by Tim Parks
‘Dangerous.’
We contemplate the great brick pile of the duomo and the old town hall with its battlements and tower. There is a rather grand sixteenth-century well with columns on each side supporting a stone lintel that bears the emblem of the Medici family. But it’s hard to get a sense of the space of the piazza. A team of men is putting up a stage in front of the duomo and erecting extensive scaffolding for seats opposite. The tourists must be entertained. The people milling on the flagstones are not locals.
The waiter brings our cedratas on a tray and asks for twelve euros.
‘Are we in Milan, or what?’ Eleonora asks.
In every café we’ve been in so far we’ve been trusted to pay when we leave, Italian style. The waiter apologizes but says too many people have run off without paying.
‘At these prices . . .’
Someone who tried to run off across this piazza 170 years ago was a senior judge notorious for his pro-Austrian sentiments and reactionary rulings. The people of Montepulciano were so excited to see Garibaldi’s patriots marching through their streets they decided to take the opportunity to lynch the man. He was caught. The General had to tear himself away from the ladies to prevent a murder. The judge, he decided, would be marched along with the hostage monks until he was far enough from his accusers to be safely released.
For how long, we wonder, did these traumatic events reverberate in the minds of those involved? Did anyone change their political opinions because of what happened that summer? Was the judge grateful to be spared? And what of the monks, whose fate hung in the balance? The Bishop of Chiusi had made it clear he wouldn’t release his prisoners whatever Garibaldi did to his hostages: their martyrdom would be an honour, and a huge propaganda coup for the Church. The General’s bluff had been called.
Struggling to choose a place for lunch, Eleonora introduces me to her lasagne theory. The dish originated in Bologna or maybe Naples. The two towns eternally contest the honour. But it is certainly not typical cuisine in other parts of Italy. ‘Yet notice,’ Eleonora points out, ‘how often it’s top of the list on the menus chalked outside the restaurants.’ It’s the dish international tourists know best. Her conclusion is, if you’re not in Bologna or Naples, never go into a restaurant that prominently advertises lasagne. It’s a tourist trap.
This reasoning, which an Englishman like myself could never have arrived at, obliges us to pass by a good half a dozen places before settling for pici con broccoli under an awning in a backstreet watching a little boy practise tossing his contrada’s flag for some forthcoming festival. Admired from a doorway by his mother, the ten-year-old windmills his arm and hurls the big flag spinning high into the alley. The blue and green fabric flaps and flashes in the sunshine until he catches it in his right hand and makes a little bow. His mother applauds. He does it again and again, with remarkable skill and concentration, very aware of the foreigners watching from the terrace of the trattoria.
Garibaldi ate with his entourage at the monastery. The monks were eager to serve the great man at table, but Anita refused to be attended by priests. She loathed the priesthood. Perhaps having been forced to marry an older man at fourteen, then being stigmatized for living unmarried with José had something to do with it. We know so little about Anita, but every detail we have suggests formidable strength of character. ‘To the first hero of our homeland,’ says the inevitable plaque in Piazzetta Santa Lucia, ‘and his intrepid wife, sublime model for Italian women . . .’
In the afternoon I climbed the tower. One pays five euros in a gloomy foyer, after which a woman uses a ruler to tear off a scrap of paper with a list of recommendations, in English. The first reads, ‘Visit advised against those who suffer from claustrophobia or vertigo.’
I suffer from vertigo, but I wanted to see what Hoffstetter and Garibaldi saw.
You climb about ten floors of stairs, round and round, up and up, as the walls narrow and the ancient masonry closes in, until for the last twenty feet there are just two old wooden ladders taking you right up alongside a big bell. You can see why they warn against claustrophobia. Everything is musty, dark and splintery. There’s no room for someone to go up while another comes down. At the top a man with a handheld radio is in constant touch with a man at the bottom, monitoring the flow of visitors.
The parapet all around is about waist height. The view is stunning. But this openness and with it the invitation I feel to throw myself down has my legs turning to water. I have to lean with my back against the timber around the bell, breathing deeply. I ask the man with the radio if people ever panic, and he nods, bored. He’s up here eight hours every day, he says.
When I’ve calmed down and am able to contemplate the country in all directions, Garibaldi’s predicament becomes clear. He has launched his appeal for support and volunteers, but with Paumgartten’s army approaching from the south-east things have to happen fast. If the Tuscans are up for a fight, he will take the Austrians on. If not, he must avoid being caught, which means escaping to Venice. To do that he will have to cross the Val di Chiana again, back towards the Apennines in the east.
It’s a hot, hazy day, and the distant mountains are no more than a smudge on the horizon. Due east is Lake Trasimeno. To get to the mountains, should the Tuscans not respond to his appeal, he will have to cross the valley to the north of the lake where the land is flat and marshy. Twenty miles of it. If the column is caught there, the attacker will have an overwhelming advantage.
Ruggeri is the best chronicler of this dilemma. The townsfolk are patriotic, he tells us. But weary. They have seen their country rapidly occupied by Austrians. They have heard of the massacre in Livorno. Their newspapers are constantly telling them of the collapse of liberal revolutions all over Europe, the crushing defeat of the Piedmontese at the hands of Radetzky. Their leaders and wealthy classes are cautious men, when not actually in the pay of the foreigner.
Forced to make his decision on the spur of the moment, Ruggeri says, Garibaldi chooses to keep moving north and east, taking his proclamation through the small villages and towns, while at the same time keeping the Apennines in sight. The larger town of Arezzo at the foot of the mountains will be the cut-off point. The people there are famous for their patriotism. He has received intelligence assuring him they are ready for a fight. If that doesn’t work out, the high Apennine passes will be just two days’ march away.
Having set up camp in Montepulciano and distributed his proclamation, Garibaldi surprises everyone by ordering a 5 p.m. departure. After barely ten hours in the town. This will allow him to follow the hills north and reach Torrita di Siena at 2000 feet before nightfall. Always a move ahead of Paumgartten. From there he will be in a good position to dive into the valley.
On the tower, I’m now calm enough to take a fleeting look straight down into the piazza and along the neighbouring streets. You see masses of stone and terracotta, piled up over centuries of civic optimism. Arches and balconies, sloping roofs and bright flags. It’s wonderful. Around me other visitors are speaking French and Korean, oohing and aahing. But they don’t stay long. They don’t seem sure what to look at or why. In the piazza an open-top minibus is picking up sightseers. A little girl complains about the heat; her mother unscrews a water bottle. Beyond the town, in all directions, the land lies blanched and scorched in the still summer air.
Returning to ground level, the Civic Museum is deserted but for a family of Germans with time on their hands. Further down the street, the Museum of Tortures seems to be doing better business, but I don’t feel like parting with eight euros to have my stomach turned. As night falls, the tourists flock into Piazza Grande for their free entertainment from the freshly built stage. We’re just settling down to sleep when the opening chords of Carmina Burana come wafting through the window; in Carl Orff’s arrangement.
‘Recognizable as lasagne,’ Eleonora sighs.
DAY 16
20–21 July 1849 – 9 August 2019
Montepulciano, Torrita d
i Siena, Foiano della Chiana – 16 miles
Torrita di Siena
In Torrita di Siena we were pursued by a street-cleaning vehicle. We arrived around 8.30 after two and a half hours easy walking in low sunshine over dew-soaked hills. You have to be careful not to walk through grass at this hour or you’ll spend the day with wet socks. The fields had been freshly harvested, relieved of their burdens of wheat and barley, the lines of the mowing still etched across the soft slopes.
Suddenly, a dog barks, and a flock of sheep bursts up the steep bank into the narrow lane. They clatter past us, chased by a handsome white Maremma sheepdog. The animal is grinning, tongue out, pleased with himself. The sheep, like the fields, have been freshly shorn. They press together in a nervous mass, ears pink in the sunlight. A timeless vignette. Then the shepherd appears, a young man on a quad bike speaking on his smartphone.
Torrita is a red town. Old brick facades glow in full sunshine. We’re approaching the southern gate, an arch with a marvellously intricate sundial above, when a cleaning vehicle buzzes out. It’s incongruous, two big green brushes whirring on the dark flagstones, yellow light flashing. It shifts direction with robotic jerkiness, attacking the nooks and crannies in the ancient paving. As soon as it’s well outside, we hurry in, only to have it turn 180 degrees and chase us up the steep cobbles. We turn left to escape, following an alley into a deserted piazza, and just have time to get ourselves served outside the one café before a low droning sound tells us the creature is still after us. It feels its way round the corner, insect-like, with its extendable green brushes and cicada buzz.
Eleonora points out that the whole piazza is already spotless; there’s nothing to clean. But there is a car, in the way, a Panda, parked beside the inevitable old well. The cleaning vehicle is turned off. A man in orange dungarees gets down and scratches his head. A policeman steps out of the noble building behind him, the town hall, complete with clock tower and commemoration plaques, flags and coats of arms. The two men smoke a cigarette contemplating the Panda, and now the paunchy proprietor who brought us our coffees comes out from the café in black braces and white vest, grumbling and shaking his head, his tired old dog at his ankles. He ambles over to the Panda, starts it up and drives it out of the square. Cigarette finished, the cleaner can get on with his job.
We spin out our breakfast to enjoy the silence after the pest is gone. All round the piazza the shutters are pulled to against the rising heat. The space is quietly alluring and uncannily empty, a complete contrast to Montepulciano. Now the proprietor’s wife enters the scene, as thin and nervy as her husband is plump and slow.
She wipes a couple of tables, rapidly but without conviction, then sits at one, quickly turns the pages of the newspaper, shakes her head and says in a loud voice, ‘The last grocer’s has just closed in . . .’ and she mentions the name of some nearby village.
‘The last grocer’s!’ she repeats.
‘Really?’ Eleonora was first to realize we were being invited to a conversation.
‘We’re down to one in Torrita now. Can you imagine? And that will be the next to go.’
‘That’s bad.’
‘Soon we will have nowhere to buy fruit and veg and fresh bread.’
Her idea of conversation is a string of gloomy announcements. The village is dying. Half the houses are empty and for sale. The only people who buy them are foreigners, who only come a couple of weeks a year.
‘Can you imagine?’ she repeats. ‘Our politicians are useless. When are they going to learn how to keep the young people here? When are they going to find money to invest in jobs?’
We had been enjoying the quiet square so much. Now its very quietness has become sinister. Feeling it’s time to go, Eleonora goes into the café to pay and gets hit by a truly scandalous bill. ‘As if we were in Piazza di Spagna!’ She’s outraged.
‘I suppose,’ I reflect, ‘we’re paying for having the place to ourselves.’
As in Cetona and Montepulciano, the people of Torrita welcomed the garibaldini with great generosity. As in Cetona and Montepulciano, no one responded to the call to join up. Not a single man. Garibaldi had launched recruitment drives before. He knew that people either came flocking or not at all. There is a tide in the affairs of men. It was not running his way.
Arriving in Torrita towards 8 p.m., the General distributed his proclamation, persuaded the locals to bake enough bread for two days’ rations, and was on the move again at 2.30 a.m., dropping down into the exposed valley under cover of night.
Except now the rain came. It fell heavily through the night. ‘A ruinous march,’ Ruggeri remembers, across the muddy plain. And he offers a reflection on guerrilla warfare. The Italian terrain is suited to it, he believes: so many hills and walled towns. The military situation is ripe for it: an invading army, unloved and cumbersome. But, he goes on, this kind of struggle requires absolute conviction. The guerrilla fighter cannot afford to be lukewarm; he must never lose heart. Not even for an instant.
Were these Italian traits?
A messenger from Müller caught up with the column, bringing news of General Stadion’s advances south of Siena. Some time later another messenger, this time from Migliazza, north of Perugia, brought details of Paumgartten’s forces, now advancing along both sides of Lake Trasimeno. Many thousands of men. Well armed, well equipped. Towards dawn Garibaldi called a halt at the small town of Foiano della Chiana. The people came out in the rain to greet them; the infantry were billeted in a monastery, in taverns; the cavalry wrapped up beside their horses under dripping trees.
But the garibaldini were not the only ones losing sleep that night. This was written at 1 a.m.
21 July, General Stadion in Buonconvento to General D’Aspre in Florence
Regarding the order to chase Garibaldi to the sea. I fear I am being drawn in that direction in order to leave Siena exposed and that he will occupy the town behind my back. Allow me to stay in Buonconvento [20 miles due west of Torrita], which offers the possibility of defending the road to Siena and leaving me in a position to attack, once Paumgartten has located the main rebel column.
Later that same day, General D’Aspre in Florence already had copies of Garibaldi’s proclamation, just forty-eight hours after it was printed in Montepulciano.
21 July, General D’Aspre in Florence to Field Marshal Radetzky north of Milan
Garibaldi has officially invaded Tuscany with 4000 to 7000 men. It is very difficult to get precise information. Unable to defend themselves, the small cities have complied with his requests for provisions. It is not clear if he is intending to reach the Tuscan coast, where American ships are waiting to embark him, or to bring about an uprising. See the attached proclamation. It has had no effect on the local people, but there is some sympathy for the rebel, above all in Arezzo.
Foiano della Chiana
In Foiano Garibaldi turned down invitations from leading citizens and slept close to the men in a small house on the edge of town. A fitful sleep. A baby was born in the house that very night, and the General was invited to name the girl. ‘Call her Italia,’ he said.
Two hours later, Hoffstetter woke him to say that Bueno was refusing to provide more cavalry to reinforce security. Migliazza’s men had made contact with Austrian forces on two different roads. Shots had been fired. Skirmishes. ‘Relieve Bueno of his command,’ Garibaldi ordered, but Hoffstetter feared the consequences and passed the buck to Garibaldi’s official aide-de-camp Marocchetti, who did nothing. The German also feared the negative impact of marching those captive monks along. ‘The canny priests would walk with their hands joined in prayer and their heads bowed so that people would feel sorry for them. In Foiano I begged Garibaldi to let them go.’ The General agreed. ‘I realized,’ he later wrote, ‘that the Church was actually hoping we would kill them.’
Sleep forgotten, Garibaldi addressed the citizens in the street from an upstairs window. The rain had stopped. ‘Better times will come. Keep faith,’ he exhorted. Amid al
l this activity he found time to give a cigar case to the young man from Torrita who had volunteered to guide them through the night. ‘I was in heaven,’ the man remembered forty years on, speaking to Belluzzi.
How different our walk was from theirs. Not a dark deluge, but blazing sunlight. I remember a tall pine hedge gloriously adorned with wisteria. Stretches of straight white track between neatly kept vineyards. A fragrant monotony of stubble and dry ditches. A marble Madonna enjoying the shade of an oak tree. The only ominous note was a long low warehouse selling stock from bankrupt businesses.
In the small town of Bettolle the woman serving us our cedratas boasted that Garibaldi was not the only hero to have passed through here. Napoleon had once stayed a night in this borgo. She was impressed by our Garibaldi project and called to her son at the bar, ‘Charge them normal prices!’ Meantime, the television brought us Salvini, warning that his patience was running out; the country was paralysed, something had to be done. A man leaned across the bar and said, ‘You can’t sort out anything, if you don’t use a big stick.’
We took off with our trekking poles and spent much of the next hour talking gloomily of politics. The woman in Torrita was surely right that a small town needed smart politicians and bright ideas to keep it in business. The country as a whole needed a leader and the only man who seemed to have any appetite for the job was blustering loudmouth Salvini. Everyone else was embarrassed at the very mention of nationhood, hoping that the EU would save the day.
Entering Foiano towards one o’clock, we stumbled on the very house where Garibaldi rested and the little girl Italia was born. ‘With the enemy at his back . . .’ says the plaque under the window where he spoke to the crowd.