TRUE BATTLING SCIONS ARE THES

Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 280, 31 December 1914, Page 3

TRUE BATTLING SCIONS ARE THES

By Richard G. Conover. J "What do., you expect, gentlemen ?•' / am an old soldier, and so, of course, I planned fqr Garibaldi to attack me in front jind he came from behind instead." „, Gallotti's explanation.

credit of his battling went to another banner.

Tlio fighting man of Italy was often creditably heard from as the generations passed and the four magnificent cities of Venice, Florence, Pisa and Genoa arose on the ruins of the original site of the Roman empire. Through Venice, in particular, the unbroken battling line of the Italian soldier may be traced. This ancient republic was founded in the fifth century by refugees of Aquileia and other Roman cities, who fled before the desolating invasion of Attila the Hun< ; Venice has been fitly named the Eldest" Daughter of the Empire, and her native soldiers fought and died for her during thirteen hundred years until the Italian conquests of Napoleon Bonaparte ended the republic. From " the fifth to the eleventh century it was the only Italian State that had never submitted to the German Emperor and no foreign Power bad been acknowledged "within its walls. Her fighters were soldier-sailors, for in order to strike a foe they had ever to embark on the Adriatic first. The Italian soldier of Venice "was a pirate destroyer for hundreds of years. Later ho fought valiantly against the Hungarians and the Genoese, and then was drawn into fighting France and Spain and Germany, according as the troubles of Europe shifted. At the Battle of I.epanto, September 5, 1573. the Italian soldier of Venice played a prominent part in the great victory over the Turk.

HKOUGH fourteen! centuries of lineal] descent from the till- j conquering Roman! legionary comes aj valorous heirship to ]' the Italian soldier, j That lie is tlie true I battling scion of hisj a-n eient forebears 1 can, -be neit he i ) .scouted nor doubted. I Fighting doeadr nee j is not proved by the; failure of the bat j tlirig man of Ihei

tino. As a preliminary there was an obstinate fight of several hours toward the Lake of Guarda, the Italian soldier being again and again repulsed. The French in the meantime had won their end of the battle against the Austrians on Cavriana heights, and, as one of their commanders afterward declared : "We left the glory of the other end of the field to the Piedmontese.", And the French confidence was not misplaced, for late in the afternoon, after

Adriatic peninsula to hold a world m subjection with his cannon ami bayonet. The soldier of Italy has never stopped fighting since the fall- of the Roman Empire. In succession he has opposed —always' fiercely and valiantly—Goth, Lombard, Frank. Saracen, Magyar, lyortliman, French, Spanish and Austrian. From A. I>. 470, when he could no longer be considered a Roman, because Rome was not, lie battled on and on. a national fragment of militancy. In 1870 he became a consolidated fighting entity again. Rut whether in fractions or whole numbers, he has been q.ver willing to face the foe on the firing line. Fate may force him to mingle his'powder and steel with the #t>liey rialions now at war. Should he 44 so, look for him to reveal his Roman legacy.

speaking a common language with him, but arrayed against him in separate petty principalities and dukedoms. And all the time he fought misguidedly hard. So. did fallen Greece.

the enemy, becoming demoralized, retreated to the castle, from which they bombarded the city. The Neapolitan fleet joined in this bombardment. May 30 the Neapolitan commander proposed an armistice, during which his 5,000 mountain searching troops returned. The remnant of Garibaldi's thousand, a few hundred banditti from the hills and a large number of the unarmed populace were all that opposed these 20,000 regulars." The conditions, proposed by the Neapolitan authorities being of little benefit, Garibaldi had the splendid audacity to break off the negotiations. He cowed the royalists, who surrendered the city to him and„evaeu.i«:ed it. Next he defeated an immensely superior force at. Milazsso, taking fthat city after desperate hand-to-hand fighting. Two instances of the fighting qualities of the Italian soldier stand out in the latter battle. Two guns of the royalist artillery were doing great execution near a highroad angle. Alessandro Pizaoli deliberately leaped before them so as to divert attention from a flank movement by a small baud of his comrades. He drew the fire and was blown limb from limb a moment before the pieces wore captured.

paste." This because Bixio pooh-poohed his wounds. His soldiers were always complaining of his bad temper and harsh language. "He is mad; he is intolerable," the volunteers cried to Garibaldi.

his many desperate attacks and repulses, the Italian soldier made one more, last, supreme effort and carried San Martino with mighty bayonet rushes the Austrians could not withstand. The loss of the allies in this great battle was 17,000 and the Austriana 22,000. At the previous battles of Montebello, fought May 20; Pales tro, fought May 30 and 31, and Magenta, fought June 4, the fighting man of "Italy shared the glory of victory to the full with his French ally.

Scintillating proof that the ancient Roman fighting spirit has descended to the Italian soldier fhashes from the inspiring page of history devoted to the name and deeds of Giuseppe Garibaldi. Never in the most glorious day of the Empire did the globe subjecting legionary perform in a more wonderful way. Across the gap of centuries of vassalage and subordination came the patriotic pulsations of the old-time unweakened battle heart. was the ideal of the Italian'-soldier and the epitome of his coimtr,y'st;fighting renaissance. There were a. few, gleams of glory through the gloom of peninsular wrangling before his- advent, but not until he drew the sword did the fighting man of Italy prove he had the ancient mettle hnd that the links of the battling chain stretching from the fifth to the nineteenth century had never been broken. .*■

"Very weL. Under whom do you wish to serve then?" asked their chief leader.

"What?"' Oh, under Bixio, of course," was the answer.

At the P»attle of the Volturno, October 1 and 2, 1800, Garibaldi led 20,000 illarmod and badly drilled troops against i 30,000 regulars. The decisive moment of the day wasjsvhen Garibaldi at the head of a body of Hungarian and \ Milanese cavalry, backed with a brilliant j bayonet charge, swept the field in the ! direction of Capua. The battle was won with 2,012 men and 77 officers prisoners of war. Naples and Sicily, as a result of this battle, voted to annex themselves to Sardinia, and at a meeting between Victor Emmanuel and Garibaldi the former was formally hailed as King of All Italy. From this time on until the final inclusion of .rlome and Venice within the /kingdom .of Italy Garibaldi fought valiantly a number of losing battles—often in defiance of the King he had made. His' entire life was given to the unification of Italy. When he visited England and. other foreign countries later ho was hailed as the greatest fighting man of his day.

I On March 18, 1848, the people of Milan, Vicenza, Padua, Brescia, Bergamo and Venice rose against their Austrian i, jru.J(*rs ; : ajac| sttacbed/thc, Austrian/soldiers in garrison. The King of Sardinia, the •most sovereign' of I at once joined them in their war ouijAustria. This most extensive confederation of Italian , soldiers seen hi, centimes attacked the enemy at Goito and won a decisive victory, although opposed by a larger army of seasoned troops. May 23 the Austrians, with a force of 19,000 men and forty pieces of artillery, attacked Viceussa, garrisoned with 3,000 Italian soldiers, mostly volunteers. The attack was repelled with a loss of 800 killed and wounded to- the assailants and 30 killed and 130 wounded to the defenders. The defence of Vicenza was justly considered one of the most brilliant feats of arms of the war. At Curtatone. May 20, the Austrians, with 15,000 men and twenty-three pieces of artil-

During the early part of the tenth century the Italian soldier was kept pretty busy fighting. First -his country-was invaded by the Magyars-or Hungarians, a fierce Turanian horde, who swept over the Alps and ravaged Northern Italy with fire and sword. Then came the, Northmen under."their famous leader Hastings, who captured, plundered and destroyed the city of Luna, supposing it was Rome. Finally the Saracens kept Southern Italy in a state of terror until the warlike Pope John X. gathered an Italian army and inflicted a severe defeat on them. From this time on the petty princes of Italy began their quarrellings, in which the fighting man of Italy took part for centuries, according as his allegiance dictated. In A. D. 982 the. Italian soldier allied himself temporarily with the infidel Saracen in the southern part of the peninsula and inflicted a decisive defeat on Otto 11. of Germany, at Crotona, expelling the invaders from the entire section.

"For there is .an undeniable heredity in,the battling- impulse. Grecian valor was transmitted unadulterated for more than'SOo : years. Consider that twentyfive successive lives would suffice to bridge the gap between A. D. 470 and A. I>. l!H4._snid the likelihood of the Italian soldier being the military legatee of the mediaeval' master-of the pilum and short sword does not seem at all remote. > On the' day th.it Koiuulus Augu'st'ulus; the last Emperor of the Western Roman Empire, was toppled from his throne the sturdy legionary on duty in Lalium, or Etruria. or Venetia, or any of the political divisions of Italia, was released from allegiance to a government that had been wiped off the world's map, and he was consequently out of his soldier's job.

Furious Night Fight,

Garibaldi, beyond question, takes precedence over any other fighting human that, has borne the caption of Italy, from king 1o commoner. What he had to encounter and overcome included mighty monarch and a powerful Pope, but he faced them unafraid. Here is a brief account of some of the remarkable battling of this ideal Italian soldier. On May u, 1860, in pursuance of secret schemes for the confederation of all the Italian States under one flag and government, Garibaldi eluded the vigilance of the Sardinian authorities and sailed : from Genoa with a force of but 1,000 volunteers, armed with bad muskets and without ammunition. Mark the number of troops well for the keener appreciation of the glory of Garibaldi. The expedition put into Orbetello. The leader boldly went to the armory there, demanded ammunition in \ the king's name, and got it from the deluded custodians, along with a few obsolete cannon. Landing was made at Marsala and 'the march on Palermo, the capital of Sicily, begun, volunteers joining the movement everywhere. At the height of Calataf imi, on the top of which the Neapolitans were posted, they numbered twice the infantry and artillery of Garibaldi. The volunteers attacked the height once, twice, thrice before they overcame the vigorous repulses of the enemy, who fell back on Palermo. Garibaldi then began the first of his famous "march around them" movements which signalized a number of his victories—after the manner of Stonewall Jackson at Chancellorsville. lie sent his artillery up a mountain road with a small detachment to face the enemy, meanwhile encircling the city to the south. At early dawn on May 27 he assaulted Palermo on the east while 5,000 of the Neapolitans were searching for him in the mountains. But there Avere 15,000 in garrison to confront him. With barely 2,000 men he cut his way through to the heart of the city. Barricading the streets, he was joined by the Palermitans, and

Garibaldi Fought with Sabre. Again, the royalist commander ordered a body of cavalry to charge and capture a gun being well served by the volunteers. They failed and on their retreat the Garibaldian infantry took station behind the hedge to escape the horses aud to empty saddles. Garibaldi and.his aide-de-camp, Giuseppe Missori, both on foot, remained in the road. The horsemen, maddened at the sight of their reeling comrades, swarmed round eager to cut down the only two of the enemy in sight. Missori shot the horse of the royalist captain, who slashed at Garibaldi as the animal fell. Garibaldi parried the stroke and, holding the bridle of the kneeling horse, killed the captain with a sabre,blow. Then, rushing to the side of his aide, the leader and his subordinate withstood ths attack of ten cavalrymen until four were killed and their comrades rushed from the hedge. With but 3,000 troops against 16,000 in an intrenched position, Garibaldi crossed to the- mainland and took Reggio. There was a fierce struggle in the great cathedral square of that city. One of the most fiery and gallant subordinate generals of the Garibaldians was Nino Bixio. The horses he successively mounted at this battle received an aggregate of nineteen wounds. He was wounded twice in thexarm as he led his division. In writing of his war experiences later he verified a local historian as follows: "My horses received ten bullets at Rome, nineteen at Reggio, three at Maddaloni. My own carcass was honored by three bullets at Rome, one at Palermo, two at Reggio and a fracture of the leg at the passage of the Voltnrno." Garibaldi sent him to bed the night following Reggio, saying, "I suppose the balls that reach you are made of puff-

Numberless instances of bravery, devotion and sacrifice during the Garibaldian period attest the battling qualities of the Italian soldier. The Cairoli family furnished the most noteworthy example. Five brothers participated in the struggltt for Italian unification on the

lery, attacked a force of Tuscan students and volunteers numbering 7,000 men and eleven pieces of artillery. Twice the Italian soldier repelled a determined assault by the enemy, giving way the third

Fought for Unity. Thousands of such fighters!, of the soil that -cradled great Rome, returned to tli'eir provinces. / Odoacer was hailed Patrician of Italy by the barbarian mercenaries who had overturned the Empire.' The retired legionary fought, the interloper, and fourteen years later; when Odoacer was slain by his successor/ Theodoric, King of the Ostrogoths, the old Roman soldier continued to fight. He was'battling against the rule of the stranger when he died, and he, -.bequeathed the conflict for a new'.'nationalization to his son. And so it continued from one son to another, carried along in twenty-five militant transfers until the unity of modern Italy was assured, fourteen centuries later.

It whs at this battle that an Italian and Saracenic commander exchanged sworde to "prove home steel with foreign spirit."

time only after every artilleryman had been killed at the suns and the Tuscan

In 1347 the Italian soldier of Rome rallied around Cola di Rienzi, "the last of the Roman Tribunes,*' a young patriot who cherished the hope of restoring the land to its former grade of greatness. Through the prestige of the ready and willing fighting man, Rieirzi was enabled to put in force a number of necessary ■reforms and by strong "measures to reduce the nobles to obedience to the government established. Later the fighting man helped him defeat the Colonnas ami.other nobles who had taken up arms against, him. An unforgettable tragedy in the history of the Indian soldier was his awful defeat at Adowa. March 1. "IS9G. Menelik. 'an Abyssinian king, with 120,000 warriors, surrounded 17,000 of Italy's fighting men—7,ooo of them native troops—in the Red Sea colonial strip, and almost annihilated the little army. The black men proved the fiercest kind of fighters, 80,000 of them bearing rifles and using them with the effectiveness of European troops.

battlefield, while their mother was as great a patriot within all possible limitations of her sphere. Four of the brothers fell fighting. Enrico, one of Garibaldi's Thousand, was killed gallantly charging at Villa Glori, 1867. Giovanni, another brother, died from wounds received in the same battle. Luigi, another brother, died while marching through Calabria, in 1860. Ernesto, still another brother, was killed in battle at Varese, ISSD. Two other remarkable soldiers of the Garibaldian epoch were I'ietro San Martino, a Sicilian nobleman, who distinguished himself as an infantryman at Palermo and Milazzo, not being ashamed to fight side by side with Giacomo Pollacie, another infantryman, son of a glover and but twelve years old. Both youthful soldiers fought with the greatest enthusiasm, preferring the hand-to-hand combat whenever they could get close enough to the enemy after rifle fire. At Milazzo the twelve-year-old Pollacie wounded two burly royalists in a bayonet charge and killed two at the first volleys. The Italian soldier fought gallantly side by side with the soldier of France in the war waged against Austria during the year 1555). At the Battle of Solferino, fought June 24, the Piedmontese troops had for their division of battling task the storming of the heights of San Mar-

killed and wounded equalled nearly half their original force.

ill Crimean War

During the Crimean War a force of Piedmontese troops won great'.creflit by their gallant fighting at the Battle of Tchernaya, August 1(>, 1855. These men had been sent to help France and England in a war that was no concern of Sardinia at all, at the suggestion of the great Prime Minister Cavour, who looked for the aid of the* two larger countries later in the unification of Italy. Even the Russians, in commenting afterward on the battle, remarked on the furious battling of the men from the Adriatic. And this recalls that in all the centuries that the Italian soldier had no unified country to fight for he was always a stout warrior for the ruler to whom he was compelled, temporarily, to give his allegiance. Ilia battling accomplishment*, however, were thus swallowed up or overshadowed in the history of the greater kingdom or empire that gave another distinctive name to its fighting men. A levy.of Italian soldiers was often incorporated in Austrian armies while that country dominated the greater part of the peninsula. Their gallantry thus became a part of Austrian glory. During the passing centuries, under different rulers, the same fighting Italian was used to obtain frequent victory. The

And how comes it that so valiant a people, with so inspiring a heritage, failed to form into a new empire, instead of remaining vassal to the modern nations so long? Ask the reason for the crumbling of mighty Greece, whose invincible sons were of the fighting phalanx of the great Alexander, and the same answer will apply to the descendants of the Roman. The Italian soldier was divided against himself by those who successfully plotted his country's ruin. "Divide and conquer"—the old, old axiom—explains it. The fighting man of Italy was beaten in detail. Craft circumvented brawn and courage. Politics and jealousies wore the successful traps and plays. So the Italian soldier fought Iris countryman for centuries.

But the descendant of the Romans lived up to the reputation of his ancestors. He left G.G7B killed and wounded on the field, or over one-third of his army of 17.000 men. line native soldier became panic stricken and ran. But no battling man ever faced death more bravely than the Italian regular. An arti'ler;- command, the Third Sicilian battery, nvre solemnly ordered to "remain at,your post and die

" 1

During the recent war undertaken by Italy to annex the fringe of desert land called Tripoli, the Italian soldier came in for much mauling at the hands of the military critics—and others. It was charged—mostly by those who, if they -had been at the seat of war-nt all, had : attached themselves to Turkish and Arab headquarters—that the fighting man of Italy was doing more retiring than battling and was not showing the proper slam-bang, .aggressive, win everything >spirit. He was takoii to task for not stalking boldly out into Sahara, dis.- ; arming the skulking Arab and planting, the banner of Italy on every sand dune with clockwork precision of accomplish-.; ment.

The fact was that the Italian soldier was mismanaged, the same as he often was in the war for the unification of 1 taly. He was marched, A after the fashion of ancient heroic defi, to an advanced spot, apparently just for the purpose of proving he had gone Forward. No system baeketfup or protected his advance; ■no-scheme of holding in a practical way, permanently, the ground gained. He wag picketed unscientifically, according to many reports, so that it was ridiculously, easy for the crawling Arabia master hi the art of concealment, to creep up.in

lation in this haphazard way, and; as *■ consequence the first; few months of iait occupation were a record of unnec-

essary fatality and blundering, with the misled fighting man of Italy the victim.

On October 23, 1011, a body of Arabs ~ appeared. before the' Italian line in the • vicinity of Bou-Meliana as a feint. They " !

assaulted and while they were being repelled their main body attacked the Italian position in • the rear. During the fight that ensued two battalions of Bersaglieri, a famous Italian soldier body, were cut off, hemmed in and, gallantly resisting, perished to the last man. On October 26 a fresh assault was made ajong the entire line. West of the cavalry barracks the Arabs and the fighting men of Italy clinched in hand to hand battling. As night came on the Italians slept on their arms in fhe trenches, worn out with the terrific day. Suddenly their Arab foes crept over the sands and threw themselves on their half-aroused adversaries. Curved knives did fatal execution, and the Italian soldier awoke to fight a brief second and then die.

When the curtain rose on the first act of tlie Italian unification drama in ISSB, Napoleon 111., whose policy was to aid Sardinia against Austria, uttered this famous dictum:—"ltaly must be free from the .Alps to the Adriatic." The Italian soldier made the dictum a true prophecy. He has battled his way to liberty under a monarch of his own choosing, "for the ballot has played as prominent a part as the bayonet in the knitting together of modern Italy. ...,'* • The valor of the soldier of Italy proceeds principally from a quick inspiration, a martial emotion and an impulse of impetuosity, lie has it in him to dash and seize, rather than to win his fight through fortitude. The glitter and the nigh lights of grim war bring out his militant endeavor much more strongly than the prosaic hardships and the dull endurances of the campaign in trenches. A long, arduous siege or a monotonous ma rch is far from being the best test of his soldiership. And his class of valor has its victories no less renowned than the slower and more sluggish triumphs.

that the remnant of the arnty may live!** The Sicilians did so. Out of four officers and sixty-two men who heard their death warrant read by their commander, just one officer and two men survived. The - others had been shot and speared by swarms of hundreds, as they served their cannon while their comrades retired. Five repeated rushes of 25,000 Abyssinians were successfully beaten back in another part of the field by 1,500 Italian regulars. In this fight the Italians killed 8,000 and wounded 5,000 Abyssinians and after a desperate struggle reached the Italian base.

the dark, stab to death and It was criminal to station a soldier. is the antithesis of patient, cool calcufe i^