by Lucy Riall
Can you obtain Mercy, can you be forgiven, can you repent, can you humble yourself in dust and ashes. Can tears run down like a river before God. Can you lift up your eyes to Christ … Sir, you have sent many down to death … You Sir are grievously sinning against God, against men and against your own Soul … Sir tremble at his Majesty – go not forth again with the Sword of war.44
Parliament
Garibaldi's remarkable stature in this period, and the strong public reaction to him, are worth stressing because they masked less happy political developments and, to an extent, prevented serious discussion of them. During 1861, divisions began to open up in the democratic movement, as activists took stock of the new political situation. In particular, they had to respond to the extension of a parliamentary system throughout almost the whole Italian peninsula, and to reconsider their policy on revolutionary action. Alessandro Galante Garrone has identified three main currents which emerged within the democratic left immediately after unification: the first, led by the Tuscan democrat, Antonio Mordini, which concentrated entirely on parliamentary activity; a second led by Francesco Crispi, who insisted that ‘we must remain within the law’45 but also pursued extraparliamentary agitation and associations; and a third, more ‘extreme’ left, headed by Bertani, which, while not excluding parliamentary action (and thus disagreeing with Mazzini), remained fully committed to the idea of revolution in Italy. Garibaldi leaned mostly towards Bertani's line, and even grew closer to Mazzini in these months, but part of his leadership in 1860 – Medici, Bixio, Türr and Sirtori – moved towards a compromise with the Piedmontese government, and accepted positions in the Piedmontese army. Garibaldi himself continued to believe that King Vittorio Emanuele could in some way lead the revolution.46 Effectively, therefore, the democrats lacked a clear policy or an agreed single response to the achievement of national unification; or as Garibaldi wrote to Mazzini: ‘In terms of projects – I have none. I limit myself to gathering the means.’47 Cavour was less charitable, writing (in late September 1860) to one close colleague that ‘Garibaldi has not a single clear political idea’. Yet Garibaldi's prestige meant that these problems were rarely discussed openly, and that members of the left felt obliged publicly (if not privately) to unite behind him.48
The confusion in the democratic camp gave Cavour a great advantage. In the first elections following the October plebiscites in January 1861, government candidates won a major victory, while leading democrats were defeated. At the same time, Cavour and his allies began to move against the garibaldini in southern Italy, determined both to oust them from their positions in government and administration and to prevent Garibaldi's volunteer army from being incorporated into the Piedmontese military.49 Particularly ruthless was the decision, planned and put through by General Fanti, essentially to liquidate Garibaldi's army. By a decree of 16 November 1860, all his officers and soldiers had to pass before a special commission, and this commission excluded huge numbers of them, notably all foreign volunteers (apart from a few Hungarian officers) and the volunteers from southern Italy.50 In January 1861, the national guards in southern Italy were also disbanded and replaced with the much more elitist Piedmontese model.51 By the spring of 1861, it was clear that very few of Garibaldi's officers or soldiers had been transferred into the regular army and, in April, new regulations were introduced putting an absolute limit on the numbers that could be admitted.
However, the action against the democrats in the South was a disastrous mistake. It removed a relatively sound basis of political support and material force for the government, and created in its place a large pool of disaffected, displaced young men, to add to the security problems of crime and brigandage and to create a series of political threats (reaction and republicanism) in southern Italy.52 The mistake was even recognised by the king who, unlike Cavour, had seen the enthusiasm of the volunteers in Naples and wrote that their dissolution was ‘bringing with it a great hatred … has done grave damage, and may yet do more’.53 Its more immediate effect was to infuriate Garibaldi. He decided to leave Caprera in early April and travel to the new capital of Italy, Turin, to take his seat in parliament and there protest publicly against the treatment of his volunteers and oppose the measures for the national guards. He wrote a letter to Urbano Rattazzi, the president of the Chamber of Deputies, in which he decried ‘[t]he deplorable conditions in southern Italy and the unjust abandonment of my brave companions-at-arms’ and expressed his distaste ‘towards those who are the cause of so much disorder and injustice’. The letter was widely publicised: it was read out by Rattazzi in parliament and published in Il Diritto.54
Garibaldi followed the letter up by his first public appearance since his departure from Naples in November 1860, this time at the parliament in Turin. His appearance was delayed by a few days due to an attack of rheumatism, during which Garibaldi added to general speculation by refusing to speak to members of the press (although he did find time to seduce two British women, who subsequently wrote him letters filled with passionate personal and political prose).55 His arrival at parliament on 18 April caused enormous media and public interest: ‘such a multitude as I never saw assembled at this place … an unusual swarming, even in the square before the Palace and the adjoining streets’, the Times correspondent commented.56 Garibaldi entered the chamber to the wild applause of a packed gallery (full of women, according to one account) but to the ‘cold silence’ of most of the deputies, and he took his seat on the extreme left. His political attitude was expressed clearly in his clothes. Instead of wearing a suit like all the other politicians (as he had done in parliament during the previous session), he had put on what one French diplomat called ‘his usual dress, his immortal red shirt with a grey overmantle … [which] made him look like a prophet – or, if you prefer, like an old vaudeville actor’.57 His appearance was obviously theatrical and intended to mark his political distance from parliamentary proceedings. If there had been any doubt about his meaning, it was dispelled by his speech. He began slowly and fumblingly, only to launch swiftly into a tirade against Cavour. First rejecting any hope of reconciliation with a man ‘who has made me a stranger in Italy’ (both a specific reference to the cession of Nice, and a wider appeal to a standard Risorgimento trope),58 he then caused uproar in the chamber by accusing Cavour of provoking a ‘fratricidal war’ in his treatment of the volunteers.59 He repeated the accusation, at which point, in the words of the Times correspondent: ‘the din of voices became terrific … The mêlée in the centre of the hall … was truly appalling. In the midst of it all Crispi was seen bawling, gesticulating like a maniac. Chaos reigned for 15 or 20 minutes.’60
The political fallout from Garibaldi's speech was considerable. Widely reported in the press, it made public and visible, almost for the first time, the real disagreement about Italy's future which divided Garibaldi and his followers from the moderate liberals. The parliamentary debate which followed was less violent than Garibaldi's opening salvo, but, in the discussions of the treatment of his volunteers in 1859 and his management of the campaign of 1860, the depth of bitterness and contempt on both sides was plainly revealed. At the time, Nino Bixio tried to cover up the cracks by telling the chamber that ‘Garibaldi's words should not be taken too literally or be given the same weight as if they were written’, but he seems to have convinced no one.61 Moreover, the dispute continued in the press. Two days after these events, General Cialdini wrote a public letter to Garibaldi – ‘You are not the man I thought you were’ – criticising his attitude to the king and his ‘outlandish costume’ and stating that the Piedmontese army had saved his volunteers at the Volturno.62 Garibaldi, of course, replied in print defending his military and political conduct (and adding, ‘[a]s for my way of dressing I will continue to wear [those clothes] until I am told that I am no longer in a free country where anyone can dress as they please’), and his letter was published in Il Diritto, L'Unità Italiana, La Nuova Europa and Il Popolo d'Italia. The quarrel was halted only by a me
eting between the main protagonists, brokered by the king but, at the meeting, ‘I did not shake Cavour's hand or seek a reconciliation’, Garibaldi confirmed to his secretary, Guerzoni.63
This particular episode was brought to a close by Cavour's sudden death of a fever in early June, but the clash between Cavour and Garibaldi had a long-term significance. First, it offered vivid evidence of a substantive struggle for power between moderates and democrats, which focused on a central issue for the new Italy: control of the armed forces. Second, the public staging of the struggle – Garibaldi's theatrical appearance; the debate in parliament; and the detailed personal and political accusations – points us to the importance the antagonists placed on establishing and controlling the public memory of recent events. Finally, Garibaldi, and the left in general, came off rather the worse in the struggle. Garibaldi succeeded admirably in displaying his contempt for Cavour and the parliamentary hierarchy, but it is difficult to see what else he achieved. By late April, it was really too late to save his southern army; and Garibaldi himself seems to have recognised this fact by leaving the chamber before the crucial vote, and writing to Cavour some weeks later of the need once more for them to work together.64 Moreover, while Cavour won considerable praise and sympathy for his dignity during the parliamentary debate,65 nobody sought to defend Garibaldi's behaviour (as we saw, even Bixio told the deputies not to take him seriously; and Sir James Hudson, the British minister in Turin, called him a ‘wild amphibious creature’).66 Thus, while unquestionably spectacular, Garibaldi's first foray into Italian politics after national unification cannot be considered a success. It did little to solve the problems of leadership, organisational unity and policy-making which beset the radical movement as it confronted the changed circumstances of national unification.
Aspromonte
After the clash in parliament, Garibaldi returned to Caprera, and seems to have accepted that there would be no military action that summer. For a while, he considered going back to the United States, where civil war had broken out, and taking up a command in the Union army.67 There were rumours that he would lead an expedition to Montenegro; the Austrian government feared he would organise an uprising in Dalmatia to coincide with one in Hungary; and the French government heard that he was planning to land in Catalonia to provoke a revolution in Spain.68 However, the real initiative came much closer to home. In the course of 1861, Agostino Bertani worked furiously to bring together the various workers’ clubs, democratic committees and patriotic associations into a single, broadly based radical movement. ‘This’, as Bertani wrote to Crispi, ‘will give us freedom of action, put Garibaldi in his place, and allow us to direct him to wherever our fatherland needs him.’69 In December, these groups met in Genoa and agreed to form a single organisation: the Italian Freedom Association (Associazione Emancipatrice Italiana), which held its inaugural meeting in March 1862. Garibaldi attended as president, and he made the opening speech calling on the left to unite their forces (like the ‘Roman fasces’) and focus on Rome and Venice.70
This conference coincided with important shifts in government policy at Turin. King Vittorio Emanuele saw in Cavour's death an opportunity to involve himself more directly in politics and, as a result of his political machinations, a new government was formed in March 1862 by the king's ally, Urbano Rattazzi. The responsibility for what happened next was denied by the king and by Rattazzi. However, it seems likely that they both contacted Garibaldi in the hope of bypassing parliament and gaining a political advantage over their opponents. The king seemingly sought to involve Garibaldi in two different schemes for the Balkans: first, to attack Austria somewhere in Dalmatia as a means of gaining control of Venice; and second, to put pressure on Greece so that the government there would accept the king's second son as the country's new monarch. Rattazzi made a million lire available to Garibaldi for purposes which remained deliberately vague.71
Throughout this time, Garibaldi remained as popular as ever. He was inundated with letters from every group and every corner of Italy and abroad: by men and women offering their services, pleading with him to liberate Rome and Venice, sending him poems and gifts, and asking for his autograph or for permission to dedicate a book to him.72 Altogether, they testify to Garibaldi's continuing capacity to encourage multiple forms of political ambition and attract an intense sense of personal belonging. For example, a Spanish general, a veteran of the Peninsular war, wrote offering his ‘feeble services’ as a soldier (‘old officers are ever young, when the hour comes to do their duty’);73 while Victor Clément, a Parisian cobbler, wrote a poem to him as a fellow artisan (‘Leave futile joys to others, Garibaldi only needs truly useful things’).74 ‘Some women’ from Brandenburg saw in him a way of becoming public. They asked him for a piece of his red shirt so that they could match the colour and make shirts for themselves, and in this way ‘pay you homage in the face of the whole world, not just in an intimate way, but also in our external clothing’.75 A radical priest in Genoa sent Garibaldi his publications on popular education (for ‘both sexes to distribute also in the countryside’), and assured him that ‘in my small way with my voice and my pen, I will not cease being a priest of God and of the people’;76 and someone wrote from Livorno simply to tell him that Italy and the world were ready for his call: just the smallest sign would be enough to show that ‘the Lion of Caprera is returning … to the field of action … ’.77
It was in this mood of popular and political expectation that Garibaldi embarked on a government-sponsored tour of Lombardy. The aim of the tour was to promote the new rifle clubs (Società del tiro a segno); and, while royal control of these clubs was obvious from the start (Crown Prince Umberto was the president), Garibaldi saw in them the possibility of reviving his military idea of the nation-at-arms and of linking it to the new political initiative made by the democratic Freedom Association. The tour was a publicity triumph. It was the occasion for speeches and commemorations, for a celebrated meeting in Milan with the novelist, Alessandro Manzoni, and for huge public demonstrations in support of ‘Rome and Venice’.78 During all these events, Garibaldi used his personality to recruit men and raise money for Venice, as well as to promote the idea of the nation-at-arms to a very wide cross-section of the population. He personally sought to establish local clubs in every town and small village that he visited.79 Through his indefatigable correspondence, he tried to reach an even larger audience. In innumerable letters he encouraged the recruitment of peasants (‘[j]oin up, my good friends of the fields, most noble class of agricultural workers; come together in fraternal maniples’); accepted the presidency of workers’ clubs and local patriotic associations throughout Italy; welcomed priests; and sought to involve women's groups from all over Italy.80 The results reflect the tangible impact of Garibaldi's presence, and the continuing appeal of his name. Letters of support for the rifle clubs followed his route through the provinces of Bergamo, Brescia, Cremona and Parma. From the South and Sicily, letters of support also arrived from local governments and other groups anxious to identify themselves with this new initiative and the ‘already legendary figure of Garibaldi’.81
But this spectacle of patriotic unity was brought to an abrupt halt in early May. A group of volunteers, led by the garibaldino Francesco Nullo, was arrested by the Italian army at Sarnico on Lago d'Iseo, near the Austrian border. The government claimed that they had been preparing to attack Austria in the south Tyrol. A popular demonstration in favour of the arrested men took place in Brescia, but was broken up by the police, who fired on the crowd killing some of them. Garibaldi published a letter condemning the ‘massacre of Brescia’ in Il Diritto.82 Crispi and Rattazzi clashed dramatically in parliament. Crispi accused Rattazzi of inventing a plot for his ‘personal advantage’: Sarnico was ‘a fairy tale, a phantasmagoria, one of those dramatic incidents orchestrated by the government’ and designed to discredit Garibaldi.83 For the left, Sarnico raised again the dilemma of choosing between parliamentary action and revolution. All h
ope for Venice seemed lost, and Garibaldi took himself off to Caprera.
In Caprera, however, events took an entirely new turn. Towards the end of June, Garibaldi left Caprera, but this time he sailed south to Sicily, apparently once more with the support of the government.84 His plans at this stage were quite unclear: ‘yes … we will go to Palermo and there we will see’, he is said to have remarked to his companions as they approached the coast of Sicily.85 He was greeted by the prefect of Palermo, his old friend Giorgio Pallavicino Trivulzio, and was taken to the royal palace, where he was given the same rooms in the ‘pavilion’ above the Porta Nuova which he had used in 1860. The sense of unfinished business was palpable. To Crispi, Garibaldi wrote on 8 July: ‘things are going well, although I don't know what we will do next. In any case, we must get out of this mud, with the same programme and the right men.’86 A week later he wrote to the British journalist, James Stuart, asking him to raise a loan of £20,000 in England ‘for Rome’ (‘[i]n Italy this can't take place without compromising the secrecy which is necessary for my plans’).87 He wrote a series of letters to Masonic lodges asking for their help in taking Rome (‘[s]tupid and wicked are those who do not rush to the defence of their own mother’).88 And on 23 July, he wrote a lengthy address to ‘Roman women’ (published in Il Diritto and L'Unità Italiana) in which he told them: