Page 223 - General Giuseppe GARIBALDI - english version

FROM THE STRAITS TO THE VOLTURNO 221

meeting between the Dictator and General Briganti and ordered the latter to
come and meet him, and, after demanding an explanation of his conduct,
ordered him to oppose with all means the advance of the volunteers.
Therefore he set sail again to communicate with the fleet, but that was far
away by then, and, sailing southward of Sicily, was going towards Naples.
Briganti could do nothing now. His troops were disbanding and disappear-
ing, like snow in the sun, and he was discouraged and deprived of power and
was going towards his death, which he would seek on the battlefield. In Melito,
st
where the units of the 1 of the line regiment and the light infantry were gath-
ered, whereas he was about to address the soldiers, aware of the poor resistance
opposed at Villa S. Giovanni and the meetings with the leaders of the enemy
forces, he was greeted with insults and derision. Then, under the eyes of his
officers, passive witnesses, he was shot dead and stripped of his decorations.
The ruinous disintegration of the royal forces continued. Also Melendez,
surrounded by Cosenz’ troops, did not react to the order of surrender. His
7000 men lay down their arms and scattered in all directions - a very sad sight
of broken morale for an army that had the reputation of being among the
best armies of Italy before some few thousands insurgents animated by that
faith and enthusiasm that the Bourbon leaders had not been able to kindle
and feed in their men. From that day - said Guerzoni – those soldiers were
seen “to leave their ranks as they pleased, forming a long line across all the
streets of the Kingdom; bustling about and throwing down their weapons
here and there; living on robberies and charity; sometimes holding out their
hands even in front of Garibaldi’s soldiers who drove them forward; they
went from place to place either in an humble and harmless way, or commit-
ting crimes and showing appalling behaviour”.
The achievements of the volunteers, which followed one another with the cat-
astrophic swiftness of ineluctable events, the dispersal of the Bourbon military
resistance, from which it seemed possible to hear the roar, was certain to produce
the great effect that Garibaldi had foreseen even before leaving Punta del Faro.
While at the court of Naples the consternation and apprehension of the
King and of his few loyal subjects grew day by day, joy and hope spread wher-
ever an Italian heart could be found. Then the revolt spread like furious wild-
fire from the Sicilian Sea to the Ionian and Adriatic Sea, and did not follow
the wave of the Red Shirts in their victorious advance, but preceded them as
the tempest does with the wrath of the sky.
In the name of the Sardinian King and his Dictator, the cities of Calabria,