Page 151 - General Giuseppe GARIBALDI - english version

THE 1859 CAMPAIGN 149

This proves that their brave action, that threatened to entangle the right flank
of the imperial Army, had created some alarm in the enemy’s camp. The day
after, it was believed, at the headquarters of Gyulai, that the Treponti was a
mock battle to hide the advance of Garibaldi on Salò with 10,000 men and
2 batteries, with the aim of crossing the Chiese upstream of Ponte S. Marco
and threaten the flank and the rear of the imperials. Also, the news of that
courageous battle arrived in Verona to the Supreme Command – taken by the
Emperor Franz Joseph on the 16 th – resulted in cancelling the orders given
when it was believed that there was a possible outflanking from the south of
the “quadrilateral” by the Franco-Sardinians, seeming that the action of
Garibaldi was a prelude to a direct attack on Chiese. On the morning of the
same day, Marshal Urban was called to Verona and replaced in the command
of he Division.
It must also be said that the battle of Treponti could have been avoided if
Garibaldi, when he saw that the cavalry Division was not arriving, had asked
and waited for new orders before going to the Bettoletto Bridge. A man of
action and intolerant of delays, he gambled with audacity when, with the
bulk of his forces, he went upstream of the Chiese, 15 kilometres from the
Mella where the Sardinian troops were fully aware that he was going to leave
not far behind him - a few kilometres away - an entire enemy’s Division,
faced by a few companies. But from the Sesia on the leader of the volunteers
had been always ahead by a few kilometres from the right flank of the enemy
effortlessly: and this time too it is possible that the imperials would not have
attacked if the troops left in Treponti had not been transported by their
enthusiasm to pursue the enemy’s outposts up to Castenedolo.
Guerzoni says that, from the entry into Brescia, the history of the Hunters
of the Alps and their captain ceases to be independent from that of the
French-Sardinian Army and that from then on the mind that controls it is
another; the ideas comes from above, from a far and higher sphere, and the
man at the head of the Hunters of the Alps, under the orders of other lead-
ers, trapped ever more in the rigid mechanism of military hierarchy, becomes
a simple “brigadiere” of the army and is no longer Garibaldi. There is a lot of
truth in this observation. The fact is that the battle of Treponti, however glo-
rious, was a tactical failure and it is very likely that it would not have been if
Garibaldi had been allowed his autonomy in his early mission to beleaguer
the flank of the enemy as he saw fit. His boundless and instinctive love for his