Part 16

Yet, with all these obstacles the campaign started at Como with much of the old spirit. Again the veterans of 1859 and 1860, many of the famous Thousand, many who had fought at Messala and on the Volturno, gathered, clad in red shirts, on the banks of Lake Como, and raised the Garibaldi hymn. Scores of enthusiastic Englishmen could not keep away from the Lakes, an Englishwoman and her husband followed the general all through the campaign, carrying a cooking-stove and store of provisions for their idol. But notwithstanding all the enthusiasm the efforts to dislodge the enemy were not very successful. The Austrians were not as easily frightened or defeated as had been the soldiers of the King of Naples, and the people of the Tyrol did not rise and join Garibaldi's ranks as had the Sicilians and Calabrians. The commissariat service was wretched, time and again the troops bivouacked without shelter or food, conflicting orders were given, and but for their remarkable light-heartedness and faith in their general the men would have been in very bad shape for any manner of combat. On the first day of real fighting, at Rocca d'Anfo, Garibaldi was wounded in the thigh, and after that had to direct operations from a carriage. Nevertheless, he lost nothing of his confidence, and planned his successive moves through the mountains and lakes with his old skill in this form of irregular warfare.

The actual military operations were of no permanent importance, the volunteers were sent down the beautiful Lake of Como to Lecco accompanied by a fleet of private boats filled with admiring friends. From Lecco they went to Bergamo and thence to Brescia, and then for a time their headquarters were at Salò, on the Lake of Garda. An eye-witness contrasts their informal style of marching with that of the regulars: "Some of them were lying at full length on bullock wagons, with their rifles decorated with roses at their sides, others were trudging sturdily along in the loosest manner, smoking, with their shirts open, and their rugs rolled across their bodies."

When Garibaldi had completed his plans for marching north he received word from General La Marmora to take Lonato, and turned there from Salò. The Austrians withdrew before the Italian advance, and the latter army was free to enter the Trentino. Their first step in this direction was to take the rocky fort of Rocca d'Anfo, and after that they marched on Darzo, which was the scene of much fighting, and then on to the fort of Ampola. On July 16 the volunteers dragged their cannon into position on the mountains, and on the 17th the real attack began. Ampola capitulated, and the march to Riva began through the Ledro valley. At a village near Bizecca they were attacked early in the morning. The Austrians opened fire from the village houses. Chiassi, one of Garibaldi's veterans, was killed, and for a time the volunteers made little headway. Garibaldi's two sons and his son-in-law Canzio did their utmost to encourage the men behind them, and gradually what had threatened to be a rout was turned into a victory. Bizecca was immediately captured, and the troops had started their march to Lardaro when news came that an armistice was being arranged, and orders were brought to Garibaldi bidding him leave the Trentino.

The Italian army had met with a reverse at the battle of Custozza, but fortunately their Prussian allies had already won the two great victories of Königgratz and Sadowa and were in a position to dictate terms to Austria. The oft-fought-over Venetian provinces became at last part of the kingdom of Italy. Venice was added to her sister cities, which now only lacked Rome. The Tyrol, however, was left with Austria, and so Garibaldi viewed the peace with disappointment. He was confident that his volunteers could have won it, and found this another instance of the mistakes of statesmanship.

As after the expedition of the Thousand, so after the campaign in the Lakes, Garibaldi found that he could not rest quietly with Rome in Papal hands. Italy was bound by agreement with France to leave Pius IX. in temporary possession of the Eternal City, but Garibaldi cared little or nothing for his country's obligations. He showed in a hundred ways that he was unwilling that the kingdom should have rest or a chance to recuperate until the city on the Tiber was won, and so again in 1867, as in 1862, he became a tremendously difficult problem to the government, the seat of which had been moved from Turin to Florence, and of which Rattazzi was again the head.

As soon as the French left Rome a number of revolutionary societies commenced operations in that city, and Garibaldi was asked to act in conjunction with them. He made an electioneering tour in the spring of 1867, and was received at Venice, at Verona, and at Legnano with a veneration that partook of religious awe. He was elected deputy in the new Parliament from four districts. He next appeared at the meeting of the Universal Peace Congress at Geneva, and spoke against the priesthood, denouncing the Papacy with his accustomed ardor. He then returned to Italy and in a fiery speech at the Villa Cairoli called on his countrymen to march on Rome. He started for the Papal frontier, and the volunteers collected about him so rapidly that Rattazzi was again obliged to arrange for his arrest. At Sinalunga he was taken prisoner, and conveyed to Alessandria, and there arrangements were made to take him to his home at Caprera and keep him virtually imprisoned there. Unfortunately Garibaldi could not be kept quiet; even when his island was guarded by four steamers and a frigate he managed to send appeals to the mainland and keep the revolutionary party alert. Other leaders were attacking Rome by now, Nicotera was advancing from Naples, Menotti Garibaldi was waging guerilla warfare near Tivoli, the brothers Cairoli--name famous in Italian annals--made their daring attack at the Vigna Glori. Pius IX. and his Secretary of State, Cardinal Antonelli, were not having a pleasant time in Rome. Barracks were blown up, bombs were discovered, petitions were presented from his subjects urging him to call in the army of Victor Emmanuel.

Meanwhile Garibaldi planned and executed his daring escape from Caprera. He pretended to be ill, and then one dark night set off in a small boat for Sardinia. He lay hidden until he could get horses to take him to Porta Prudenza, and from there sailed with his son-in-law Canzio to the mainland. A day or two later he was brazenly haranguing the people from the Loggia dei Lanzi in Florence. The government learned that they could not control him, and now concluded to repeat the tactics of Aspromonte, and allow him to bring about his own destruction.

At Terni Garibaldi began active campaigning. He met his troops, and planned an immediate attack on the town of Monte Rotondo, which crowns a hill overlooking the Tiber and the roads to Rome. The hill town was hotly defended, but the volunteers finally took it. From there, after a short stay, Garibaldi moved his army, now numbering 15,000 men, on towards the Ponte della Mentana, some four and a half miles from Rome. It is said that an agreement had been made by which the Papal governor of the castle of St. Angelo was to surrender his post for a sum of money, and that this sum was raised by Garibaldi's English friends, but through treachery was not properly used. This occasioned some delay, and by that time French troops had been landed and were marching to the aid of their allies, the Papal guards.

The general was obliged to retreat temporarily to Monte Rotondo, and there he issued a public address. He relied on the fact that the Roman Republic of 1849 had made him a Roman general. After rehearsing the facts of the Italian government's position he said, "Then will I let the world know that I alone, a Roman general, with full power, elected by the universal suffrage of the only legal government in Rome, the Republic, have the right to maintain myself armed in this, the territory under my jurisdiction; and then if these my volunteers, champions of liberty and Italian unity, wish to have Rome as the capital of Italy, fulfilling the vote of Parliament and of the nation, they must not put down their arms until Italy shall have acquired liberty of conscience and worship, built upon the ruin of Jesuitism, and until the soldiers of tyrants shall be banished from our land."

The French had now joined the Papal army, and the Italian troops were massing in Garibaldi's rear. On November 3 he started towards Tivoli, but had to fall back on Mentana, and there occurred the battle which decided the fate of the expedition. The volunteers fought with the greatest courage and enthusiasm, but their arms were no match for the new chassepots of the French. Garibaldi had to fall back on Monte Rotondo, and there, on discovering that his men had scarcely a cartridge left, he was forced to order a further retreat. The expedition was at an end, the volunteers were disbanded, and Garibaldi took train to Florence. There he was arrested and conveyed a prisoner to the fort of Varignano.

The battle of Mentana had cost many Italian lives. Victor Emmanuel was deeply grieved and had a message sent to the French Emperor: "The last events have suffocated every remembrance of gratitude in the heart of Italy. It is no longer in the power of the government to maintain an alliance with France, the chassepot gun at Mentana has given it a fatal blow." The battle therefore had the result of severing the tacit alliance between Italy and France, and henceforth the problem of Roman occupation became simpler to the King's government.

In 1870 the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war compelled Napoleon to defend his own borders, and no longer to support a Papal government in a foreign land. When the French and Germans were fighting the question of the temporal power of the Church was quietly settled, with almost no fighting and little outside attention, by the entrance of the King of Italy into Rome. At last Italy was united. Garibaldi had nothing to do with this final occupation, for which he had laid plans since his early South American days.

When Napoleon was eliminated from French politics Garibaldi could no longer restrain his ardor for the republican government. He took sword, and left Caprera to volunteer for service with France. He was given command of the army of the Vosges, and his campaign against the Prussians at Autun and Dijon was at least as successful as that of the regular French generals. The Prussians were too strong, the Army of the East gave way before them, and Garibaldi's brief campaign was at an end. After the peace he was elected deputy from Paris, Dijon, and Nice, but was not allowed to sit in the Assembly on the ground that he was a foreigner. He received the official thanks of the French government and returned home.

There remained a somewhat turbulent old age for Garibaldi. Italy was united and rapidly growing stronger under the happy influence of continued peace. Garibaldi, however, could not remain quiet, and when he appeared in public he was publicly worshiped and privately feared. He became more and more ardently a republican as time went on, and his republicanism was only too apt to take the color of the last man with whom he had talked. He was not an able original thinker, and except in military manoeuvers had always been too much inclined to lean on the advice of others.

In the elections of 1874 the general was chosen by several districts, among others the city of Rome, to sit in the Senate. He made a triumphal progress from Caprera to the capital, and when he was sworn in as a Senator the members forgot all past and present difficulties and cheered to the echo the man who had led the Thousand from Genoa to Naples. He went to the Quirinal to see the King, a sovereign whom he had ardently admired since the time when he had first seen him in battle. A little later we find him a member of a committee with the King and Prince Torlonia to divert the course of the Tiber and improve the Campagna.

Meanwhile at Caprera Francesca, the devoted woman who had first gone there to nurse Garibaldi's daughter, had taken Anita's position, and become the mother of the general's youngest children, Manlio and Clelia. In 1880 the Court of Appeal at Rome declared Garibaldi's marriage to Giuseppina Raymondi, the adventuress who had taken advantage of him long before, null and void. Fortunately the marriage had been contracted under Austrian and not Italian jurisdiction. Had it been otherwise the annulment would not have been allowed. Immediately on receipt of the news Garibaldi and Francesca were married. At Caprera Garibaldi lived like an island prince, continually receiving visits and presents from admirers of all nations.

Yet, for all his domestic happiness, the old warrior would mix in public affairs, and almost always as an opponent of the existing government. Even when his old friend and comrade-in-arms, Benedetto Cairoli, fourth of the famous brothers, became Prime Minister, he was not content with his policies. He embarrassed the government by continually writing ultra-radical letters to the newspapers. Two or three times more he appeared in public, became again an active figure when his son-in-law Canzio was arrested at a turbulent meeting in Genoa, and resigned his seat in the National Chambers. He was, however, too worn out physically to make further dangerous expeditions, and was persuaded to leave the more active part to younger men. In 1882 he died at Caprera.

Neither the character nor the achievements of Garibaldi are difficult to estimate. His character was simple, he was ingenuously frank and open-minded, absolutely sincere, warm-hearted, and forgiving to a fault. His whole career is filled with instances in which his generosity was traded on, notably the case of his second marriage. He was always frugal, unostentatious, unselfish, never did a breath of public scandal sully his name. Although he had many opportunities to gain wealth he was always poor. During the last days of his life he enjoyed a pension from the government, but the most of that was given to his children or dispensed in charity.

Given this true, straightforward nature, we find that from his boyhood he had above everything desired a free united Italy, with Rome as its capital. The name Rome never failed to thrill him. So long as the master-hand of Cavour was ready to guide him Garibaldi proceeded gloriously forward, the crusader who could lead men into battle and fill them with a great enthusiasm. Cavour could fight against the Mazzinian theories of a republic, he had to fight hard to keep the soldier in the straight path, particularly in those early days in Naples, but he succeeded, and saw Garibaldi proudly deliver Naples and Sicily into the care of his King. How great was Cavour's steering hand we find in later years; without that powerful mind to control him, Garibaldi fell under the influence of many different types of men, and his simple confiding nature found it easy to trust each seeming friend in turn. The very virtue of his nature acted against him then, he became a tool for men to use, his great name a flag for any new quixotic idea. It was only when he was fighting that he was his own commander, at other times he was ever ready to sink his own opinions in those of others. The latter part of his life was therefore continually stormy, he had not the art to weather varying changes in national sentiment.

Almost as easy to estimate as his character were his achievements. They were superlatively great for Italy. Nobody can tell whether Cavour's diplomacy alone would ever have won the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Garibaldi started from Genoa on an expedition that seemed doomed to disaster, but which, successfully begun, carried all opposition before it. It is true that the army of Francis II. was poor, and that the battles, with the exception of Calatafimi in Sicily, are not to be classed as great conflicts, but Garibaldi did much more than win battles, he roused the people to a pitch of fighting spirit they had never known before. The fame of the Thousand spread across Europe, and with it rose European admiration and interest in the Italian cause. Foreigners joined his army, and when the great general met Victor Emmanuel and gave over the two crowns he had won the eyes of the whole world were focused on the sovereign and the hero. The glory of that expedition could not fade, whatever Garibaldi did later could not efface the memory of those great days; even the governments that found him rebelling against the laws and treaties they had made could not but thrill at the recollection of the days of 1860 and 1861. The red shirt became an oriflamme to lovers of liberty in all lands, the Garibaldian hymn set hearts to dancing with pride and exultation, the simple soldier with his dramatic effects of life and bearing became an Italian national hero with all the mythical charm of a Cid Campeador or a William Tell. He will take a place in Italian legendary history that was empty until his day.

This atmosphere of romance that surrounded him was of his nature. He wrote two books, one, "The Rule of the Monk," which appeared after his imprisonment at Varignano, the other, "The Thousand," after the Vosges campaign. They were both extravagant, artificial, as wildly eventful as any novels ever penned. Yet in a sense they catch the flavor of his own career. When he describes the monks he pictures them as they actually seemed to him, agents of the power which had so hounded him after the siege of Rome, and which had executed his friend Ugo Bassi. When he writes of "The Thousand" he shows his followers as men capable of any heroism, and the expedition becomes one series of marvellous adventures. He saw that intensely dramatic side of the struggle, and he became the symbol of that dramatic element in the eyes of the world. His country needed that symbol, the glory of a crusader was as essential to Italian redemption as the soul-stirring fanaticism of a Mazzini, the statecraft of a Cavour, or the kingship of a Victor Emmanuel. He was the living personification of the great fight for liberty; that was his contribution to the cause.

VICTOR EMMANUEL, THE KING

Few royal families in Europe possess as proud a record as the House of Savoy. Legend carries their race as Princes back to 998, when an exiled noble of Saxon birth settled in Burgundy, and ultimately built a family stronghold at the pass of Moriana on the frontier of Savoy. This prince was known as Humbert of the White Hand. He was followed by a series of fighting, ambitious, able descendants, who gradually carved for themselves the Dukedom of Savoy, and married into the most powerful of contemporary royal families. Their small state was so centrally placed that it early became a storm-center, and for centuries the Dukes were famous as warrior-adventurers, fighting now under the banner of the Empire, now under that of Spain or of France. Happily the Dukes of Savoy shared little of the tyrannical natures of their neighbors, they were not altogether saintly, but they were surprisingly merciful and just in an age famous for cruel bigotry. Emmanuel Philibert, better known as "Testa di Ferro," or "Head of Iron," one of the most popular of Piedmont's heroes, became a great favorite with the Emperor Charles V., was a general of renown, and secured firm possession of his Savoy lands. From his time the position of the family became more assured.

In 1703, Victor Amadeus, fifteenth Duke of Savoy, assumed the title of King of Sicily, as a result of a treaty following his defense of Turin and overturning of the Bourbon power in Italy. Shortly thereafter Sicily was exchanged for Sardinia and certain territories adjoining his frontiers, and the title of the head of the house of Savoy became King of Sardinia.

Victor Emmanuel I. of Sardinia, who succeeded his brother Charles Emmanuel IV., was a brave, thoroughly good-hearted man, whose nature was, however, absolutely mediæval. He was much under the influence of Austria, to whose Emperor he had given a promise that he would never grant his people a free constitution. He finally abdicated in favor of his brother Charles Felix, a man of a much narrower nature, who did all in his power to check the free-thinking sentiments rapidly spreading through his people as a result of the Revolution in France. When he died in 1831 the elder branch of the House of Savoy came to an end, but fortunately there was a distantly related younger branch, known as the Princes of Carignano and Savoy. The seventh Prince of this line, Charles Albert, born in 1798, had married a daughter of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, and had been a great favorite with Victor Emmanuel I. On the death of that King he had acted for a short time as regent for Charles Felix, and had then served in the war between France and Spain, winning a great reputation for bravery. When Charles Felix died he succeeded him as King of Sardinia in 1831.

Charles Albert was one of the most interesting characters of the early Nineteenth Century, a man of the noblest character, burning with the desire to free Italy from the foreigner, but always suspicious that he was not the man to do it. This suspicion was continually played upon by the clerical party at the court of Turin, and with the result that the King, as firm a Roman Catholic as his ancestors, and by nature devout almost to mysticism, was the continual battle-field of the warring sentiments of love of liberty and love of the Church. During the reign of Victor Emmanuel I. the liberal party in Piedmont looked upon Charles Albert as their natural leader. He often spoke of his desire to see Italy united, and made little concealment of his hostility to Austria and the Bourbon princes. Yet, when he was actually invited to lead the Piedmont "Federates" as they were called, whose object was simply the confederation of Italy, he could not make up his mind to accept. As Santa Rosa, the leader of the party, said, "He both would, and would not."

Victor Emmanuel I., bound by his promise to the house of Austria, had yet seen that his people were bent on reforms, and rather than break his word and grant a constitution he had abdicated in favor of Charles Felix. Immediately the liberals had besieged the regent, Charles Albert, with petitions and a show of force which could not be denied. He had then proclaimed the constitution, accompanying it with this declaration: "Our respect and submission to his majesty Charles Felix, to whom the throne belongs, would have hindered us making any fundamental change in the laws of the realm until the sovereign's intentions were known; but as the force of circumstances is manifest, and we desire to render to the new King his people safe, uninjured, and happy, and not in a civil war, having maturely considered everything, and with the advice of our council, we have decided, in the hope that his majesty, moved by the same considerations, will give his approval, that the constitution of Spain shall be promulgated."

But Charles Felix, when he came to Turin, would have none of this constitution, and Charles Albert left Piedmont under the shadow of his kinsman's displeasure. When a few years later he himself ascended the throne the popular idea of him as an advocate of liberalism was still current, and it was this idea which led Mazzini to write to the new sovereign that remarkable letter on behalf of "Young Italy," commencing, "All Italy waits for one word--one only--to make herself yours." But Charles Albert was at that crucial moment under priestly influence, and he paid no heed to the letter, as a result of which the growing Mazzinian party, which might have been attached to the interests of the House of Savoy, became strongly republican.