Garibaldi
Giuseppe Maria Garibaldi (4 July 1807 – 2 June 1882) was an Italian general, patriot, revolutionary, and republican. He contributed to the Italian unification and the creation of the Kingdom of Italy. He is considered one of the greatest generals of modern times and one of Italy's "fathers of the fatherland", along with Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, Victor Emmanuel II of Italy and Giuseppe Mazzini. Garibaldi is also known as the "Hero of the Two Worlds" because of his military enterprises in South America and Europe.
Garibaldi was a follower of the Italian nationalist Mazzini and embraced the republican nationalism of the Young Italy movement. He became a supporter of Italian unification under a democratic republican government. However, breaking with Mazzini, he pragmatically allied himself with the monarchist Cavour and Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia in the struggle for independence, subordinating his republican ideals to his nationalist ones until Italy was unified. After participating in an uprising in Piedmont, he was sentenced to death, but escaped and sailed to South America, where he spent 14 years in exile, during which he took part in several wars and learnt the art of guerrilla warfare. In 1835 he joined the rebels known as the Ragamuffins (farrapos), in the Ragamuffin War in Brazil, and took up their cause of establishing the Riograndense Republic.
Garibaldi fought, womanised, and learnt the arts of a guerrilla leader on sea and land, in southern Brazil and Uruguay. He met Anita, the love of his life, who eloped as a teenager to join him in southern Brazil, bore him four children – two of whom became Italian generals and a daughter who married one – before dying a tragic death after the defeat of the Roman Republic.
His life in South America is the stuff of a wildly improbable film. He had gone to Rio de Janeiro because he had been sentenced to death after a failed mutiny in the kingdom of Piedmont and Sardinia. Brazil was then, improbably, an Empire though it was ruled by regents. There, as a convinced republican, he joined the cause of a breakaway republic in the south, initially as admiral of its tiny fleet.
Captured early on, he was tortured. He built ships, towing them overland with bullocks to reach the Atlantic. With Anita on board he had hair’s breadth escapes from death. At a land battle in Curitibanos he and Anita were split, she was taken prisoner, and she thought he was killed. When she could not find him among the corpses she escaped, riding through forests and rivers before finding him again.
In 1841 the couple, already with one small baby, went overland to Montevideo with 900 cattle given as a reward, which failed to survive the journey. There they were soon involved in another civil war, fighting for Montevideo against the forces of a former president, Oribe, who was backed by the Argentine despot, Rosas. Here Garibaldi raised an Italian Legion, from among the thousands of expats, mostly from the northern Italian states, threatened by the siege of Montevideo. Significantly he put them in red shirts, the uniform that was to become legendary. The shirts were originally destined for workers in a slaughterhouse in Buenos Aires, available and distinctive.
Garibaldi’s derring-do in the Uruguayan war made him known in Europe, where Britain and France sent naval forces to the aid of Montevideo, and their merchants besieged there. But he became disillusioned with politicking in Uruguay, he thought the situation in Italy was becoming more promising with the arrival of an apparently liberal Pope and a friendlier attitude by Carlo Alberto, the king of Piedmont and Sardinia. So in 1848, after sending Anita on ahead with their three surviving children, Garibaldi went home.
Garibaldi
Giuseppe Maria Garibaldi (4 July 1807 – 2 June 1882) was an Italian general, patriot, revolutionary, and republican. He contributed to the Italian unification and the creation of the Kingdom of Italy. He is considered one of the greatest generals of modern times and one of Italy's "fathers of the fatherland", along with Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, Victor Emmanuel II of Italy and Giuseppe Mazzini. Garibaldi is also known as the "Hero of the Two Worlds" because of his military enterprises in South America and Europe.
Garibaldi was a follower of the Italian nationalist Mazzini and embraced the republican nationalism of the Young Italy movement. He became a supporter of Italian unification under a democratic republican government. However, breaking with Mazzini, he pragmatically allied himself with the monarchist Cavour and Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia in the struggle for independence, subordinating his republican ideals to his nationalist ones until Italy was unified. After participating in an uprising in Piedmont, he was sentenced to death, but escaped and sailed to South America, where he spent 14 years in exile, during which he took part in several wars and learnt the art of guerrilla warfare. In 1835 he joined the rebels known as the Ragamuffins (farrapos), in the Ragamuffin War in Brazil, and took up their cause of establishing the Riograndense Republic.
Garibaldi fought, womanised, and learnt the arts of a guerrilla leader on sea and land, in southern Brazil and Uruguay. He met Anita, the love of his life, who eloped as a teenager to join him in southern Brazil, bore him four children – two of whom became Italian generals and a daughter who married one – before dying a tragic death after the defeat of the Roman Republic.
His life in South America is the stuff of a wildly improbable film. He had gone to Rio de Janeiro because he had been sentenced to death after a failed mutiny in the kingdom of Piedmont and Sardinia. Brazil was then, improbably, an Empire though it was ruled by regents. There, as a convinced republican, he joined the cause of a breakaway republic in the south, initially as admiral of its tiny fleet.
Captured early on, he was tortured. He built ships, towing them overland with bullocks to reach the Atlantic. With Anita on board he had hair’s breadth escapes from death. At a land battle in Curitibanos he and Anita were split, she was taken prisoner, and she thought he was killed. When she could not find him among the corpses she escaped, riding through forests and rivers before finding him again.
In 1841 the couple, already with one small baby, went overland to Montevideo with 900 cattle given as a reward, which failed to survive the journey. There they were soon involved in another civil war, fighting for Montevideo against the forces of a former president, Oribe, who was backed by the Argentine despot, Rosas. Here Garibaldi raised an Italian Legion, from among the thousands of expats, mostly from the northern Italian states, threatened by the siege of Montevideo. Significantly he put them in red shirts, the uniform that was to become legendary. The shirts were originally destined for workers in a slaughterhouse in Buenos Aires, available and distinctive.
Garibaldi’s derring-do in the Uruguayan war made him known in Europe, where Britain and France sent naval forces to the aid of Montevideo, and their merchants besieged there. But he became disillusioned with politicking in Uruguay, he thought the situation in Italy was becoming more promising with the arrival of an apparently liberal Pope and a friendlier attitude by Carlo Alberto, the king of Piedmont and Sardinia. So in 1848, after sending Anita on ahead with their three surviving children, Garibaldi went home.