by Lucy Riall
Commenting on the return of Garibaldi to Palermo in September, and on the scenes of popular enthusiasm which greeted his arrival, Il Precursore proclaimed, ‘Oh how sweet it is to rule not with the bayonet and cannon, but with the love of the people!’74 The evidence available suggests that the population was not as unmoved by the call of Garibaldi as the new political elite in Palermo privately believed. Now, while ‘the love of the people’ could not resolve all the problems of men and money, it does point to a degree of political authority and consensus which is relatively unusual in nineteenth-century Italy, and which has been overlooked by historians more interested in explaining the ultimate disappointment of Garibaldi's campaign. From the limited evidence available, the current picture of relations between government and people under Garibaldi's dictatorship, often said to be characterised by political indifference, needs revision. Indeed, it seems likely that the vision of national belonging proposed and promoted by Garibaldi in Sicily did have a broad appeal and impact. In certain circumstances, Sicilians fought with Garibaldi. Garibaldi's patriotic message was endorsed and elaborated both by the press and by the priests, so it reached different, and significant, sections of the population. If popular songs are anything to go by, the story of Garibaldi's expedition, the military and political ideals which it sought to represent, and the images and symbols through which these ideals were expressed, were incorporated into popular culture and reproduced in a local vernacular. Moreover, this story evoked a popular response: at the very least, the songs remained in wide circulation and helped to construct a popular memory of the events of 1860. So, Garibaldi may not have persuaded Sicilians to join up with him en masse, but he does seem to have laid some foundations for a state-sponsored religion of the nation.
The nation-at-arms
One of the most remarkable aspects of the war of 1859 was the rush of young men from Lombardy and central Italy to volunteer to fight against Austria. They did so amid broader scenes of nationalist enthusiasm, such as patriotic demonstrations, the formation of associations and the organisation of public subscriptions. Garibaldi's war against the Bourbons in 1860 provoked a very similar reaction. In fact, his calls for volunteers and material assistance in 1859 had carried on, as we saw in Chapter 7, throughout the winter of 1859–60 and had culminated in his plans for the nation-at-arms in early 1860. These military plans were halted by the Piedmontese government, but the popular appeal of volunteering and otherwise offering aid to the nationalist cause did not cease. The phenomenon of volunteering in 1860 is worth looking at in some detail as it can tell us much about the nature of support for Garibaldi and the national idea which he represented.
One strong indication of public support for Garibaldi was the money given to his Million Rifles Fund during 1860. The Thousand sailed to Sicily, and financed itself until arrival in Palermo, with 90,000 Piedmontese lire from the Rifles Fund (roughly $400,000 in present-day figures).75 Figures given by Agostino Bertani (who stayed behind in Genoa after Garibaldi's departure for Sicily and was responsible for organising new expeditions)76 indicate that money continued to be donated thereafter, the fund ‘[p]rofiting’, as Raymond Grew puts it, ‘by its association with the General’.77 In all, the Rifles Fund was able to give a total of 2 million lire (c. $9 million) to the expedition, along with thousands of rifles and muskets. Some of this money came from the Piedmontese government, and some from patriotic municipalities (the city of Pavia donated 37,000 lire and Cremona 130,000 lire to the Thousand); in the latter case money was raised both from municipal funds and via new loans and public subscriptions. Similarly, the National Society received around 450,000 lire (c. $2 million) for the campaign from a combination of official and private sources. Outside these channels, the Sicilian exile, Count Amari, collected around 200,000 lire (c. $900,000); a separate central fund (cassa centrale) set up by Bertani collected over half a million lire (c. $2.25 million); and Garibaldi himself donated approximately 36,000 lire (c. $160,00), apparently from money sent directly to him by his admirers.78
The issue of which political groups funded Garibaldi's expedition and campaign is a tricky one, and is connected to the bitter rivalries between moderates and democrats which rumbled on throughout the summer of 1860. For the purposes of assessing both the nationalist response and the popular reaction to Garibaldi, however, these rivalries matter less than the fact that money was given, and from these different sources. The list of sponsors in Bertani's central fund shows a mix of public subscriptions, private donations and municipal funds. One letter to Bertani also suggested opening a bazaar in Genoa to collect money for Garibaldi's expedition. It refers to the frenetic fund-raising activity during May: ‘balls are organised … flower shows are opened, and the price of the ticket is donated to Garibaldi’. Newspapers had opened subscriptions; and the committee in Bologna had already set up a shop, the letter revealed.79
As impressive as the fund-raising was the constant stream of men wanting to volunteer to fight with Garibaldi, or to return to battle with him. In March 1860, a man who had shaken Garibaldi's hand in Rimini wrote him a letter of commendable nationalist orthodoxy:
Yes, my General, send me wherever you think my few military studies and my limited knowledge can be put to use for the Italian cause: I have no unrestrained ambitions; My profession of faith is this: my life, and that of my two dear sons … must end in honour defending the regeneration of our Italy: I, and they, desire nothing else.80
Risorgimento rhetoric, and enthusiasm for Garibaldi, reached many during 1859 and early 1860. An English observer, Laurence Oliphant, who was on a train with Garibaldi shortly before the departure for Sicily (but while the expedition had been shelved in favour of defending Nice), was struck by his capacity to provoke a popular response. On the train, Garibaldi read his morning's mail, an ‘enormous correspondence’ which after reading he tore into small pieces; and the letters were so many that, in Oliphant's words, ‘by the time we reached Genoa, the floor of the carriage was thickly strewn with the litter, and looked like a gigantic waste-paper basket’. Oliphant later learnt that these letters were responses to Garibaldi's call for volunteers to Sicily.81
Even if it had achieved nothing else, the expedition of the Thousand would have been proof of enthusiasm for the idea of Italy. Indeed, the expedition must be seen as the continuation of a much longer Mazzinian tradition, which began with the Bandiera brothers in the early 1840s and continued through the 1850s, and which has been identified by Paul Ginsborg as a central element in the romantic conception and realisation of Italy as a nation.82 But it is equally significant that the departure of that expedition from Quarto was part of a much broader movement. Bertani's central committee, and a number of local committees in the Lombard cities of Milan, Bergamo, Cremona and Brescia, and other cities like Modena, Bologna, Florence and Livorno, had the task of encouraging and organising volunteers; and it was to these committees that letters were addressed, from those ‘imploring’, in G. M. Trevelyan's words, ‘to be allowed to serve under Garibaldi’. Cremona, a city of 30,000 inhabitants, alone sent nearly a thousand volunteers.83 Moreover, from the very day (9 May) when Garibaldi's call for volunteers was published in the papers, but long before the outcome of the expedition was known, offers started to pour into Bertani's central office.
One of the earliest letters in Bertani's files, written on 9 May by an N. Palazzini of Milan, protested bitterly that the expedition had left without him: why, he asked Bertani, was he considered ‘unworthy’ to serve his country? He accordingly demanded to be reassured that ‘on the very next occasion, I will be called on to be part of the elect and given the honour to claim freedom for our Italy’.84 Another, an officer from Piacenza, begged to be included in the ‘other expedition being prepared’, adding that he was ready to keep his involvement a secret, to leave immediately, to be accepted in any grade, and to bring other soldiers with him, if only he was allowed to go to Sicily to fight with Garibaldi.85 Others expressed themselves as ‘very anxious to tak
e part quickly in that noble expedition’;86 ‘fervent’ to offer their lives ‘for the patriotic love of Italy’;87 ‘fervent … to join Garibaldi in any place and to share their destiny with him whatever that may be’.88 As one man wrote:
desiring fervently to follow the brave General Garibaldi in any event and in any danger for Italy my fatherland, and to put at your disposal my feeble hand, I turn to you sir … begging you to do me the favour of telling me, if or if it is not true that the volunteers are being sent back, and if it is not true, I can tell my companions so that they are convinced and we can leave.89
Girolamo Guglielmetti, already in Genoa from Domodossola, expressed an equally ‘fervent desire’ to go with a new expedition. If Bertani would only let him go, he wrote, he would be ‘grateful for ever’, adding: ‘if in these days you have any need of my person for any purpose whatsoever, I am at your disposal, and I will do what little I can with great pleasure’.90
The statements made and questions asked by these volunteers suggest the extent to which bits of information and other rumours rapidly circulated about Garibaldi's expedition in early May, as well as the enthusiasm with which many responded to the news and letters which formally announced his departure. ‘Desiring to join up with General Garibaldi as soon as possible’, a volunteer wrote in a pompous style on 22 May:
and not having had from your committee any precise indication, I have taken the liberty of asking you [i.e. Bertani] directly that if I come to Genoa will I be able to leave quickly for Sicily, and how should I regulate myself? I will not seek to hide from you how fervent is my request: but I hope that you will forgive such fervour and the cursive style of my letter, as I care for nothing but the idea which has inspired my resolution.91
Some people simply dropped everything and came directly to Bertani's headquarters at Genoa, ‘hoping’, as two volunteers put it, ‘that with your means you can realise our golden dream by taking us to Sicily’.92 One group of Italians left their homes in ‘the centre of Africa’ and wrote to Bertani from Algeria asking for advice on how to get to Sicily.93 Many relied on references from friends or elders with more experience or influence, in an attempt to be accepted by Bertani.94 Others joined together, and proposed to come as groups of students, artists, enlisted soldiers or from a particular locality. One typical letter of 11 May spoke for a ‘few young students from Saluzzo, equally ardent in their patriotic love for Italy’, who ‘with no other means of dedicating themselves to the same, offer her their lives'; and this group persisted with their offer, writing again on 15 May, and as ‘a force of fearless and determined young men’ on 6 June.95
Often, it is the individual offers that tell us most about the depth of the emotional reaction to the news of Garibaldi's expedition and subsequent campaign. One man wrote a breathless letter – entirely without punctuation – to Bertani asking to be taken on as a volunteer: ‘in short how can I be useful to my Fatherland which is my whole life all I have is willing’. Although he was poor, he insisted that if he was accepted as a volunteer he could bring his horse and two saddles.96 A young Genoese girl wrote to Bertani, stating that: ‘Genoa and the world weary me, so far from the heroes of Italy … My parents may perhaps be averse to my decision to go to Sicily, but you who are, like Garibaldi, the incarnation of the Italian mind and heart, can find means to persuade them.’97 That she is not an isolated case, and that some women were desperate to fight with Garibaldi, is suggested by various anecdotes of women dressing as men in order to join his army.98 A father, a veteran of 1848, offered his son – ‘my only son not yet twenty’ – to Garibaldi;99 and a sixteen-year-old told Bertani, ‘I want to devote myself because I love Italy, one free independent under the sceptre of King Vittorio Emanuele, and because I adore Garibaldi. And for Italy, for Vittorio Emanuele and for Garibaldi I would be torn to pieces.’100 Several boys defied their parents and ran away to join Garibaldi. One letter wrote of a sixteen-year-old ‘runaway’ who had left home ‘with the intention of joining the glorious standard of the intrepid Garibaldi’;101 a father asked for the whereabouts of his seventeen-year-old son, ‘my only hope’, who had managed to leave ‘without my knowledge’ with Garibaldi and from whom nothing had been heard since Marsala;102 an uncle asked for news of his nephew, a fifteen-year-old student from Varese, who had run off ‘with other young lads … full of youthful fire to join up in the ranks destined for Sicily’;103 while still another letter decried the foolhardy actions of two boys from good families but of a lazy disposition (‘idle, very idle’), who ‘[i]n the land of sun will quickly end up as food for misfortune, lost in idleness or pleasure, or they will be shot, at the best …’.104 Towards the end of June, a woman, Giulia Tonelli, wrote to Bertani asking for help. Her husband had abandoned her to go to Sicily, leaving her alone with a child; without financial assistance from Bertani's committee, she wrote, she would be ‘obliged to beg for a living’.105
Thus, Garibaldi's call for volunteers provoked a great rush to join him. Enthusiasm for his expedition was not confined to the young, reckless or feckless: doctors, pharmacists and government officials all wrote to Bertani asking to be enrolled. Two brothers, both customs officers, wrote before Garibaldi's departure was made public, asking for confirmation of the news so that they could resign their posts to follow him (they wrote again later in the month repeating their offer).106 A pharmacist who had worked for five years in ‘one of the main pharmacies in Turin’ was willing to abandon his job ‘just to be as useful as I can to the holy cause’;107 and a postal clerk offered his services to the postal office in Sicily but added that he was also prepared to fight as a soldier: ‘I too would rush to take up arms to fight for the independence and union of Italy.’108 A lawyer from Alessandria, an employee in the local government, proposed himself (twice) for a post in the Sicilian administration, but said he was equally prepared to go there as a ‘simple soldier’;109 and a professor of chemistry at the University of Pavia wrote that while it was difficult for a man in his position to join the volunteers in the normal way, ‘nonetheless I have a strong desire to get myself down there’. ‘Don't be discouraged and stay in Pavia’, was Bertani's kindly reply to this last request for a place.110
A large number of offers came from officers, ex-officers and soldiers. One man, an ex-officer in the Ottoman army (or, as he put it, an officer ‘for the Tyrant I hope that the above will soon disappear like mist in the sun’) wrote directly to Garibaldi from Constantinople offering his services, and asking him to ‘love me as much as I love you’.111 Another ex-officer, from the Austrian army, wrote that volunteering for Garibaldi would ‘cancel out’ his past actions.112 Although Bertani had been instructed by Garibaldi to reject men from the regular Piedmontese army, many refused to be put off and were convinced they could go. A sergeant asked Bertani for advice about being released from the army ‘in order to give a helping hand to the Fatherland … Viva Garibaldi Viva il Re Viva l'Indipendenza Italiana’.113 A lieutenant requested three days' notice so that he could ask for his release along with his three brothers (‘a fourth one is already with the General’).114 ‘Having read about the glorious battles of our brave general in Sicily,’ another lieutenant wrote, ‘and feeling that it is really there that the Battles of the Fatherland are being fought, and seeing that here we are kept in shameful idleness – while other Brothers are dying in battle, unless you tell me otherwise I will go to Turin and resign my commission.’115 From Modena, a veteran with twenty years' service wrote furiously, first to La Farina and then to Bertani, about his various efforts to be released from military service and accepted as a volunteer:
I would have happily given half of my blood in order to be with him and the other half I would happily have shed on to Sicilian soil for the Holy Cause. I am resigned to the fact that I cannot be among the first, but I hope … I will not be among the last … to offer his arm and his mind to the brave Sicilians, for my fervent desire to do my duty, the duty of every Italian, to give my all, and to all, and with all my moral
and physical faculties for the maximum benefit and the progressive tendency of the common Fatherland, within the limits of honest Justice.
All this passion did not convince Bertani, who rejected his offer of service.116
Just as significant was the number of offers coming from men who had previously served as volunteers in other wars. There were one or two sad stories of returning veterans: a Neapolitan, Vincenzo Masi, had fought in 1848 and '49, and after ten years of exile – ‘a whole odyssey, an entire Dante's inferno’ – he had returned to be rejected as a volunteer in 1859 and imprisoned for ‘sedition’ in Tuscany; beset by debt and with his wife dying, he asked Bertani for money so that he could come to Italy and take part in the ‘heroic expedition’ to Sicily, and find ‘at least an honourable death on the field of battle’.117 Another veteran from Napoleon's Russian campaign and the 1821 revolution in Piedmont wrote pathetically to Bertani, twice offering his services ‘with all my heart’, and asking for ‘the day, the time, and the place where I can join myself up with you’ (but without success).118 However, these stories are unusual: the majority of those who wrote to Bertani had had their combat experience during the wars of 1848–9, and/or had been enrolled as Cacciatori with Garibaldi or regular soldiers in the war of 1859, and seemed to see these events in an entirely positive light. Their enthusiasm for the fight in Sicily suggests that, for many, participation in the wars of 1859 and 1860 was part of a single struggle for the liberation of Italy.
