by Tim Parks
Alfio was still seeping through the window. The last song I remember before sleep finally ambushed me was ‘Vengo dopo il TG’, ‘I’ll Come After the News’. It’s a comic 1980s song in which a man keeps his lusty girlfriend waiting in bed while he watches the day’s last news bulletin. I smiled. The news these days of course was all Brexit – another bid for self-government. And Salvini’s opportunistic xenophobia. The same stuff coming round and round, century after century, in different shades of pale. And Alfio sang,
È la tivvù che vizia,
Il fatto è che mi sfizia,
Restare fino all’ultima notizia.
It’s the TV that spoils me,
Fact is, it suits my fancy
To stay till the last story.
DAY 23
29 July 1849 – 16 August 2019
Sant’Angelo in Vado, Lunano, Macerata Feltria – 14 miles
Lunano
We woke to the jingle of our alarm. For some days now the garibaldini had stopped using a trumpet for reveille. The enemy was too near. In each company a sentry was assigned the job of waking the others.
The posh old clock in the breakfast room said ten to six when we presented ourselves to find boiled eggs already on the table. I steered clear of the question of the cannon. Our landlady was explaining that there were so many immigrants in the town because of the jeans factory. Remote towns like this, she said, needed some big industry to keep the population from emigrating. Lunano, for example, had high-quality industrial tubes. But then the local youngsters left anyway, so people came in from outside.
‘Not everyone wants to spend their lives in a factory,’ Eleonora observes, having escaped her own home town fifteen years ago.
By 6.30 we were on the road. Unusually there were clouds. The sun topping peaks to the east was shining beneath them. A big pylon stark above us carried cables across the river where the garibaldini watered their horses. The mule track was gone, or if it was there, our maps didn’t give it. We followed a new road for a couple of miles, then left it where it disappeared into a tunnel.
The path was steep now, but the landscape magnificent. Rolling upland, rich with crops and shady thickets, but thrusting up here and there to higher, darker slopes where craggy outcrops look like they might be castles, or vice versa. There’s a sense of vastness, distant hills, distant mountains beyond the hills, and faint peaks, even more remote, reaching into the sky. The bright sunshine enamelled everything, the pale stubble and the lush alfalfa and white flecks of isolated farmhouses. Seeing rich fields of maize, Anita wanted to stop to gather forage, but Garibaldi insisted they press on. It was a race.
We pressed on despite Eleonora’s tendinitis, and towards nine dropped down into Lunano over the mouth of the long tunnel we had been walking above.
Lunano need not apply for the borgo-più-bello award. The castle on the hill above is in ruins. The centre is as much a car park as a piazza. ‘And Anita’s heart beat beside him,’ says the plaque on the town hall. Otherwise there’s a quietness about the place that might be leisure, but is more likely melancholy.
Macerata Feltria
Having travelled north to reach Lunano, Garibaldi now turned north-east along the tiny river Foglia. He could then drop down to Sassocorvaro and from there to Pesaro and the sea, just forty miles away. Except the paths were poor or non-existent. Their guide led the men down into a gorge and along the riverbed. I was curious to see if this was still possible, and at the first opportunity we turned off what is now a fast modern road and pushed half a mile along a gravel track past abandoned farmhouses. Just before a narrow bridge, a chain was hung across the path leading to the river and a sign told us access was Absolutely Forbidden. We climbed over and went down to the water.
Very little of it. The riverbed was twenty yards wide. Cracked grey mud with thick trees and bushes each side. The air buzzed with winged beetles and cicadas. The heat was intense. The narrow stream, just a few feet wide, meandered back and forth across the mud, forming pools among big flat stones. Dragonflies hovered. We went under the bridge and found a beaver’s dam just beyond. There was a lot of woody debris about. Eleonora was sceptical, but I thought it looked possible.
Our feet slipped on slimy stones. Here and there the ground gave way and shoes sank in the mud. Then, at a bend in the river, the stream drifted towards us and we were trapped between the water and a high bank of thorns. Should we ford it? It wasn’t the kind of situation where you wanted to walk barefoot. I backtracked to where a boulder seemed to offer a stepping stone, but it shifted under my weight and I ended up with a leg in the water.
Enough. This was silly. We turned back. Yet that half-hour fooling on the riverbed in the heat with the flies and the slime brought us far closer to the garibaldini than we ever could be on the smooth asphalt of the road. Closer to their doggedness; thinking of the mules and oxen splashing in the shallows, the horses heaving the cannon and Captain Jourdan moaning on his stretcher. Major Zambianchi’s foot wound was worse by the hour so that he screamed with pain at every jolt. Major Cenni was still feverish with typhus, but recovering. Anita was fading, pale and sapped of energy. Everyone crowded into this meandering trickle of grey mud and flies, one long hot summer’s day.
Approaching Sassocorvaro, a cavalry scout brought news that the main body of Archduke Ernst’s army was marching on the other side of the hills to their right, the east, in order to block their descent to the sea. Garibaldi had already discussed alternatives with their guides, and the column turned sharply left, which is to say north-west, to Macerata Feltria, five miles away. It was a climb of 1500 feet, and again they followed the bed of a dry torrent. Assai dirupato, Hoffstetter says laconically. Rocky.
All the same, when they made it to Macerata Feltria in the early evening, Garibaldi was in excellent spirits. They had eluded the Austrians again! He feasted on roast chicken and wine provided by a deferential young priest who refused to be paid, relaxing with Anita under canvas on Church property.
The people of Macerata were welcoming and excited. True, their chief citizens had fled, but they had left orders to provide for the soldiers. Two barrels of dried cod were opened and much appreciated. A few educated men who had stayed came to offer the General their opinions as to which route might be feasible. Not the road down to Pesaro, which Archduke Ernst would soon occupy. Not the longer road to the west, through Carpegna, Pennabilli and Perticara towards Cesena; that was already occupied by Austrian troops climbing up from Tuscany. Which left the wild paths over the mountains, past San Marino and down through Verucchio to Rimini.
Garibaldi listened and smiled and kept his counsel. There was much eating and drinking. I find no mention of the forty or so men they had lost in Sant’Angelo.
Was this unfeeling? This merriment. Was this stubbornness foolhardy? Eleonora and I are thinking a lot about the men who tramped these hills before us. We’ve been with them more than 300 miles now. The deserters are easy to understand. They are discouraged. They want to save themselves. But the hard core still supporting the General are of a different mettle. For them death has long since been factored in. It may come, it may not, but it’s not the issue. This frees them to follow their cause and live for the day.
We don’t even look for the dry torrent they took and instead climb steep earthy paths through woods and wild dry grasses, until Macerata appears below us to the right with all the air of a pretty market town in Derbyshire. From this distance even the tower at the top of the town looks vaguely English. The houses cluster on a low hill above a valley thick with foliage. A half-hour later, entering the first streets, we come across Via Ugo Bassi. Born evangelist, the priest took only a couple of hours to impress himself on the locals. Ciceruacchio on the other hand, dining in a private house, fell into an argument with a cavalry officer and challenged him to a duel. The two were already out in the courtyard with swords drawn before their companions managed to disarm them.
Again we’re in one of the borghi più belli. A lon
g straight street climbs to a T-junction which boasts an elaborate ironwork drinking fountain with two quaint old street lamps hanging above. Plaques abound.
Macerata Feltria, proud guardian of the remains of
the unknown garibaldino . . . 1962
The Nazi Fascist fury of 1944 smashed this memorial stone to Giuseppe Garibaldi, which the people of Macerata Feltria have repaired in honour of this symbol of liberty and independence . . . 1954
From the horrendous carnage
Meditated and perpetrated
By a new and more ferocious Attila
Comes a cry of grief
Europe bleeds and weeps and
The horrified world
Stamps on the face of history
Two accursed names
Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler
April 1945
Shining with ideal beauty
Among the glorious defeated,
Heroic in her daring
Sublime in her sacrifice
Blessed in her kiss of love,
Anita Garibaldi . . . 1908
In the gardens that look out from the town across the valley, at the top of six steps on a high plinth between two dark cypresses, stands a tall white Garibaldi; he’s wearing loose dungarees, has a sword in his belt, his arms folded under his poncho, his bearded face raised to the mountains. Which is where, towards 11 p.m. on 29 July, just as his men were settling down for the night beside blazing campfires, the General ordered them to climb. At once.
Belluzzi’s interviewees, years later, speak admiringly or disparagingly of Garibaldi’s impulsiveness, the suddenness of his decisions: when he ordered his men out of Citerna at midnight; when he left Torrita di Siena at a moment’s notice; when he suddenly changed course to go to Castiglion Fiorentino. That was how he was, they sigh.
Hoffstetter was not fooled. The General hadn’t told anybody they would be leaving Macerata Feltria, he observes, for obvious reasons. But the decision had long been made. An hour before departure the mule men were quietly warned to start loading their animals. Then came the order to march. It caused consternation. Even resistance. Great care had been taken to make sure their position was safe. They had marched through the town and camped above it, so that the enemy would have to come through narrow, well defended streets to attack them. They had sealed the entrance, leaving a rearguard down the road, with fifteen of the boys from the Compagnia Speranza constantly running back and forth from rearguard to town gate to make sure all was well.
Some men had barely fallen asleep and didn’t want to move. Others were in taverns or houses. Some of the rearguard tried to rush into the town for a quick drink or something to eat. The youngsters blocked the gate with their bayonets: the men must hold their position till the General ordered.
Hoffstetter was impressed. Officials were sent round the houses to flush out stragglers. In one case blows were exchanged. Two officers were arguing furiously over a question of protocol. These flare-ups, Hoffstetter observes, always occurred between those who had been professional soldiers and those who hadn’t. The untrained volunteers would forget the proper terms of address. The trained soldiers couldn’t get used to the idea that they were not in a regular army. But now a volley of shots rang out.
Were they under attack? Everyone ran to join their companies. The General had ordered this false alarm to put an end to the chaos. The arguing officers were reduced to the ranks. So in a few minutes the column was on the road, in a savage mood, climbing due west now, away from the sea, into the mountains, in the night. And it became clear why Garibaldi had allowed the luxury of campfires. Hoffstetter was left behind with a company of cavalry to keep them alight for a few more hours, so that distant eyes would imagine they were all still there.
We walked through the town and out in the same direction to where the Hotel Pitinum, a modern three-star establishment, stood up on the hillside beside its swimming pool. Yes, we were just in time for lunch, the proprietor said. Then took an age to serve us. The chef was having a day off, no doubt after his Ferragosto efforts of the day before. The proprietor’s mother was cooking. Alone in a dining room meant for a hundred, we drank white wine and waited.
‘And Captain Jourdan?’
‘They left him behind. For dead, Hoffstetter thought.’
‘But? And?’
‘Together with another man, also wounded in Sant’Angelo and also carried on a stretcher. They were left in a hostel with a family called the Venturini.’
‘But do we know if he survived?’
‘Hoffstetter never found out. The other guy had already been given the last rites.’
Eleonora laughs. ‘Basta! Tell me.’
She drums her fingers on the table and looks pointedly right and left. With its marble floor and air conditioning, the room is cool to the point of being chilly. There is no sign of our food.
‘OK, I give up.’
At dawn on 30 July, while the garibaldini were taking up defensive positions at Rocca Pietrarubbia, a monastery perched on an impregnable crag five miles up the road, two Austrian soldiers, Tyrolese men, burst into the Venturini household, smashed furniture and mirrors, grabbed the wounded man beside Jourdan and started pulling him out of the house by his feet. Jourdan was alive enough to curse them. A villager rushed in and protested that the man was dying. So the soldiers grabbed Jourdan and took him out in the street in bedclothes caked in blood. ‘Goodbye, my friend,’ he called to the man who had tried to stop the soldiers. ‘I’m off to die. But not afraid.’
‘Lots of detail here!’ Eleonora says appreciatively.
‘It’s the version of a guy called Filippo Belli, the villager who tried to intervene. He told Belluzzi. Forty years on.’
Jourdan was questioned by General Stadion himself, who wanted to know about Garibaldi’s plans. Jourdan couldn’t stand up. Having been a professional soldier, an engineer in the papal army, he saluted the Austrian general respectfully but refused to give any information aside from his name and rank. Stadion, who was meeting his first garibaldino face to face, was taken aback by the man’s dignity and conviction. Instead of having him shot, as everyone expected, he not only sent him back to his bed, but for the duration of the Austrian army’s stay put two guards on the door and had a black flag hung over the building to indicate it was being used as a hospital. Jourdan was then looked after by Doctor Giovanni Castellani, who filled his huge wound with lint soaked in a mixture of boiled fat and crushed rose petals. Three months later, perfectly healed, Jourdan left Macerata Feltria, to the great regret of its people, and emigrated to the USA.
‘Hurrah for General Stadion!’ Eleonora raised her glass.
Our tagliolini had arrived.
‘Hurrah for crushed rose petals!’
‘I bet the general didn’t mention this in his dispatches, though.’
He did not. But there was definitely a change of tone in the exchanges between the Austrian commanders at this point in the saga. In mid-July the garibaldini were riff-raff, brigands, vandals. An irritation. Now, exchanging compliments with the French commander, General Oudinot, in Rome, D’Aspre talks admiringly about Garibaldi’s ability and speed. ‘Almost encircled by our battalions coming from Bologna, Ancona, Arezzo, he could still break out. He moves faster than us. He has friends everywhere.’
Stadion writes on 30 July to boast of having shot seventeen garibaldini stragglers. But he fears the rebels are still capable of doubling back into Tuscany and raising hell. ‘At which point the only thing we can do is, at all costs, to catch up with them and launch a surprise attack.’ The ‘at all costs’ suggests how improbable he fears this is. He thanks D’Aspre for the delivery of three state-of-the-art rocket launchers, though these have had to be carried on mules. ‘It is so difficult to move things around on these miserable paths.’
‘Too bad the garibaldini couldn’t read all this,’ Eleonora observes. ‘It might have cheered them up.’
Two other correspondents join the discussion. Major
General Hahne in Rimini and General Karl von Gorzkowsky, governor of Bologna. They have been asked to close in on Garibaldi from the east and the north, to complete the encirclement that will finally allow them to get their man. Gorzkowsky is the most senior and the most powerful. He has a reputation for ruthlessness. And he writes to the operation’s overall commander, Field Marshal Radetzky, to complain of the incompetence of Stadion and Paumgartten and Archduke Ernst. ‘If Garibaldi remains the shrewd and tireless commander he is, he’ll get down to Rimini or Cesena long before Paumgartten or Ernst . . . Then I’ll have to deal with him myself with the few men I have.’ He goes on to complain that rumours of Garibaldi’s arrival are provoking all kinds of excitement in liberal circles in Bologna and Ravenna, with graffiti everywhere and many young men ready to join him. He demands Radetzky send reinforcements.
In Florence, D’Aspre is already looking forward to the moment when Garibaldi is finally defeated. He informs Radetzky that the Grand Duke of Tuscany has appeared in Florence at the annual Corsa dei Cocchi – a kind of chariot race – and again in the evening at the theatre, wearing full Austrian uniform on both occasions. ‘It seems he is eager to know if we are satisfied with his behaviour.’ Historians now agree that it was the grand duke’s growing identification with his ruthless minders that would lead to him being swept away without regret ten years down the line.
Ten years, Garibaldi told people in Macerata. We will be back in ten years to thank you for your kindness.
We spend the evening studying maps. Tomorrow we are going to steal a march on the garibaldini. Two dramatic days of theirs will be crammed into one of ours. Because we will have the benefit of modern roads and bridges.
Our destination, eighteen miles away, is San Marino. The climax is at hand. We feel excited, but anxious too. There will be endless ups and downs. The mountains are higher again. We are fit but full of niggles – blisters, tendinitis, sunburn – and a mental tiredness is gathering. It’s the sheer quantity of world we have had to absorb: the conversations, the sun, the landscape. The endless decisions about paths and food and places to stay. The insects. The bathrooms. The lack of bathrooms . . .