Page 216 - General Giuseppe GARIBALDI - english version

214 GENERAL GIUSEPPE GARIBALDI

II became indignant at the “friendly Sovereign” who supported him. And
even later did they discover the shrewd game played by the Count of Cavour.
Then the orders to the Sardinian Army of Persano ceased to be ambiguous,
and the definite order allowing the general to do what he wanted, so that the
red wave of the revolution could bring the flag of the Savoy across the
straights, climb along the peninsula and stretch out up to Venice.
The conquest of Sicily was not, and could not be, but the heroic prelude
to the invasion of the Kingdom, a harsh blow to its prestige and military effi-
ciency. In fact, immediately after the battle of Milazzo, that broke the last
resistance of the Bourbons on the island, Garibaldi, meditating to cross to the
continent, was already thinking of the means and ways to overcome the seri-
ous political and military difficulties that he saw in his way.
The scanty band of Marsala had rapidly grown, like a raging flood fed by
a thousand streams, and now that crowd of armed people had to be gathered,
organised and formed into cadres; finally, a base of departure had to be pre-
pared, and from there to move forward. The choice of the commander,
appropriate from all points of view, fell on that tongue of land extending into
the sea north of Messina and that was commonly called Punta del Faro.
That sort of sea bulwark was, therefore, the gathering area of the small
army that prepared the invasion of Calabria.
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There it was possible to count them: on the evening of August, 8 , 1860,
Garibaldi’s army totalled about 23,000 men distributed in three Divisions,
numbered in succession of the great Piedmontese units, almost so as to estab-
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lish an ideal connection with their comrades in the northern army: 15 ,
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General Türr, 16 , General Cosenz; 17 , General Medici. But Garibaldi’s
forces were not all there: the Bentivenga battalion of Cosenz’ Division had
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remained to garrison Milazzo, whereas all Bixio’s Division (the 18 ) had
gone to Bronte to suppress the serious riots that had broken out on the occa-
sion of the distribution of the municipal assets.
Punta del Faro was transformed into a vast bivouac, where, in the memo-
ry of the recent victories, a crowd of youth waited the new orders of their
leader. All around, in the meantime, appropriately deployed by Orsini, the
35 cannons conquered by the enemy had been arranged in battery to chase
away the Bourbon warships, if they had come close to the coast.
If the forces seemed numerically adequate for the difficult undertaking
that Garibaldi wanted to accomplish - and he did not doubt that they would
further grow, after the first successful actions on the other shore, with the