The Hero's Way

by Tim Parks

  The Austrian colonels and generals also twisted the truth to give positive versions of their behaviour. On 23 July Radetzky writes to the minister of defence in Vienna, telling him Garibaldi is in Todi, despite having already replied to D’Aspre’s last dispatch that put him in Foiano. Apparently the old field marshal did not want to admit that the rebels had already succeeded in crossing much of Tuscany. Stadion and D’Aspre frequently exaggerate their small achievements, the length of their marches, their foresight. Paumgartten constantly plays up the problems he is facing, his fortitude and wisdom in overcoming them. On 24 July a certain Major Holzer writes to his superiors to say that he has outmanoeuvred Garibaldi and entered Arezzo with 4000 men. By the time he did so, Garibaldi, his real target, was far away in the hills.

  Perhaps the most instructive moments for any writer of non-fiction are when you feel a strong resistance to the material you have found. Belluzzi didn’t want to believe Müller capable of betrayal. And reading Belluzzi before reading the Austrian dispatches, I didn’t want to believe it either. Denial is always inviting. The whole Arezzo episode is painful. The city had been cried up as the most patriotic in Tuscany; with Garibaldi’s arrival the uprising would surely begin. How one would love to write that Garibaldi came at night, battered down the gate, and was welcomed by a wave of enthusiasm that swept away the pathetic Austrian garrison, the traitorous mayor and so on. Or again that the General’s men understood perfectly the wisdom of his decision not to attack and headed into the hills with enthusiasm. But that wasn’t the case. They were furious, demoralized.

  Writing and reading stories, you learn about yourself, which way you want things to go. And this is all the more true of history, where some facts just can’t be ignored. Garibaldi got it wrong about Tuscany. He was badly informed. He had taken a gamble and lost. He had underestimated the effect on his men. Now it was hard to know what to do for the best. On the other hand, for anyone with aspirations and optimism, disappointment is always on the cards. The General was used to it. Reaching the source of the Scopetone at 1500 feet, he had his men rest a few hours, then left before dawn, turning due east on a good road along the Cerfone valley. Venice was a hundred and eighty miles away.

  PART THREE

  Survival

  DAY 20

  24–25 July 1849 – 13 August 2019

  Arezzo, Citerna – 19 miles

  Citerna

  Hoffstetter has a pounding headache. The sun ‘falls straight as a plumb line’ in the narrow valley. He can barely stay on his horse. Major Cenni has typhus. He’s laid out in a carriage somewhere behind the column, protected by a party of cavalry. Word gets round that it was his carriage passing right under the walls of Arezzo that started last night’s shooting. Protecting him, Major Zambianchi took a bullet in the foot that is causing him serious pain. Local notables looking for Garibaldi come across Anita crouched in a shelter of laurel branches, pale as death, cracking nuts on a stone. A cavalry scout is struck on the head, exchanging sword blows with an Austrian hussar. A doctor must be found.

  In Citerna, towards evening, no one comes to greet them. Most of the inhabitants have fled. There is no one to bake bread. No forage for the animals. The gates of the convent are barred. In the Tiber valley beyond, the Austrians have a garrison in San Sepolcro, where all roads meet. An Austrian column from Perugia is marching up the valley to Città di Castello to the south. On the road from Arezzo, behind the garibaldini, Migliazza is skirmishing with Paumgartten’s soldiers as they climb in pursuit. Wounded men on both sides. Two Austrian horses captured.

  The convent in Citerna is eventually occupied. Likewise a monastery. Hoffstetter can’t sleep in the garden with the others because he has diarrhoea. He passes the night shivering with fever on the floor of a filthy cell. Major Cenni is coughing in the next cell. A black night. It’s a matter of time now, surely. They are fugitives, nothing more. The locals will not support them.

  It is pointless, writes Ippolito Nievo in his great novel Confessions of an Italian, ‘to plead for freedom if one’s heart is deeply servile.’ The book was written in 1858 before the nationality ‘Italian’ officially existed. ‘There are rights,’ he goes on ‘that have to be earned.’ As a schoolboy Nievo was involved in uprisings in Mantua in 1848 and Pisa in 1849. Like many patriots he formed a scathing opinion of his fellow citizens: ‘a sheep-like flock of men without faith, strength or dreams’.

  Such exasperations chime with today’s revisionists, who tell us the formation of Italy was a mistake, the work of a few hothead liberals, a rapacious Piedmontese monarchy and an international conspiracy of Masons. In a trattoria in Milan, a month before we began our march, I had a falling-out with two university colleagues, economics professors, who insisted that, unlike in other countries, there had been no widespread support for unity in Italy. Unity was a farce, they said. I couldn’t understand these things, because I was a literary man. And English at that. ‘Only a handful,’ they insisted, ‘actually fought.’

  In which other western European countries, I countered, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries did volunteer armies fight for so long to rid themselves of despots and foreign occupiers? Many Germans rose up against their rulers in 1848, seeking the formation of a pan-German territory, but the main work of German unification was done by Bismarck and the Prussian army; and there was nowhere near the same level of foreign occupation. Nor the apparently insuperable problem of a state governed by the Pope and propped up by other Catholic countries.

  Some 6000 Tuscans, 14,000 Romans and 14,000 Neapolitans came north to join the Piedmontese in their battle against Austria in 1848. By the time the southern campaign of 1860 reached its final battle at Volturno, the original 1000 had become 50,000. All volunteers. They fought without any assurance of pay or pensions or even medical care. In 1866, 40,000 volunteered to serve with Garibaldi in the last war of independence against Austria. At the time, the overall population of Italy was fewer than 20 million.

  Yet it could all so easily not have happened, had Garibaldi been captured or killed in the flight across the Apennines. Garibaldi was important because, more than any of the other patriot leaders, it was he who understood, precisely after this long and disappointing retreat, that they must drop all talk of social revolution and republicanism. They must unite around the single aim of Italian unity. It was the only way to bring the bourgeoisie on board and sever their ties with the foreigner. Supporting the Piedmontese monarchy, the patriot volunteers could then become the loyal and legitimising link between a new king and a new nation. So it would turn out in the great campaigns of ten years on. But for that to be achieved, the General needed to survive, now.

  The men’s change of mood after Arezzo was matched by a change of landscape. Postcard Tuscany is behind us. The country is wilder and emptier. We’re climbing wooded slopes up to 4000 feet. Tall grasses and thistles, gorse and heather. Everything is poorer. Makeshift signposts of board nailed on wood. An abandoned hut. A few wilted flowers next to a Madonna in a dog’s kennel. An exposed thorn bush twisted by the wind.

  By 7 a.m. we’re looking back at Arezzo, far below. A distant glimpse of Foiano and Chiantishire beyond. Castiglion Fiorentino is hidden by a dark ridge. The paths deteriorate. Dry mud, shale and stone. All rutted by the recent rain. Roots to trip over. Ahead, hills, hills and more hills, rolling away in long chains, all wooded, all uncultivated. This is not the route Garibaldi took. The narrow Cerfone valley is now a four-lane superstrada. We are outriding again. On a parallel line a couple of miles to the north.

  Despite last night’s thunder, it hasn’t rained. The sky is a milky blue haze. There’s nowhere to stop for refreshment. There are no buildings at all. We’re laden with food and drink. At a certain point the trees and scrub give way to an open stretch of tall dry grass, white with flowers. The path disappears. We’re feeling our way across, looking for an opening in the trees ahead, when a smell assails us. The smell of death. There’s a corpse torn and rotting in the grass. A de
er. Perhaps a hunter wounded it and it came here to die. Days ago. Now it’s a feast for animals and insects. The air is buzzing. Eleonora is nauseated by the smell and indignant with the casual killers. Very likely, I reflect, we owe it to the hunters that these paths are open at all. We haven’t met a soul all day.

  Where to stop and eat? We’re winding left and right, up and down in thick, untended woodland at 3000 feet. Stunted trees laden with lichens, choked with ivies. Dense undergrowth. Desert-dry soil, prickly with creeping grasses. Broken rocks, fallen trunks, green lizards, thick cobwebs. The kind of place a knight might go to fight a demon, in an etching by Dürer.

  There’s nowhere to spread a groundsheet. Eleonora is wary of wasps and hornets. I’m desperate to stop. I need sustenance. Perhaps we should eat on our feet. She’s determined to find a comfortable place. It goes on. Noon has come and gone. At last providence provides. Towards the top of another hill, a scribbled sign on bare board: Il Cappello di Paglia. The Straw Hat. A restaurant apparently. Incredibly. It’s a little off our path, but we head there anyway. The woods open into a couple of small fields. There are fences and farm paraphernalia. Geese and turkeys. A vegetable garden. At last a low modern ranch appears with a veranda looking down into the Cerfone valley. Lines of tables and chairs. It seems we can eat a proper lunch!

  No. It’s closed. There’s no one about. Not even a dog. We decide to sit on the veranda and eat our sandwiches. But climbing up there we hear a tinkle of music from inside the house. The last thing we need is to be surprised by an angry proprietor. I open the French window an inch and call across an empty room. The music is louder. I call again. Two figures appear, a man and woman, in aprons, holding floury hands in the air. And a beautiful misunderstanding occurs.

  The restaurant is closed because today is 13 August. 15 August is Ferragosto, the big summer bank holiday, traditionally a time of heavy eating. They have closed for a couple of days to prepare for a full house. They’re making pasta. We explain we’ve walked from Arezzo and, passing by, hoped we could eat. Perhaps if they don’t mind we could just sit on the veranda a while.

  They don’t get it. As on other occasions, the idea of people walking so far just won’t sink in. They assume we’ve driven from Arezzo and walked up from Citerna or Monterchi, a few miles away. ‘Oh, but you should have phoned and booked,’ the woman cries. She’s so sorry! We must feel so let down. We repeat that we were passing by chance; there’s no need to apologize. But they are not listening. ‘You really should have phoned. By all means take a seat, have a rest.’ They can’t feed us, she says, but perhaps we would like a drink.

  ‘Cedrata?’

  ‘At once!’ The woman wipes her hands, disappears and returns with two yellow bottles and glasses filled with ice. She won’t hear of being paid. ‘Per l’amor di Dio, you climbed all the way up here, poor things, only to find us closed.’

  So we eat our bread and cheese and apples and peaches on a shaded veranda, looking down into the Cerfone valley, where the garibaldini barbecued a couple of oxen while Migliazza made life difficult for the advancing Austrians. Forty years later a nun in the local convent complains to Belluzzi that the rebels forced them to open up and took their bread without paying. But monks in the nearby monastery remembered with amazement that the garibaldini paid for everything, and paid well. A historian in Città del Castello turns up an IOU in town hall archives in which the General promises to repay a large loan in ten years’ time. ‘How can one know the truth,’ the historian despairs, ‘when everybody tells different stories.’ Belluzzi makes the same complaint. He finds it hard to believe the garibaldini took four monks hostage in Citerna – surely they wouldn’t repeat that mistake – and even harder to believe the Austrians were so afraid of being poisoned that they would ask the locals to taste anything they offered before accepting it. The only thing everyone agrees about is that the rebels were in very poor shape when they arrived in Citerna.

  25 July, 9 p.m., General Stadion in Arezzo to General D’Aspre in Florence

  This very moment reliable news has arrived: Garibaldi’s bands, around 2500 men in a miserable state, are now in the vicinity of Monterchi, Le Ville, Citerna. Majors Zsoldos and Matinowsky will be there tomorrow and are under orders to attack at once.

  ‘Just a big bunch of boys,’ reported one local. ‘Disheartened, bruised and beaten, completely incapable of facing a battle.’

  We too were in a miserable state on arrival in Citerna. We had forgotten to fill our water bottles at Il Cappello di Paglia. Thirsty, we hurried. The sun was burning. Suddenly I found myself right back where I’d been climbing that last hill to Tivoli three weeks before: head heavy, eyes swimming, odd sensations of detachment. And no sign of Citerna. The road stretched on. Cracked asphalt, dusty hedgerows, scorched grass. Climbing, climbing, climbing. Until, at last, an avenue of pines announced the town. We topped the hill and found ourselves in Corso Giuseppe Garibaldi. A piazza opened to the left on the wide panorama of the Tiber valley. To the right, under a grey stone tower, the white sunshades of Bar Citerna. I collapsed on a chair. The padrona stood over me wringing her hands in a dishtowel. Should she call a doctor? ‘How old is he?’ she asked Eleonora. ‘Just bring,’ I whispered, ‘a Coke and two bottles of water.’

  Topography is important. Garibaldi chose Citerna carefully. It’s a small stony borgo on the top of a ridge, about 400 yards long by 100 wide. There are just three parallel streets, with Corso Garibaldi, in the middle, higher up, and the other two below marking the edges of the ridge each side. To the north and east you look out across the fertile Tiber valley, six miles wide here, and the higher mountains of the second Apennine chain beyond, in particular Monte Giove – Mount Jupiter – which is directly opposite. The drop from Citerna into the plain is a steep scarp of maybe 500 feet. There are no paths or roads that way. It’s precipitous. On the other side of the ridge, to the south and west, the town walls command a view of the narrow Cerfone valley and the village of Monterchi about a mile away. The Cerfone flows through Monterchi towards Citerna, but veers sharply right below it to breech the ridge on which the town stands a few miles to the east, near Città di Castello.

  So, roughly speaking, in Citerna we’re at the joint of a T with the Tiber running across the top and the Cerfone approaching from beneath. Garibaldi can look back along the valley that he and his men have just travelled. He can see Zsoldos and Matinowsky arrive. He can fire his cannon at them. If they want to get to the Tiber valley they will have to pass beneath Citerna, under a barrage of rifle fire from above. And on the other side of the town he has an unbroken view north up the Tiber valley to San Sepolcro, nestling at the base of the next line of mountains, and San Giustino, almost straight across the valley, beneath Monte Giove. He can’t see Città di Castello eight miles to the south-east, but he can watch the road from there to San Giustino. And the road from Anghiari five miles to the west to San Sepolcro. In short, through his trusty telescope, the General can watch all the Austrian troop movements, pretty much 360 degrees.

  And watch, or gaze, is what Garibaldi will now do for what Hoffstetter feels is an unconscionably long forty-eight hours. Don’t they risk being trapped here? On the other hand, Hoffstetter is ill and glad of the chance to rest. And you would have to be mad, he feels, to attack Citerna. Sitting on its high ridge, surrounded by thick walls, it’s impregnable. The danger is encirclement. To avoid that, Garibaldi sends his cavalry to do their normal duty of pushing against the enemy’s advance guard, giving them the impression he is headed this way or that, inviting them to assume defensive positions. So his men ride to Anghiari, San Sepolcro, San Giustino and Città di Castello.

  ‘A party of horsemen in bizarre clothes rode into the piazza,’ reports an inhabitant of Cospaia, a tiny village outside San Giustino. ‘They galloped around waving their sabres and rode off. Like Bedouins!’

  The tactic worked, but was not without its costs. Here is a passage from Anecdotes and Memories of the Passage of Giuseppe Garibaldi thro
ugh the Upper Tiber Valley in July 1849 by the local historian Giovanni Magherini-Graziani.

  A certain Cipriani Angioloni, scouting for Garibaldi near Città di Castello, was surprised and captured by the Austrians. He was beaten with sticks and tied to a stone trough in the cowshed under the barn where the soldiers were billeted, his hands trussed under his knees, like a goat. The following night the Austrians left and Angioloni was loaded on a cart. Eventually, he asked if he could get down from the cart and walk. They let him and when he had the chance, he grabbed a soldier’s bayonet and in a fury stabbed as many Austrians as he could. Restrained despite ferocious resistance, he was shot in the evening at the hour of the Angelus.

  Other anecdotes Magherini-Graziani tells are more cheerful. A priest whose wooden leg prevented him from fleeing barricaded his fine house against the garibaldini. But in the dark three men broke in and rushed up to his bedroom. ‘Don’t you recognize me?’ cried one. ‘Ciceruacchio!’ the priest shouted, and the old acquaintances drank into the night. Another local man was astonished when the cavalrymen billeted in his house insisted on visiting his dying father and paying their respects. ‘They were so polite,’ he marvelled. ‘They even made a point of not looking into my daughter’s room when they passed by.’

  Ugo Bassi rode into Città di Castello just before the Austrians arrived to find himself a fresh pair of trousers. They gave him red ones and he took two pistols from the town’s armoury. Evviva Ugo Bassi, the people cried. Say Evviva l’Italia, he protested. He was eating in a hotel in the piazza when two cavalrymen brought him a priest who had almost drowned in the Tiber, running away. Bassi lectured his fellow cleric: the duty of a priest is to stay with his flock when they are in danger. And you were never in danger from us!