Page 236 - General Giuseppe GARIBALDI - english version

234 GENERAL GIUSEPPE GARIBALDI

And so he ordered Cattabene to take his position as best as he could, and
to wait for help from a Brigade of General Medici, who was expected to reach
that place within a few hours. But since the entire Brigade could not be avail-
able, the 2 nd regiment of Colonel Vaccheri was sent in its stead.
st
Unfortunately, the morning after, September 21 , while these troops were
already marching on the hills south of Caiazzo to help Cattabene, two battal-
ions of light infantrymen, some cavalry squadrons and an 8-piece battery left
without delay from Capua and rushed to attack Garibaldi’s soldiers in
Caiazzo.
Cattabene’s situation appeared immediately more than worrisome, in fact
desperate. The volunteers, attacked in their front lines by the Bourbon
troops, under the fire of an artillery that the two pieces they possessed could
not counter, were at the same time attacked from behind by the population,
who had suddenly risen and were shouting loudly “Viva Maria!”.
The braveness of leaders and soldiers could do nothing against the num-
bers of the enemy and the treason of the population. Caiazzo was lost.
Cattabene, with most of his men, fell into the hands of the royal troops and
the others found their death fighting desperately in the narrow streets of the
town and in the waters of the Volturno, that they tried to ford or cross swim-
ming.
Nor could Vacchieri do anything better, arriving on the hills north of
Caiazzo, he had counterattacked the enemies and succeeded for a few
moments in stopping them. He, too, was overwhelmed and stuck between
the Bourbon troops that by then had the town under their power and the
squadrons galloping around him; he had to find shelter towards the river, and
counter his assailants step after step to prevent his retreat becoming a bloody
rout. Also Vacchieri suffered huge losses. Out of the 1200 men in
Cattabene’s and Vaccheri’s troops, only 400 could reach Garibaldi’s positions.
A very sad day for the volunteers! While the waters of the Volturno car-
ried the corpses of the Cacciatori di Bologna (Light Infantrymen from
Bologna), another setback devastated Garibaldi’s Army. Major Cudafy, who
had been sent with 300 men to Vairano and Marzanello through Solopaca to
carry out a demonstration at the back of the Bourbon troops, was attacked
by a larger army and was forced to retreat to Maddaloni with serious losses.
A wrong interpretation of the orders, an excessive development of opera-
tions that only had to annoy and stop the enemy, a use of inadequate means