“We must not forget that Garibaldi contributed significantly to the construction of the political unity of our country through a laboratory, a sort of social engineering of which we are all proud, a network of free and unprejudiced intellectuals”. Marco Foti’s intervention
Il Risorgimento, which designates the cultural, political and social movement that promoted the unification of our land, recalls the romantic, nationalist and patriotic ideals of an Italian rebirth through the achievement of a unitary political identity which, while having its ancient roots in the Roman period, it had suffered an abrupt halt [with the loss] of its political unity in 476 AD following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire.
And this is the message with which I begin to tell the figure of Giuseppe Garibaldi, whose profile as a man, in the first instance, would seem simple, addressed to a routine vision, of a great leader, of one who knew how to motivate his men and push them to victory. If one delves into the experience of this man, on the other hand, strong qualities of multifaceted personality, of ability and sensitivity in reading historical moments wisely are outlined.
A figure, that of Garibaldi, characterized by multiple facets.
Giuseppe Garibaldi was born in France, in Nice, in 1807. Initially the reflections could be many (an Italian hero born in France) but the origin of his family, Genoese, Italian, moved to the French city because his father, originally from Chiavari, he was the owner of a “tartana” and worked as a fisherman, as did his mother’s parents, who were also fishermen from Loano.
An all-Italian family. Even in the expectation of their son for whom they wanted a career as a lawyer, doctor or priest. But Giuseppe did not like studies, he preferred physical exercises and sea life, following in his father’s footsteps: he himself told (from a biography of him) that “he was more a friend of fun rather than study”.
At the age of seven he tries to escape by sea to Genoa but discovered by a priest, he was stopped as soon as he reached the heights of Monaco and then brought back home. There is nothing to say: an important adolescence, his, based on the desire for freedom and not rather on disobedience, as he will later explain to his parents the reasons for this flight.
Garibaldi is located in an important historical period for France (starting from 1815), characterized by a movement of “reaction” that is not only political, but also philosophical and literary. This “reaction” was as rapid and at the same time violent as the French Revolution. At the age of fourteen, in 1821, Garibaldi convinces his father to undertake the life of the sea and is entered in the register of the boatmen in Genoa, thus starting the adventure aboard the boats and the numerous trips around the world. Genoa is always mentioned in his life, to the point of playing an important role several years later, remaining forever in his heart.
At the age of twenty-six, on a trip to Constantinople, he meets Emile Barrault, a professor of rhetoric who expounded his Saint-Simonian ideas that “the company would be run by scientists and industrialists who, thanks to scientific discoveries and industrial development, would have given birth to a company which would guarantee better conditions of life for the proletarians ”.
The proximity to Barrault helps to convince Garibaldi that the world was crossed by a great need for freedom and, making the theses of Giuseppe Mazzini his own, I find in the struggle for the unification of Italy the moment of revenge of the peoples who felt oppressed. Freedom.
Genoa is still present in his life: at the age of twenty-seven, in 1834, he enlisted in the Sardinian Navy. Mazzini, despite Garibaldi not yet enrolled in Giovine Italia, entrusts the task of organizing an insurrection in the Ligurian city, connected to a movement already started in Savoy. The project fails and he flees first to Nice and then to Marseille. From this moment he does not return on board the ship in which he was embarked, practically becoming a deserter, a fugitive that is considered as an admission of guilt and therefore sentenced to the death penalty.
He begins his journey around the world under a false name. In Brazil, during one of his trips in disguise, he meets Anita about her and in 1842 he marries her with a religious rite in the church of San Francisco d’Assisi.
The Italian riots of independence broke out Garibaldi and authorized to return to the Sardinian states with a group of soldiers. In 1859 some politicians (including Bixio) press for Garibaldi to organize an expedition against the Bourbons. The armistice of the second war of independence, wanted by Napoleon III in which Lombardy was recognized as the Kingdom of Sardinia (with the exclusion of Mantua) but left Venice and all of Veneto in Austrian hands, had created discontent in most of the patriots Italian units.
On the night between 5 and 6 May 1860 Garibaldi, under the command of a thousand volunteers, leaves from Quarto, in the territory of the Kingdom of Sardinia for Sicily, in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.
Six Bourbon warships await Garibaldi in the Egadi Islands to guard the coasts of Marsala, seat of the Bourbon Military District, which in those years was engaged in trade with England. Garibaldi, displaying the English flag, approached the Marsala coast and, pretending to be a merchant boat, I began the landing in Marsala. Garibaldi proclaimed himself the dictator of Sicily in the name of Vittorio Emanuele II, whom he called King of Italy.
Garibaldi formed a government with eight dicasteries, abolished the tax on ground coffee, demanded that part of the state property of the Municipalities be divided among the fighters, founded a military institute where abandoned children were collected and gave a subsidy to poor families in the city of Palermo, in the meantime seeking the support of the ruling classes.
After the battle of the Volturno in 1860, Garibaldi meets Vittorio Emanuele II in Teano (there are other theses according to which the meeting took place near Caianello) and hands over the sovereignty over the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, then retires to the island of Caprera where a great period of writing begins. In 1882 he died in Caprera.
Garibaldi is a character considered as an emblem of what the Risorgimento had of anti-Catholic and even anti-religious. However, the same should be reported to the contexts and to the different phases of his work.
His myth begins to spread since the South American years within a discourse of the Italian Risorgimento, therefore detached from being anti-Catholic and anti-clerical. Since before his return to Italy, in 1848, the figure of Garibaldi is not very characterized in ideological terms, but he represents for everyone the man of the redemption of Italian honor. The dominant figure is that of a volunteer soldier, who fights for freedom and redeems the bad opinion widespread in Europe, according to which the loss of freedom has meant the loss of virility for the Italians.
The figure of Garibaldi is founded on his military exploits and on his moral figure as an upright man, from the hero to the champion of military redemption, from the man of honor to the fighter for freedom. The patriotic clergy, fascinated by Garibaldi, by the enterprise of the Thousand and the Unification of Italy produced sympathies and militants in the southern Church.
In reality, his thinking is the opposite: in historical novels, and in his memoirs, he often makes the clergy the scapegoat for national evils, from the low propensity of young people to military life, a weakness that for Garibaldi derives from the past will of priests to do altar boys instead of virile men, due to the non-participation of peasants in volunteer work in red shirts, because they are held in parishes by their parish priests, or finally due to the phenomenon of southern brigandage.
In all this, to conclude, we must not forget that Garibaldi contributed significantly to the construction of the political unity of our country through a laboratory, a sort of social engineering of which we are all proud, a network of free and unprejudiced intellectuals. It is on this basis that the unity of Italy is founded.
