Page 205 - General Giuseppe GARIBALDI - english version

THE 1860 CAMPAIGN IN SICILY 203

“we deplore the hard fighting against Italian soldiers – he said in his orderly
book of Calatafimi – we must confess that we met a resistance worthy of sol-
diers that should have been fighting for a better cause”. And to Bertani he
wrote: “our enemy fought bravely and abandoned its position only after
engaging in relentless hand-to-hand frays. Our fights in Lombardy were cer-
tainly less relentless and fought with less bravery than yesterday’s fight”.

B) GARIBALDI’S OPERATIONS

We already explained which strategic problem the great commander of
Nice wanted to solve when embarking for Sicily. With 1089 young men,
most of which were badly armed, he had to land and escape the Neapolitan
vessels cruising those waters, he had to survive by any means available and
conquer the entire island by attacking an army Corps with 24.000 men who
garrisoned it, supplied with all they needed, supported by well armed cities
and who safely communicated with Naples and could rely on the resources
of the Bourbon monarchy.
It could seem folly, and it was, if we analyse it only by reason; it was a folly,
indeed, but led by Garibaldi; and the men who formed the expedition were
Crispi, La Masa, Bixio, Calvino, Orsini, all prepared to go straight to the
scaffold if that was what was necessary to light in Sicily the fire of the revolt
that was sparking everywhere else.
Of course, when Garibaldi landed, he did not imagine that his undertak-
ing would take the trend that it took due to fortuitous events; if he hadn’t
been stopped at the very beginning, as was the case for Pisacane, the only
rational choice would have been to clear his path among the population and
the many villages of the island and possibly reach Castrogiovanni (now Enna)
and from there to march on Palermo, and this only when the fire of revolu-
tion had been brought very close to it.
But things went differently.
Let us examine in detail the various phases of his action.

1. – Choice of landing place. – Due to Garibaldi’s point of departure and
the forces that he had, the choice of a place where to disembark was neces-
sarily limited to the few places along the western and southern coasts. Apart
from escaping the cruising Neapolitan ships, and from choosing a bay clear