The Hero's Way

by Tim Parks

  Aside from the food, we are in luck. The Pinacoteca San Francesco, right opposite the city gate, is advertising a special exhibition. GARIBALDI IN SAN MARINO. A poster features the famous print, Garibaldi and Anita towards San Marino, made by Roberto Franzoni in 1949. The buccaneer and his wife now look like they are starring in some elegant costume drama. Sporting smart cloaks and fancy hats, they top a hill on handsome horses. It’s a parade. Among those riding behind is a second woman who appears to be wearing a fur coat. In midsummer.

  We buy a ticket that covers all the state’s six museums, but decide first to find the hotel, in the centre, that we’ve booked into for this evening. ‘I’m on Greta’s side,’ says a poster by the door. Opposite, through glossy glass, are three shop dummies in stylish pink and grey coats. BRASCHI, FUR COLLECTIONS, the sign announces.

  It was a Lieutenant Giambattista Braschi who took Archduke Ernst the message bearing Garibaldi’s rejection of unconditional surrender. The archduke was camped down in Fiorentino, two miles and 700 feet below. There was no question of the people of San Marino forcing the garibaldini out of the city, Braschi warned the archduke, because the walls were breached in many places and the General’s men were still armed.

  The archduke began to place cannons and rockets on the heights opposite the ancient town.

  Next to the Braschi fur shop is a window displaying Chanel, Givenchy, Dior. Then a supermarket for fine liquors. San Marino is a vast duty-free store. This is what the tourists come for. This is how it exploits its postage-stamp sovereignty. And many shops are selling postage stamps. San Marino produces them on an industrial scale. Philatelists abound. Garibaldi and Anita towards San Marino comes in five different values and colours. Then there’s Ugo Bassi in his priest’s hat, fifteen cents. Garibaldi with an ostrich feather, fifty cents. Anita, looking as if painted by Rubens, five cents.

  All this would be innocent enough, were it not for the weapons. There are gun shops everywhere. Rifles, semi-automatics, Kalashnikovs. HOT SHOT, one particularly busy emporium is called. Displayed beside the guns are racks of baseball bats. But these aren’t sports shops. Matteo Salvini, we have read, is seeking to relax Italy’s gun laws. He’s a great supporter of neighbourhood vigilante groups. ‘Any soldier found guilty of selling his rifle will be shot,’ Garibaldi warned his soldiers as the men tried to come to terms with the disbanding of the legions.

  The tourists gaze into the windows of their choice. Girls and women, men and boys. They do not seem to be visiting the museums. Except the Museum of Medieval Criminality and Torture, which is attracting much attention. And the two picture-book castles that top the town. Here, on walkways connecting ancient stone towers, there’s barely room to move. Everybody is sweating profusely from the steep climb up the cobbled streets. The views from the battlements don’t disappoint. The sea is a beguiling blue haze, the hills wonderfully textured with their woods and stubble and scarps. In the larger of the two castles is a well stocked museum of weaponry. People are queuing.

  But back at the Pinacoteca San Francesco, nobody. Not a single soul in the Garibaldi exhibition. The two women at the door seem taken aback when we enter. In the first room a startled guard looks up from her phone. The timeline panels introducing the show set out a clear narrative: San Marino saved Garibaldi and, in so doing, made a crucial contribution to the eventual unification of Italy. ‘30 July, Ugo Bassi arrives in San Marino asking for permission to cross the territory.’ The panel doesn’t say that permission was denied. Twice.

  But the relics are fascinating. Garibaldi’s saddle. One of the many, one presumes. With a fancy pommel and iron studs. Garibaldi’s pistol, elaborately engraved. A camp fork, its iron prongs folding into an ivory handle. A camp spoon. A banner of the PRIMA LEGIONE ROMANA. A rubber stamp of the Roman Republic. A small silver container that was Ugo Bassi’s holy-oil sprinkler. Leaving San Marino in haste, he didn’t have time to pack his bag.

  Above all, there’s the handwriting. Garibaldi’s orders of the day: decisive, sharply slanted pen strokes. ‘Anyone found sleeping on sentry duty will be shot.’ ‘Officers must set an example.’ ‘The men must not be allowed to straggle.’

  Archduke Ernst’s response to Belzoppi’s attempt to mediate is just eight lines scrawled at the top of a piece of notepaper. ‘I am acting on behalf of the Pope who will accept nothing but total surrender.’ Whoever actually wrote the words, in Italian, was having problems with his pen. The ink wasn’t flowing. Scratches and blots. The paper bears the stamp of the San Marino government archive.

  Captain Regent Belzoppi had also sent a messenger to General Hahne, the archduke’s superior, in Rimini. An hour away on horseback. Ernst, we should remember, although a cousin of Emperor Franz Joseph and a distant cousin of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, was only twenty-four years old. Hahne was in his sixties. He sent a negotiator, Adolfo De Fidler, who arrived shortly after Ernst’s negative response. ‘I have received your message,’ Garibaldi scrawls to Belzoppi on a note without date or time, ‘and would ask you to complete the negotiations in all haste.’ While they were talking, the Austrians were reinforcing their positions.

  Towards five in the afternoon Garibaldi was called to the Palazzo Pubblico and handed a larger sheet of paper, roughly scribbled on both sides with plenty of blots. I had to ask Eleonora to photograph it; my hand was shaking. The hand that wrote it was uncertain too. Some of the nouns are given capital letters, as if the writer might be more used to German than Italian. Some words are crossed out. Others inserted in tiny letters.

  There were nine conditions. The men would lay down their arms. They would be divided according to their Italian regions, then escorted home by Austrian forces and handed over to the civil authorities. Only those accused of ‘common crimes’ would be punished. The Republic of San Marino would be compensated for its expenses with seizure of the column’s horses, mules and equipment. All guns and money would go to the Austrians. Garibaldi would be obliged to depart for America with Anita and must promise never to return. The rebels had until midday tomorrow, 1 August, to respond. Assuming they accepted, the agreement would only come into force after the governor of Bologna, General Gorzkowsky, had given his assent, until which time there would be a ceasefire and no troop movements. As a guarantee, two representatives of the Republic of San Marino and two of Garibaldi’s top officers must go to Rimini as hostages.

  Reading through the terms, Garibaldi observed to Captain Regent Belzoppi that he had not asked him to negotiate on his personal behalf, only on behalf of his men. He had no intention of leaving Italy. It was humiliating, he pointed out, that only one side should be asked to provide hostages. And unacceptable that his men, once disarmed, should be obliged to submit to an Austrian escort. After thanking the captain profusely for his efforts, he asked for a clean copy to be made so that he could discuss the terms with his officers.

  There is only one other example of the General’s handwriting in the exhibition: three lines on a thin strip of paper. Written in sharp pencil, without hesitation or second thoughts, nor any indication of time, date, place, or person addressed, it says:

  The conditions imposed on you by the

  Austrians are unacceptable and therefore

  we are leaving the territory.

  Yours. G. Garibaldi.

  How curious that ‘you’ is! As if the guest were seeking to save his host from embarrassment.

  Leaving the museum, we drifted back to the Simoncini café, barely fifty yards away. Perhaps we could eat there, lasagne or no lasagne. But the place was full. No doubt that note from Garibaldi had been written on one of the tables in there, late in the evening. The problem, all the General’s officers agreed when they got together to decide their fate, was Gorzkowsky. A Polish aristocrat now in his seventies, the military governor of the region was entirely committed to the empire. Italian patriotism directly challenged his own decision not to support Polish independence. Leading the Austrian invasion of the Papal States in 1848, Gorzkowsky had been
personally responsible for the heavy shelling of both Bologna and Ancona. Hoffstetter in particular argued vehemently that the governor would never agree to Hahne’s lenient terms. It was a trick. The Austrians were deploying more troops by the hour.

  Trick or not, Hoffstetter was right.

  From General Gorzkowsky in Bologna to Field Marshal Radetzky in Monza

  This very moment I have received a communication from Major General Hahne dated Rimini, 1 August, two in the morning, according to which the whole Garibaldi mob is now in the territory of San Marino.

  In relation to these rebels, Major General Hahne, acting against my advice, has undertaken a negotiation with the Republic which is protecting this infamous band.

  Your Excellency will be so good as to peruse the terms and conditions attached.

  To resolve this question quickly and effectively I am leaving this minute for Rimini by stagecoach.

  To give more power to my Diktat – a demand for total and unconditional surrender of all this horde – I have ordered the following troops to follow by forced marches under the command of Colonel Count Creneville:

  The Creneville battalion of grenadiers

  5 companies

  ½ cavalry squadron

  1 horse-drawn battery

  ¼ rocket battery

  1, 4-horse cart and 5, 2-horse carts with munitions

  The Marziani battalion of grenadiers

  2 Romanian companies

  ½ cavalry squadron

  2 mortars

  1 howitzer battery

  If Garibaldi does not bow to my conditions, I am determined to invade that miniscule Republic with force of arms.

  Hahne felt the situation should be defused, and Garibaldi consequently diminished, whereas Gorzkowsky wanted blood. In the café, on the afternoon of 31 July, Hoffstetter and others felt sure that the governor’s real intention was to capture and perhaps execute the General himself. ‘As one man,’ Ruggeri writes, ‘the officers rejected the terms. ‘Onward,’ they said. ‘Let’s break through their lines, fighting if necessary. Then to Venice!’

  *

  We could not summon up any interest in San Marino’s other museums. Walking past the now familiar pottery from centuries past, the interminable coins and medals, the religious relics and second-rate paintings, the only question for discussion was Garibaldi’s decision. How can one not be fascinated by the psychology of decision-making? We remembered times when we had had to decide whether to leave the university, or to leave a partner, take this job or that. How hard it is. And here hundreds of lives were at stake.

  After grabbing a sandwich, we walked down to the convent of the Cappuccini again. Lorenzo Simoncini had gone there personally to fetch Anita and take her to his café. She was ashen and finding it hard even to stand. In the convent grounds the men were recovering from their heroic efforts. They were anxious that the Austrian forces had moved closer. Some were crying. Many angry. ‘How did they react the following morning,’ Eleonora asked, ‘when they heard that Garibaldi was gone?’

  ‘We’ll discuss that tomorrow,’ I said. Already I felt eager to be walking again. It was a sort of hunger.

  ‘You don’t have a sore tendon,’ Eleonora pointed out.

  Retiring to our hotel room to escape from the sun, we went through the photographs we’d taken of the display cases in the Garibaldi exhibition. It was another lucky moment. Eleonora pointed to something we hadn’t noticed during the visit: a rather childish-looking home-made album with a typewritten label. It was displayed among other books and half obscured by the butt of a rifle laid across its cover. Zooming in on the photo, we managed to read a few words, written with a manual typewriter on a white label. ‘Gino Zani, BADARLON SPEAKS.’ I vaguely remembered having seen the name Zani, but who was Badarlon? Idly, I typed the names in Google. A website came up at once. For the next hour we were riveted. Written in 1949, this was material neither Trevelyan or Belluzzi had seen.

  ‘Feel like going for a walk?’

  Francesco della Balda, the man who had taken Ugo Bassi’s message to Garibaldi on Monte San Paolo, addressed these words to Badarlon around 6 p.m. on 31 July. ‘Badarlon’ – meaning simpleton hunk – was the ironic nickname of Nicola Zani, a hemp curer with a second job: he would take groups of young refugees from Lombardy and the Veneto, men fleeing conscription into the Austrian army, and guide them all the way to Rome, after which they went on to Naples and safety.

  ‘I guessed at once what I was being asked to do,’ Badarlon later remembered. The man reporting his words was his grandson Gino Zani, who wrote the story down in his own old age. And the man who put it all online in 2007, the second centenary of Garibaldi’s birth, was another Nicola Zani, Gino’s grandson.

  Badarlon was twenty-six. He was drinking in Simoncini’s café, a meeting point for liberals, when his friend Della Balda took him upstairs. ‘Garibaldi got to his feet. When he heard I was to be the guide, he looked me over from head to toe. His eyes were steel. All the other officers looked on in silence. I was so flustered no words would come. Anita smiled.’ Cesenatico was the destination. By tomorrow. They would have to get through the Austrian lines. ‘Of course I was afraid!’ Badarlon told his grandson.

  Garibaldi asked the guide how much he wanted. He was always up front about money. He offered four scudi. But Badarlon suspected the General had even less money than he did and refused. ‘In any event, I realized my friends had chosen me because, being a citizen of the Papal States, not San Marino, if I was captured, no responsibility would fall on the republic. Very smart.’

  Formalities over, Badarlon made to go home, to prepare for the long hike.

  ‘You’re not leaving here now,’ Garibaldi said sharply.

  ‘But my passport’s at home.’

  ‘You don’t need a passport with me.’

  Since he was unable to say goodbye to his wife, she was brought to the café, briefly, with their young son Pio. The Pope’s name. She just had time to notice that Anita was in a desperate state. ‘Swollen up, and dressed like a man, like the other rough women who followed the garibaldini.’ But Anita stroked Pio’s blonde curls and smiled at the boy.

  Confined in the room the whole evening, Badarlon understood very little. The officers spoke in different dialects, foreign languages. There was a lot of cigar smoke. ‘I did realize that Anita kept trying to persuade Garibaldi to disguise himself.’ Garibaldi refused. Leading armed men, he must be dressed as a soldier. Anita asked Simoncini’s wife for a peasant’s dress for herself. ‘To set an example,’ Badarlon thought. Ciceruacchio turned up with his son Lorenzo. And we discover that Ciceruacchio wore two gold earrings, ‘like a woman’. The general gathered a number of documents on the window sill and set light to them. Then they ate. ‘No one spoke, they were all anxious.’ A lieutenant of the San Marino army came and told them the gate would be opened at eleven. Collusion. Now Braschi, Belzoppi’s messenger, arrived bringing a paper. ‘The General read it, then said to everyone: “If you want to come with me, come. A good republican never gives in!”’

  You have to wonder what was in that paper, coming directly from the republic’s head of state. No other account of the story mentions it.

  ‘After so many years,’ writes Gino Zani in 1949, ‘my grandparents’ memory may have betrayed them over this or that detail. Mine too. If any of this is incorrect, I beg pardon of the historians and invite them to put it right.’

  ‘Funny the guide’s wife mentioned other women,’ Eleonora remarks.

  We’re eating in a restaurant just outside the walls. In the open air. Which is finally beginning to cool.

  ‘Belluzzi mentions a woman whose husband had been killed in the siege in Rome and who marched with the column as far as Terni, where she lived. And another woman, in Cetona, weeping because her lover had been killed. Also in Cetona, the archives mention Colonel Rulli and his wife making a request for clothes. Not a word otherwise. Nothing in Hoffstetter, nothing in Ruggeri.’

  ‘Men ju
st don’t care.’

  But the question bothering me is this: did Garibaldi betray his men, abandoning them in the night? Was it a disloyal thing to do?

  Eleonora reflects. ‘He had disbanded them, hadn’t he? He’d freed them from their oath.’

  ‘According to Hoffstetter, he was furious about their behaviour under attack. Said he didn’t want to have anything more to do with this rabble.’

  ‘Words spoken in the heat of the moment.’

  ‘You’re very pro-Garibaldi today!’

  Eleonora laughs. It’s unusual, she says, seeing me less than enthusiastic. I admit that to me it does seem a moral issue, leaving these men to their fate without so much as a goodbye, the very ones who hadn’t deserted.

  Over a carafe of house wine we talk through the various scenarios that would have been on offer in the Simoncini café 170 years ago.

  ‘If Garibaldi had stayed and they all surrendered, would that have improved the men’s situation?’ Eleonora asks.

  ‘It’s hard to see how. And if he had stayed and they decided to fight, they’d most likely have been massacred.’

  Only at this point did the obvious occur to me. Without Garibaldi, the men were infinitely less dangerous. The Austrians could perhaps afford to honour their preliminary agreement. At least with regard to the rank and file.

  ‘There you are,’ Eleonora says. ‘Whereas if he’d stayed and surrendered, he’d have been handing a huge propaganda coup to the enemy. Without gaining anything for the faithful.’