GARIBALDI, LIBERATOR

Taranaki Daily News, 15 September 1934, Page 13 (Supplement)

GARIBALDI, LIBERATOR

FATHER OF UNITED ITALY

(By

I.N.M.)

It is a common complaint that romance and adventure are rapidly fading before the rush and bustle of modern life, and that to find them one must search ever further afield. Admittedly glimpses into the past of even less than a century ago seem to lend the theory some support. The death at Auckland this week of Captain W. J. Newby, the 102-year-old veteran of Garibaldi’s famous campaigns in Italy, gives opportunity for just such a glimpse, because for the spice of adventure and the richest colourings of romance one could hardly go past the extraordinary character of Garibaldi himself. From the son of a simple fisherman he rose to a position of national, even international, importance, and became the hero of his country and the idol of many another. Garibaldi was not a highly educated man, as his three novels show. The average schoolboy could write as well. He was a child in many ways, yet his indomitable spirit, his brilliant generalship, and his genius for leadership won him a place among men to which few may aspire.

Giuseppe Garibaldi was born at Nice on July 4, 1807. His father was a simple, God-fearing fisherman, seldom in prosperous circumstances, /but. he contrived to give the, boy a fairly good education, possibly • with the idea of making him a priest. However, young Garibaldi determmed'tb be a sailor, and after a rapid rise in the merchant service he .was appointed in 1828 second in command of the brig Cortese. His early voyages, including a visit to Rome, filled him with democratic ardour, and it followed, only naturally, that he should be involved in the “Young Italy” movement of Mazzini, whom he had met

at Marseilles. As a result he was condemned to death for taking part in an attempt to seize Genoa. Escaping to Marseilles, he fled to South America, and offered his services to the province of Rio Grande, then in rebellion against the Emperor of Brazil. There he distinguished himself as a guerilla warrior and 33 a privateer. His elopement with and marriage to the beautiful Creole Anita Riveira de Silva was not the least romantic of his adventures, the popular story being that he espied the girl while sailing near the coast, landed in haste, convinced himself and her that she was the wife he had been waiting for, and returned with her to the ship. She was the constant companion of all his early campaigns, and the mother of his three children. After some experience as a drover, a shipbroker and a teacher of mathematics, Garibaldi reverted to his roving life of guerilla warfare, on behalf of the revolting Montevideans and won fresh renown as a naval commander. 'The “red shirt” of Garibaldi had thus already become famous when he first made his appearance in Italy at the head of a body of volunteers that performed some notable feats against the Austrians on the Swiss frontier. He appeared again in 1849 . when the Pope, Pius IX., fled from Rome and a republic was proclaimed. He refused the dictatorship in June of that year and a month later, after a brilliant defence, had to abandon Rome. He retired, pursued by the Austrians, to the Adriatic, hounded from shelter to shelter) with only his wife, now desperately ill, at his side. Soon, worn out by suffering and anxiety, Anita died and was buried in the sand. . He was arrested at length and requested to leave Italy, niuch' to the indignation of the people, for he had already become a national hero. After a visit to New York' he settled in 1854 on the island of Caprera as a farmer.

Rest was not for. him, however, and when in 1859 Austria declared war on the Italian allies he answered the call of his country and placed his sword at the disposal of Victor Emmanuel of Savoy. With his “chasseurs of the alps” he gave valuable service to the allies, and after the temporary peace of Villafranca, when Napoleon 111. withdrew his aid, he went to central Italy as second in command. Checked for a while by the loss of French support, Cavour, of whose statesmanship the whole scheme •of Italian unity was the aim, set about his work in another direction and saw in the fire and leadership of Garibaldi the possible salvation of Italy. He therefore encouraged him with both moral and material support in the freeing of Sicily from the Bourbon authority of Naples. Completely successful there, Garibaldi immediately brought his “thousand heroes” to the mainland and with a sweeping succession of victories forced his way to the capital. He then issued a proclamation assuming the dictatorship of the kingdom, and in that capacity handed over the Neapolitan fleet to Piedmont By brilliant generalship he defeated the Neapolitans completely at Volturno, and, the Piedmontese troops, from the north meeting similar success, within three weeks the campaign was at-an end, and Cavour was master of the situation..

On November 9 Victor Emmanuel and Garibaldi entered Naples side by side in the same carriage, and the dictator, in laying down his office, called on the people, now happily re-united with their brethren, .to join in consummating the great work of Italian unity. Thus within two years after Villafranca the Italian kingdom had emerged as a new Power in Europe. Rome still held out, but Cavour was content to wait a little. Not so Garibaldi, however. His burning patriotism could see only one aim, the completion of his triumph by the occupation of Rome. In 1062, therefore, he embarked on a rash attempt against the capital, supported admittedly by popular sentiment, was met at Aspromonte by Italian troops, and fell wounded by an Italian bullet. He was detained for two months, then allowed to retire to Caprera. For the rest of his life, except for a brief “outing” against Prussia in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, he remained a helpless invalid at Caprera, and through the generosity of his English friends he became the entire proprietor of the island. On June 2, 1882, he died,- mourned not only by his countrymen but also by the lovers of liberty throughout Europe. Although as a soldier he was perhaps nothing more than a resourceful leader of irregulars, and although his ignorance of political considerations, amounting almost to childish simplicity, sometimes did actual harm to .the ■ cause he advocated, yet it would be impossible to over-rate the importance to Italian unity of his wholehearted devotion to his country, a devotion that he communicated to all with whom he came in contact.