Page 141 - General Giuseppe GARIBALDI - english version

THE 1859 CAMPAIGN 139

that he had the advantage of dictating his will to the enemy: this very well
chosen march, carried out with 3000 volunteers, tired and malnourished, fac-
ing an entire Division of three Brigades that did not dare to bother them, is
the best proof of it.
The first thought of the general was to strengthen the position, dislocat-
ing one regiment to Camerlata and one to the castle of Baradello and to S.
Fermo, maintaining the contact with the enemy through four bold and large
patrols led by officers and sent in four different directions.
They were supposed to deceive the population and the enemy by appear-
ing in different localities, showing from afar the uniform of the volunteers,
ordering food supplies for thousands of men here and there and then disap-
pearing.
That same day, the 2 nd , the commander of the 1 st Imperial Corps,
Marshal Clam-Gallas, had sent another Brigade in support of Urban towards
Gallarate and, believing that the feared Garibaldi was in Lecco, seemed deter-
mined to put him out of service, with the overwhelming force of his troopse.
And here it is worth mentioning the very poor forces and means available
to the leader considering the enormity of the task assigned to him, so much
so that one could presume that, given the possibility that the French-
Sardinian command had to attack the imperials on the right – as he did – the
reason why more forces were not given to the popular Hero was to avoid
attracting too much attention from the enemy to the north. In fact, as we
saw, he had little more than three thousand fighters, poorly armed, poorly
dressed, with no artillery, almost no cavalry, as if all could be replaced by the
tactical acuity and the common sense and expediency of the leader and the
courage of his soldiers, who under his bewitching look went to their death
with a smile.
The general did not fail to write to the minister of war and the King,
explaining how with the sole forces at his disposal it would have been very dif-
ficult to achieve the desired aim and for which orders were given to bring
under his command all the volunteers that at that time were in Savigliano and
Acqui, including the Hunters of the Apennines, who had joined largely to go
and fight at his orders. But the minister of war rejected this request because
for the time being that corps was not able to withstand the toils of war.
In those days - unbeknown to the volunteers - great events had taken
place between Sesia and Ticino.
th
Since May 20, the Emperor Napoleon III, who on the 14 , in