Page 230 - General Giuseppe GARIBALDI - english version

228 GENERAL GIUSEPPE GARIBALDI

First of all, the King of Naples had not surrendered and still announced
that he wanted to reconquer his lost kingdom, get back the States taken from
him by force, and acknowledge what he believed to be his sacrosanct right;
also the Bourbon army, although reduced in number by defeats and defec-
tions, and the deep crisis had reduced its material and moral efficiency, was
preparing the defence between Capua and Gaeta, and certainly was thinking
of a reconquest. To this end, general Ritucci was deploying along the
Volturno three infantry and two cavalry Divisions.
The situation in the Neapolitan and Sicilian territories was equally serious.
Men and political factions, damaged in their private as well as collective inter-
ests by the Garibaldian storm and the new order of things, were supporting
the few partisans of King Francis II and the plotters who usually come out of
hiding in these situations, and here and there appeared groups of malcon-
tents and critical people, veiled oppositions and even nests of rebels and
insurrectionists.
But if in the cities the attempts of revolt could be easily put down, in the
countryside they led to real acts of war, as in Ariano, for instance, where the
bishop and generals Flores and Bonanno stirred up a revolt that the Milano
Brigade had to put down with arms and in Dentecane, where the National
Guard had to disperse the rioters.
Also revolts and ambushes were organised at the back of the Piedmontese
army, when it entered the Kingdom of Naples, which eventually led to that
guerrilla war that took the name of “brigantaggio” (brigandage), and for a
long time kept in ferment the southern provinces and was the cause of so
much sacrifice of life and money for the young Italian State.
As if this was not enough, in such an exceptional moment, next to the
reactionary demonstrations, there was also dissent within patriots and there
was divergent opinions on the future status of the freed states and the medi-
ated and immediate scope of Garibaldi’s action: therefore, for many who in
the first outburst of the Mille had not foreseen that beautiful undertaking as
aimed at gathering together all Italians under a single flag but as an impulse
of the unbridled strength of the population against the established govern-
ment, there was a return to that ungrateful Royalist loyalty of Garibaldi while
the followers of Mazzini’s ideas both in Naples and Palermo were proudly
proclaiming their Republican leanings and were talking of separatism, so
blinded by their libertarian ideologies that they did not understand that get-
ting rid of the Bourbons was meaningless if Italy remained disunited.