to date, which ran across seven issues of the radical paper Il Corriere Livornese during July and August 1847.89 Cuneo's account followed the already standard lines established by Mazzini and produced by De Boni and others in the previous year. It was richly illustrated with (the now usual) documents and claimed to recount all details of the war in Montevideo, ‘as they happened, without altering any aspect of them’. In common with the previous descriptions of Garibaldi and his men, Cuneo made much of the accusations that Garibaldi was a ‘mercenary’ and ‘adventurer’. He commented that ‘the foreigner, ever in search of new opportunties to heap abuse on our fatherland, invents new scoops, by altering the facts, and spreads the news’. Announcing that such ‘a terrible insult has made me shake with rage’, he confided that it was this insult which had inspired him to write the present account. He insisted that he sought only to defend Garibaldi and that Italians should be proud of Garibaldi's achievements and the achievements of his ‘slandered brothers’ in the legion.90 Once again, the main proof of ‘the moral qualities of this unusual man’ and of the ‘noble and lofty character’ of Garibaldi lay, for Cuneo, in his exceptional courage and qualities as a leader and in his rejection of all rewards. Hopelessly outnumbered at San Antonio, Garibaldi encouraged his men by telling them ‘above all to remember the honour of Italy’, to which his men replied ‘with one voice’: ‘we will fight to win, or die, Colonel’. Faced with a counterattack, Garibaldi rallied his men ‘with his voice and with example’, and fought with such enthusiasm and fury as to scare off the enemy. Like earlier writers, Cuneo also stressed the fame of the legionaries in Uruguay: they were welcomed as heroes returning to Salto, the wounded were tended to by the ‘gentle sex’, and public ceremonies were held to honour their accomplishments.91
Throughout 1847, press interest in Garibaldi showed few signs of abating. In May, London's Times, which was hostile to the liberals in Uruguay and hence to Garibaldi, and in 1846 had declined to publish a second letter from Mazzini detailing the events of San Antonio del Salto, now mentioned his ‘brilliant victory’ there and described him as ‘brave and single-minded’.92 Again, in London, a non-Mazzinian Italian exile, the journalist Antonio Gallenga, wrote an anti-Austrian tract which found space to express faith in Garibaldi's potential as a military leader.93 In the same year, the Turin-based liberal publisher Lorenzo Valerio began to produce regular features about Garibaldi in his papers, Letture di Famiglia and La Concordia, and these continued to appear during early 1848.94 La Concordia began a regular pattern of publishing letters from Garibaldi himself. After he had received his sword of honour, Garibaldi wrote to Valerio that he would always treasure it, adding – and again here he established what would become a popular theme – that he had never expected any reward for his deeds, and all his men were pleased and surprised by the ‘applause’ given to ‘our small efforts’. Garibaldi thanked and praised the musician Giuseppe Bertoldi for his ‘robust poem’, published as a pamphlet that year in Lugano.95 Bertoldi's pamphlet, Alla legione italiana in Montevideo ed al colonnello Giuseppe Garibaldi, was published by Valerio, and had included a description of the public subscription for Garibaldi and various letters about his activities in Uruguay. The poem itself – a ‘hymn’ – of the same title likened Garibaldi to David conquering the giant with stones and a sling, and to George Washington, and it looked forward to ‘the glorious day’ when Garibaldi would lead the people against the ‘oppression’ of the ‘barbarians’ (i.e. against Austrian rule). It was a minor publishing success, with repeatorders for the pamphlet coming in from at least one bookshop, and it was sold in Bologna and Florence as well as Turin.96
Somewhat more prosaic, but arguably more significant in its connections and impact, was the article published in October 1847 about Garibaldi in a moderate liberal Florentine paper, La Patria, owned by Baron Ricasoli. The author, Stanislao Bentivoglio, was the brother-in-law of the official French envoy to Uruguay, Count Walewski, and he had personally met Garibaldi in Montevideo. Bentivoglio explicitly identified his pleasure at an Italy ‘risen again to new life’ with Garibaldi, ‘who there with his brave companions puts on such a fine display of Italian valour’. Reflecting his perhaps more moderate leanings, Bentivoglio stressed Garibaldi's commitment to order as much as his courage and leadership: ‘Garibaldi bravely fights enemies much greater in number than he, he represses internal uprisings with equal vigour, he punishes wicked men who are ever ready for disorder and strife, and he rouses with energetic words or just by his presence the spirits of those who otherwise would have been crushed by such a long and exhausting war.’ And he too looked forward to the day when Garibaldi returned ‘to his friends and the Fatherland’, commenting that then the sword of honour given to him by the Italians ‘would be in his hands a pitiless weapon against our enemies’.97
Mazzini was not slow to realise the potential of this broadening of public interest in Garibaldi, and sought to turn it to his advantage. In 1847 he wrote to Cuneo and to another exile in Montevideo, Giacomo Medici, about sending a painting of Garibaldi to Europe, which he planned to have lithographed and circulated to raise money for a newly launched National Fund which, among other projects, would help Garibaldi and his men return to Europe.98 A painting by Gaetano Gallino, the same Italian artist in Montevideo who had designed the flag of the Italian Legion, was produced and lithographed in 1848 by a Turin-based company called Doyen. The lithograph depicts Garibaldi as a romantic, exotic figure, half turned towards the viewer. Although his hands rest on a sabre, there the orthodox military references stop; he wears a long cloak over one shoulder and a loose dark ‘blouse’ with full sleeves, his hair is flowing and shoulder length and he has a full beard and sloping, sensuous eyes.99 A similar lithograph was produced by the same company in the same year as Giuseppe Garibaldi di Genova (this time he wears a large, sloping beret, and a white open shirt tied with a tassel), to accompany the text of Bertoldi's hymn to the Italian Legion.100 The same lithograph – a slightly altered copy signed ‘Delangle’ – was also published in the newly launched illustrated magazine, Il Mondo Illustrato, of Turin in February 1848 (see figure 2 opposite).101 By early 1848, in effect, engraved portraits of Garibaldi had begun to circulate in northern Italy.
2 Portrait of Garibaldi published in Il Mondo Illustrato, 1848. This portrait, of which many versions exist, was the first picture of Garibaldi to be published in Europe and was produced before he arrived in Italy in June 1848.
However, Mazzini did not have things entirely his own way, and Garibaldi proved more difficult to control than he had expected. In January 1847 Mazzini
expressed genuine alarm and irritation at the rumours that Garibaldi and Anzani were planning to organise a military expedition from Montevideo to Italy (‘What a misfortune … for our affairs! So, it's possible to lose your head in this way!’). By November, however, he had decided to make their plans his own, and wrote to Felice Foresti in New York to ask him for help in transporting Garibaldi and a thousand men to Italy and in supplying them with firearms (he mentioned buying them some of the new Colt revolvers). Garibaldi, Mazzini told Foresti, ‘is really an exceptional man for us’: those who met him confirmed his ‘unusual abilities’, and in Italy his name ‘has begun to carry weight’.102 In the end, Garibaldi only set sail for Italy from Montevideo in April 1848, with sixty-three of his legionaries and a dying Francesco Anzani. His wife and children had left for Europe before him, as had his colleague from the Italian Legion, Giacomo Medici, destined for London to make contact with Mazzini.
The return of the South American exiles to Italy was strictly supervised by Mazzini, and was the result of his strategy to hold them in readiness to fight and die for Italy when he felt the political and military moment was right. But by late 1847 it had already become difficult to hold Garibaldi back. Garibaldi was disillusioned with developments in Montevideo and anxious to return home. He was particularly enthused by the election of the ‘liberal’ pope, Pius IX, in Italy and, unlike Mazzini, believed that he represented a new opportunity for Italy. Indeed, in October Garibaldi and Anzani – convinced, as they put it, that a man ‘had arisen in the breast of our Fatherland’ who understood the ‘needs of the century’ – had written a letter to the papal representative in Rio offering the military services of their legion to the Pope.103 In December, the first newspapers arrived in Montevideo giving details of the reforms taking place in Italy, and a celebration was held by the Italian community in Montevideo. Garibaldi and the officers of the legion led a torchlit procession through the streets, to the sound of musical bands and revolutionary and patriotic songs. Just days before his departure for Italy, Garibaldi would probably also have heard the news from Italy that a popular revolution had occured in Palermo, which had overthrown the rule of the king of Naples.104
Conclusion
The early fame of Garibaldi was the result of a deliberate strategy conceived by Mazzini and enthusiastically endorsed by his followers, including Garibaldi himself. As a national hero, Garibaldi represents a triumph for Mazzini's insistence on the unity of thought and action. His fame was the result of cultural elaboration and military accomplishment, and its purpose was to inspire and publicise political engagement in word and in deed. Especially worthy of comment are the various ‘fits’ between the first accounts of Garibaldi and the Risorgimento narratives discussed in the previous chapter: Garibaldi provides a concrete and symbolic link between the nation as cultural identity and nationalism as a revolutionary political movement, and there are striking similarities between the way Garibaldi is described and the qualities of a Risorgimento literary hero. Like the Risorgimento hero, Garibaldi is virile and attractive: he smoulders in long hair and flowing clothes. He is of a ‘noble and lofty character’, personally modest yet rebellious, and defiant in the face of defeat; and he is exceptionally courageous and daring when it comes to upholding moral principles and defending the honour of the community. Equally, in these early accounts Garibaldi is always, and is perhaps above all, a soldier, a military hero who shows the way forward to the glorious day when Italy will rise again to a new life. Garibaldi can perhaps best be understood as a kind of Italian fusion (or bricolage)105 of Walter Scott hero and Mazzinian genius, of eclectic borrowings from romantic sensibilities and militant Jacobinism.
It is vital to note that, especially in the accounts written by Mazzinians like Cuneo and De Boni, Garibaldi does not stand alone. Like the imaginary/historical heroes of Risorgimento novels and paintings, Garibaldi embodies the romantic idea of the nation; thus, he is part of a free and equal fraternity, and he is tied to his ‘brothers’ in the Italian Legion as much by feeling as by disinterested virtue.106 Garibaldi's greatness lies not only in his capacity for ‘great deeds’ but also in his qualities as a leader. It is his leadership of those ‘brave brothers’ who have ‘freely elected’ him as their colonel, and whom he encourages by his own example and with his own voice, that is repeatedly stressed in these narratives. Moreover, all the legionaries fight as bravely as he, and are just as prepared to die for the honour of Italy. They too are the heroes of San Antonio del Salto, cared for by the ‘gentle sex’; and when, after the battle, in a clear public gesture which is underlined in all these accounts, Garibaldi dedicates his honours to the dead and wounded of the legion, he downplays his own contribution and emphasises the religious and romantic virtues of martyrdom. So, if Garibaldi represents the elaboration of an Italian ideal of heroism which takes its inspiration from a romanticised past, the Italian Legion also represents a new political ideal – that of fraternity and sacrifice for fraternity – derived from Jacobinism and the French Revolution. In this way, Garibaldi's legionaries are a voluntary ‘band of brothers’, whose association and actions provide a model for the new national community envisaged by Mazzini and his followers.
Perhaps the most interesting feature of all, and common to nearly all early accounts, is the juxtaposition of the squalid insults ‘heaped’ on Garibaldi and his legion by foreigners and the enemies of Italy with the marvellous truth revealed by Italian patriots and honest journalists. The starting point for the texts discussed above is broadly the same: the accusation of ‘mercenary’, ‘adventurer’ or ‘bandit’ and/or the public's ignorance of the glorious exploits of Italy's exiled ‘children’ far away from the fatherland. These allegations serve to throw into sharper relief the magnificent true story of the legion, true because the letters of those involved and reports about them reveal the full extent of their selflessness, bravery and heroism in serving a just cause. The structure of these accounts is remarkable for its closeness to Risorgimento narrative, and specifically to its stages of decadence, rebellion, death and redemption. As we saw with D'Azeglio's novel, Ettore Fieramosca (see page 27), attacks by foreigners on the independence and honour of Italy were a particular theme in Risorgimento texts, as was the refusal by a few heroes to accept this insult to national pride. This suggests that the story of Garibaldi in South America would have been easily recognised and provoked an emotional response in many readers, and that a clear attempt is being made to identify the political/military actions of Garibaldi and his men with the general risorgimento of Italy. Thus, in the narrative structure and in the use of familiar themes, we see the creation of a story for Garibaldi and his legion which both resembles those found in the popular novels, poems and paintings of the period and aspires to be a more general foundation story for the new Italian polity.
In a very short period of time – between early 1846 and late 1847 – Garibaldi became a symbol of the ‘new’ Italy, a resurgent Italy no longer just imagined but being brought to life. That Italy's Restoration governments were forced to tolerate the circulation of such dangerous political rhetoric about a revolutionary hero gives us some idea of his popularity, or of the almost irresistible tide of public opinion running in his favour. Enthusiasm for Garibaldi was now shared by scientists, diplomats and artists as well as by the group of dedicated Mazzinians who were his original friends and promoters. During this period, in other words, Garibaldi became a sign as well as a lived existence. His life became as important for what it could symbolise and provoke imaginatively as for what he could achieve materially. Although not all aspects of Garibaldi's public personality were evident, a number of key features were already in place when he set sail for Italy in April 1848. Perhaps most noteworthy is the remarkably successful – because convincing – combination of moral rectitude and personal bravery (Mazzini's ‘physical courage and virtue’, quoted above), personal qualities which were, in turn, identified with an idealised general concept of italianità. Just as interesting, howeve
r, is the extent to which his ideas and image were formed by experiences away from Italy. Garibaldi's knowledge of French socialism and South American politics were as central to his political formation as were his encounters with the Mazzinians. His defiantly exotic and sensual physical appearance could hardly have differed more from the austere image carefully cultivated by Mazzini for himself while in London. In this respect, Garibaldi's persona, and the strong responses to it, point to his cultivation of a different, more physical political aesthetic, which was to have a broad international appeal.
