by Lucy Riall
In Italy, Garibaldi played a decisive role both in the broader process of politicisation and in the specific representation and spread of an Italian national identity. He did this first by virtue of his military successes, most notably the spectacular and perhaps truly heroic victory over the French of 30 April 1849. These successes built on his practical experiences in Brazil and Uruguay, and they helped confirm more broadly the Italian revolution's need for military volunteers. Although volunteers were regarded with suspicion by the regular Piedmontese army in 1848 and '49, their youth and enthusiasm was a valuable addition to the nationalist struggle. Moreover, during the fighting for the Roman Republic in 1849, as well as in the defence of other cities during the same year, the volunteers had a second chance, which they took full advantage of. Co-ordinated in part by Garibaldi, their victory over the French in Rome was arguably one of ‘the most successful and heroic military engagements of the Risorgimento’;150 it certainly formed a striking contrast to the utter ineffectiveness of the Piedmontese soldiers, crushed twice by the Austrians at the battles of Custoza and Novara. From this point of view, the ultimate defeat of the Roman Republic seemed less important than the proof in many parts of Italy of ‘brave resistance and honourable defeat’ by an army of young volunteers.151 Thus, the formation of volunteer militias in 1848–9, and especially the role played in them by Garibaldi, seemed to offer a solution to the twin problems of military weakness and popular apathy which had dogged the Mazzinian party in Italy since the formation of the movement in the early 1830s. Although some military strategists – notably Carlo Pisacane – went on to criticise the tactics used by Garibaldi, a general strategy of forming a national and popular army was henceforth agreed upon by the Italian revolutionary movement.152
The defence of Rome by Garibaldi and the volunteer army against French attack has also been described as ‘a poet's dream’.153 Both in Rome and earlier, Garibaldi played a leading part in creating a new – living and contemporary – romantic myth of Italian military heroism. His experiences had all the ingredients of popular Risorgimento narrative: the brave warrior-hero; the community in danger; its defence by a defiant band of ‘brothers’; their sacrifice and the death of the heroine (Garibaldi's wife Anita). Indeed, the message of national redemption seems to have been all the more compelling because it was ‘true’: part of politics and the acts of men rather than something dreamt up by romantic writers. Throughout the events of 1848–9, Garibaldi represented a visible and physical bond between the romantic vision of Italy and Mazzini's ideal of political engagement. In Rome, moreover, he helped to damage (if not entirely dissolve) the symbolic link between the Pope and the nation, an achievement which was reflected in attacks on him in the right-wing and clerical press. Although, as we shall see, it took time – roughly the whole of the 1850s – and a series of writers fully to create this new nationalist formula and establish its close identification with Garibaldi, the main elements were put in place during the events of 1848 and 1849. And both the story itself and its references to the romantic Risorgimento genre were introduced at the time through Mazzinian editorials, in visual images and, perhaps especially, by Garibaldi's own speeches and appearance.
It helped enormously that so many Mazzinians in 1848–9, including Garibaldi, had considerable experience in producing propaganda, in writing good stories and/or in creating better relations with the press, and had long-term friendships with writers and journalists. Indeed, for the historian writing in the twenty-first century, what is most conspicuous, and certainly most familiar, about these events is not so much the street barricades or the acts of military valour as the growing, almost self-sustaining, tide of media interest in them. The ‘explosion of journalism’ in Europe brought about by the end of censorship in many states in 1847–8 was a clear symptom of political change and participation.154 The press itself helped to create that change, to publicise and define the revolution and to establish its memory during the ensuing years. Even before 1848, while Garibaldi was still in Uruguay, the press had been a crucial tool in the creation of his fame. In 1848–9, it was the press which launched Garibaldi as a public figure with an appeal beyond the restricted circles of democratic clubs and associations. Throughout 1848, Garibaldi was promoted by the press as an Italian hero, with a clear resonance for the liberal, patriotically inclined elites living in the towns and cities of northern and central Italy. And it was foreign press attention in 1849, thanks to the defence of Rome, which gave him an international reputation both as seductive idol and as dangerous ‘freebooter’.
Still, perhaps the most important aspect of Garibaldi's fame in this period is less immediately obvious to us, and lies in the message which he conveys. Of course, most of what we know about Garibaldi's appearances in 1848–9 is mediated through newspaper reports, political commentaries, and scenes imagined by artists or remembered by participants, so its value as historical evidence is far from straightforward. What is clear, however, is the extent to which, as a political symbol, he lies outside any kind of accepted mainstream. For instance, as a soldier, he looks and behaves less like an officer and much more like a bandit. As a national icon, he is neither Jacobin nor Napoleonic; there is little hint of classical beauty or dignity, even less of controlled masculinity, and not much in the way of saintly behaviour. For the readers of The Illustrated London News he is ‘picturesque’, a popular term in the nineteenth century which means natural, exotic and pleasing, and would have reminded the English of seventeenth-century Italian paintings by artists like Salvator Rosa, who peopled their landscapes with soldiers, shepherds and bandits.155
Garibaldi seems young, he is sultry, unkempt and hirsute and he dresses unconventionally in flowing, brightly coloured clothes. He is strong and fierce and he makes camp ‘like an Indian’; he is sunburnt and he sweats. His look is not self-controlled and classical but that of a hero of the Middle Ages; and while his speeches exalt violence and courage, they also appeal to sex and love. Garibaldi's followers are ill-disciplined, they include strong women and a black ex-slave, and, when they leave Rome, they are beautiful, romantic and sad. A female eyewitness longs for Walter Scott to be alive and see them go. Garibaldi, in other words, is an intensely romantic figure, rebellious, independent and emotive rather than austere, conformist and authoritarian. In political terms, he represents a distinctly democratic and inclusive ideal. He seeks to be a living embodiment of the people's aspirations, and he is part of the community and the nation rather than a ‘great man’, alone capable of great deeds.
Despite this liberating message, the final legacy of 1848–9 was more negative, and was to cause great damage to the democratic movement in the years to come. The revolutionaries' exceptional talent for self-publicity was not really paralleled by a similar capacity for day-to-day organisation and co-ordination. They were divided in 1848–9, not simply into democrats and moderates (who were not revolutionaries at all), but also into unitarians and federalists; there was a gap between the ‘Italian’, but also cosmopolitan, Mazzinians and other republican groups with a much more regional or local focus, and/or between all of them and smaller groups with more radical, socialist leanings. It was this tension and lack of co-ordination which partly led to their downfall; it meant that few practical steps were taken to consolidate the revolution, either in preparing for its defence or in seeking to reach out to the provinces and countryside, and to the poorer classes of society.156 Even on a micro-level, in terms of relations between friends and allies like Mazzini and Garibaldi, the level of discord – especially over the fundamental question of military strategy and tactics – was often striking. If only in this respect, historians are probably right to argue that romanticism provided a flawed and unrealistic basis for political action in 1848–9.
However, such tensions might have been less serious had they not endured and hardened and, in turn, affected democratic thought and practice in the decade after the revolution's end. Paul Ginsborg argues that the republicans learnt the wrong
lessons from 1848: ‘They became convinced that the most important feature of the Risorgimento was the struggle for independence and unity, to which the[ir] democratic and republican beliefs … were to be sacrificed.’157 It is also true that after 1848–9 the generation of Mazzini, Manin and Garibaldi lost much of the intense enthusiasm and fearless optimism which had characterised their political activity up till then. For Garibaldi, revolution left a memory of bitterness, frustration and, after the death of his wife, profound personal grief.158
One effect of the 1848–9 revolutions was to inspire a ‘poet's dream’. The revolutionaries launched an influential and enduring myth of selfless struggle for national freedom, and they also publicised a republican idea of Italy and a compelling model of political engagement. But this dream worked best for those who had time to read and sleep, or those who came of age thereafter; it appealed most of all to foreigners, to those too young to fight or to those excluded by their sex. Not everyone was taken in by the dream, and those who were not (conservatives, clericals) were often the most powerful groups in European society, with the strongest hold on its poorest members. For the protagonists themselves, and perhaps especially for Mazzinian nationalists, the memory of revolution was more divisive, and henceforth they seemed less able to live up to the message of fraternity they had so successfully promoted. Thus, for those already with an idea of Italy, who had embraced Mazzini's vision of combatant national resurgence long before the spring of '48, the reality of revolution was one of failure. The most lasting impact of this failure was the reintroduction of the more traditional themes of death, decadence and betrayal to the centre of Italy's national story.
CHAPTER 4
EXILE
After the fall of Rome
At the beginning of August 1849, having come within fifty miles of Venice, Garibaldi disappeared for an entire month. The Austrian authorities in Bologna issued a proclamation on 5 August which warned of ‘Summary Military Justice’ for anyone ‘who knowingly aids, shelters or shows favour to the fugitive Garibaldi or to any other individuals of the band led and commanded by him’.1 Several of the Roman Republic's most celebrated radicals – the priest Ugo Bassi and the popular leader Ciceruacchio, along with his two sons – were captured and executed, but Garibaldi himself managed to escape and went into hiding.
What happened was that following the death of his wife at a farm in Mandriole on 4 August, Garibaldi and his companion ‘Leggero’ (Battista Colliolo) first hid from the Austrians in the thick pine forest to the north of Ravenna. It was there that they abandoned all hope of reaching Venice, and decided simply to try to get home without being arrested. From the forest they were taken by local sympathisers to a hut in the middle of the marshes and, during the night of 7 August, were moved to the outskirts of Ravenna and on across the Romagna plain towards the Apennines and the Tuscan border. With Leggero (who was wounded in the leg so could only travel slowly) and moving carefully to avoid the Austrian troops, Garibaldi spent some two weeks zigzagging through the mountains between Florence and Bologna, after which they cut south towards Prato. From Prato, they travelled by carriage to Poggibonsi and Volterra, and eventually reached the Tuscan Maremma and the Tyrrhenian coast. In the early morning of 2 September, Garibaldi was moved to temporary quarters at an isolated farmhouse called Casa Guelfi. Here he apparently smoked a cigar and slept for a few hours before being taken to the tiny bay of Cala Martina, from where he embarked for the island of Elba on a fishing boat.2 After Elba he sailed via Porta Venere to La Spezia, and from La Spezia travelled by land to Chiavari, which was within the territory of the kingdom of Sardinia. He arrived there on 5 September. Garibaldi's reappearance was announced by La Concordia and La Gazzetta di Genova on 7 September, by La Gazzetta di Milano on 10 September and by The Times of London on 14 September. But until his arrival in Chiavari, nobody other than his immediate companions had known where he was or what had become of him.3
Throughout August, there had been intense speculation as to Garibaldi's whereabouts. The narratives which emerged were mostly false or based on half-truths at best, reflecting both public interest in Garibaldi and the lack of any real news about him. The Times, which carried reports from the main European papers, reported on 17 August that he had escaped but that there was ‘great uncertainty’ about his movements, and ‘[s]ome say he re-embarked at La Mesola, with his wife and 30 followers, and reached Venice’. The Turin paper La Concordia tried to convince its readers that Garibaldi had reached Venice. It announced on 16 August that Garibaldi had arrived in Venice together with his wife and had been elected admiral: ‘Manin received him with great affection and exclaimed “Behold a hero, whom God has sent to save Venice!”’ On 29 August, the paper reported that Garibaldi had written to his mother from Venice ‘in order to tranquillise her fears’ and that, on arrival in Venice, ‘he was obliged to keep his bed for a week’. In Paris, at the end of August, he was said to have reached the coast of Dalmatia.
The conservative and Austrian papers initially announced Garibaldi's imminent capture. On 11 August La Gazzetta di Milano reported that Garibaldi's boats had been intercepted by the Austrian navy. When driven on to the beach by Austrian guns, Garibaldi had leapt into the waves and abandoned his ‘trunk of money’; shouting at ‘the few who followed him: “everybody save himself as best he can”’, he then threw down his sword and ran off into the woods with his pregnant wife. It was said that she then comforted him and dried his tears. Other papers concentrated on the alleged death of his wife. Anita was said to have died at Chioggia, outside Venice, ‘of the excessive fatigue she had endured’; later when her corpse was found near the Mandriole farm she was said to have been murdered – strangled by her hosts – for money. In early September, when Garibaldi arrived in Genoa via La Spezia and Chiavari, a more coherent and persuasive narrative emerged. La Concordia, which probably received the news from Garibaldi himself, announced the death of his pregnant wife (‘the unhappy woman, who loved, oh too much! her passionate husband, and who wanted to go everywhere with him in his turbulent life’), and described his escape from the Austrians, his perilous journey across the Apennines and his arrival in Chiavari disguised as a fisherman.4 Its story closely follows the first-hand account given by Garibaldi himself and written down by Augusto Nomis di Cossilla, the intendant of Chiavari. When asked the nature of his business in Chiavari by Nomis, Garibaldi was reported to have replied as follows:
to have an American passport, under a false name, taken after the surrender of Rome, although to have never used it, never having been in Venice, to have embarked … on a fishing boat, to have arrived this morning in Portovenere, without having had anything asked of him, to have come to Spezia, to have there taken the mail coach, to have come here, having relatives and friends, to expect to stay a day or two, and then to continue his journey for Genoa and on to Nice, having there his family, to expect to remain there. All this he said with fine and unusual frankness … while this listener heard him talk with no small surprise, curious episode in the very curious history of our time.5
Garibaldi's arrival in Chiavari caused quite a stir. Nomis admitted that ‘all his adherents … make a fuss of him and are preparing a serenade for him’.6 A Captain Ollandini, the carabinieri commander of Chiavari, wrote to Genoa that Garibaldi was recognised on arrival and a large crowd gathered spontaneously to applaud him; in the evening, moreover, ‘the most excited’ of the national guard put a sentry outside Garibaldi's house and told government officials that any attempt to arrest Garibaldi would be met with armed resistance, and ‘they would make the church bells peal’.7 In fact, Garibaldi's arrest was ordered almost immediately by Alfonso La Marmora, the general in command of Genoa, on the obviously trumped-up charge of entering the country illegally (since he had allegedly forfeited his citizenship by fighting in the defence of Rome, a foreign state).8 Unsurprisingly, this action did little to calm pro-Garibaldi agitation in Chiavari. When he was taken from Chiavari to Genoa, there was first a demonstration
outside the place where he was staying and then disturbances around his carriage. As one official put it, after he got into the carriage, ‘the attitude of the numerous bystanders changed, and some broke out in applause for Garibaldi, others in shouts of insults against the king, the government and us, they accompanied us in this way for about a quarter of a mile, forcing the horses to stop at every step so that they could take the time to express to Garibaldi the full extent of their sympathy’.9 And although in Genoa and Nice officials had the situation more under control, they were still deeply worried by Garibaldi's presence and by his ‘immense influence on a great part of the population’, and were concerned enough about the threat of disorder to make sure he arrived in Genoa quietly at four o'clock in the morning.10 When Garibaldi left for Nice from Genoa, La Concordia stressed the excited crowds which gathered in boats to watch him leave, and that when he arrived in Nice he was carried in triumph by the crowd to embrace his ‘old mother’, his aunt and his children. According to the paper, Garibaldi was especially moved by the encounter with his daughter: ‘the loss of his wife distresses him deeply, and everything that reminds him of her hurts him terribly’.11
