Page 145 - General Giuseppe GARIBALDI - english version

THE 1859 CAMPAIGN 143

are constantly marching with little care of our communications. It could be
said that we live a closed life: we go where the enemy is without caring too
much of the number. All the rest is silent; continuous marching, never stop
for more than 6 hours, irregular eating, but bread, cheese and sometimes
some grilled meat is all that the soldiers receive; our hardship is being always
short of shoes; but we all walk happily…”. And he finished with these
prophetic words of faith: “…I am certain that, regardless of the vicissitudes
of this war, the day has arrived when Austria has ceased to reign in Italy.
Of course, not everything is great in our future, but time and posterity will
do the rest…”.
The Garibaldians remained two days in Bergamo to reorganise them-
selves, to complete the training and enlist volunteers, while the guides on
horseback and some detachments pushed forward faraway explorations and
kept alive the uprising of the populations.
Among the detachments sent, one, of about forty Hunters under the com-
mand of Lieutenant Pisani, was definitely sent to Brescia, to keep an eye on
the enemy; the evening of the 9 th it was in Palazzolo on the Oglio and the
following day in Spina, near Cologne, between Palazzolo and Rovato, where
it managed to hold at bay an entire enemy battalion coming from Verona,
retreating on the Orfano Mountain after capturing 18 men.
The same day, Garibaldi went, through Lecco and Como, to Milan to talk
with the King, who awarded him the gold medal of military valour and
announced the appointment of him by royal decree as Major General of the
Sardinian army, of which, until then he only served as by ministerial disposi-
tion. He also expressed to him his warmest congratulations for the fearless
and brave behaviour of the Hunters.
When the general told the volunteers of the King’s pleasure, he said he was
moved and proud to lead those braves, but added only the recommendation
of a more “accurate discipline”.
Once he distributed the rewards for merit awarded by the King, on the
th
evening of the 11 , having learned that marshal Urban had retreated from
the Adda and that Brescia had been cleared of the Imperial forces, he left
Bergamo for Brescia through the main road.
He left Major Camozzi in Bergamo and sent Lieutenant Cadolini to
Sàrnico, on the lake Iseo, for recruitment and to keep alive the insurrection,
a task that Captains Costa, Fanti and Ferrari had respectively in Varese,