Page 212 - General Giuseppe GARIBALDI - english version

210 GENERAL GIUSEPPE GARIBALDI

In the orderly book issued after the battle of Milazzo, he wrote: “Our
enemy, protected beyond natural shelters, has escaped the onslaught of our
bayonets, and this time, too, you have seen that the bayonets only, and not
gunshot, decide the outcome of a battle”. This tactic of the bayonet was a
necessity for him, since the ammunitions available were scant and the short-
range rifles not so many, but in Milazzo, more than everywhere else, the seri-
ous losses suffered demonstrated that rifle fire was anything but dispensable
at that time. Seven years later the French chassepots unfortunately gave to
Garibaldi’s soldiers the clearest demonstration of this.
Garibaldi did not apply only tactics: in 1860 in Sicily he also engaged in
strategy and politics; His operations were always based on the behaviour of
the population and the action of the squads, which he used within and out-
side the scope of action of his tactics to tease his enemies and keep them con-
tinuously in the dark about his moves.
He always kept in contact with Pilo and La Masa, and the key to his real-
ly prodigious success must be found in his full confidence of the patriotism
of the Sicilians, and especially in the wise work that he continuously carried
out to coordinate the moves of his volunteers and those of the squads.
But where Garibaldi can be considered unrivalled, and even superior to
Napoleon, is in the qualities of his soul.
Empowered with a strong will and a vivid faith in the fate of his
Homeland, that he wanted free and united, he was naturally optimistic about
the good outcome of a campaign or a tactical action he had undertaken and
served them with his robustness, his remarkable sobriety that pushed him to
sacrifices and to brave actions and sometimes bordered on recklessness.
Due to his power of physical attraction, and to the bright light of his past,
he exerted on the people who followed him a wonderful ascendancy. And
here it is better to hear what Bandi wrote, who was one of his best followers:
«Many men have perhaps received by nature the force, the courage and the
heedlessness of death that shone brightly in him; but only seldom, I believe,
men of war have kept a serene attitude and have been master of their souls as
he did; and we therefore may say, with no fear of exaggeration, that the great-
ness of the danger and the extraordinary difficulty of an undertaking made
clear and calm his eye more than anything else, and more cautious and more
shrewd his judgment. Indeed his sharp resolutions and the swift rapidity of
his decisions were among the most remarkable qualities of that great com-
mander, who never lost his soul, nay, and not even his keenness of vision,