Page 12 - General Giuseppe GARIBALDI - english version

10 GENERAL GIUSEPPE GARIBALDI

concept, his sudden decisions and most of all the irresistible vigour and res-
olute action revealed the original imprint of the bold warrior, hero of so many
feats in the endless pampas and in the rough and tangled mountainous
regions of the countries north of the Plata, or of the elusive pirate still a leg-
end in the lashed Brazilian coasts or on the large marshes and the immense
oceanic rivers of that far away scene of war.

FIRST PERIOD (1836 - 1842)

Everybody knows, it having been mentioned in the numerous and famous
biographies of the Hero (and we think it superfluous to mention them here),
of the curious events through which the young Garibaldi, from being a mod-
est and unknown captain of a coasting vessel on the Brazilian coasts, sudden-
ly, in May ’37, became one of the most famous privateers and then a brave
commander on the sea and on the land in the defence of the small and poor-
ly armed Republic of the Rio Grande do Sul, that had been desperately fight-
ing for a long time against the powerful Brazilian empire.
The fantastic events of this war without quarter and with little hope of
winning took five years (from ’37 to ’42) of the tempestuous American mil-
itary life of our Hero. After this, and with a pause of only a few months, his
fighting activity started again for a further six years (from July ’42 to April
’48) reaching its highest expression, this time in the service of the Republic
of the Oriental Band (Uruguay) in a decisive battle against the domineering
conquering aims of the cruel tyrant Rosas, dictator of the nearby Republic of
Argentina.
An attempt at recounting all the extraordinary events of this two long
periods of war that made famous the name of Garibaldi would risk repeating
more or less what is known from other well known but very scarce sources
available: the first and most authoritative that of the “Autobiographical mem-
oirs” of the Hero, to which, more or less, everybody added, at times also with
unbridled fantasy, as in that sort of “romanticized life” written by the master-
ly pen of A. Dumas.
On the other hand, rather than a detailed and methodical tale of war
events, our interest is to highlight most of all the original personality of
Giuseppe Garibaldi as an improvised, but immediately exceptional com-