Page 138 - General Giuseppe GARIBALDI - english version

136 GENERAL GIUSEPPE GARIBALDI

The Landi Company was successful in entering the communication trench,
of the fort, where it was engaged in a violent hand-to-hand battle with the
defenders, but once the officers were wounded – Landi and the Second
Lieutenants Gastaldi and Sprovieri – had to retreat. On the other hand, the
Bronzetti Company, badly guided by the locals, wandered the entire night
and did nothing. The darkness also prevented the howitzers being pulled to
climb up the hard road of he Sasso del Ferro, so that they returned to
Cittiglio. Spegazzini, the third captain, was also wounded during the retreat
that took place under lively artillery and rifle shots fired blindly by the
enemy. Surprisingly the steamboats also failed because of the panic of the
boatmen when the guns were fired.
At dawn of June 1, having added to the battery 4 mountain howitzers on
the hillock south of Laveno, the general in person, who had remained up there
with the Genoese Carabinieri for the night, accepted the uselessness of any
further action and ordered the retreat to Cittiglio, which took place slowly and
in total order, despite the violent fire from the forts and the steamboats.
The Hunters of the Alps suffered 18 wounded some of which like Second
Lieutenant Gastaldi, was left in the hands of the enemy who only lost 7 men.

Garibaldi’s return from Como and Varese and the venture of Laveno
received a fair amount of criticism. But history has accepted it and chooses
to highlight mainly the artistic side of that sudden decision. A general of
common calibre would have kept the very tired and worn out troops around
Como to reorganise them, with the risk of being taken by surprise in that
lowland by an offensive return of Urban’s larger forces. The immobility, given
the task given to Garibaldi to act on the Austrian right, corresponded neither
to his mission nor his nature, intolerant of stagnation, particularly since only
being active could compensate for numerical inferiority. What should he do?
Place himself, with his slender formation with no horses or guns, in a flat and
open ground, in search of the enemy towards Milan, where he would have
met, apart from the Urban Division, the garrison of the Lombardo-Veneto
capital? It must not be forgotten that on May 28 and 29 the closest allied
troops were in Vercelli, 75 kilometres as the crow flies from Como, and the
st
30 th and 31 were in Palestro, more or less the same distance.
The Laveno expedition, if successful which it might have been – could
have made secure the rear and communications of the small autonomous
corps of volunteers who in those days had been abandoned to their own