Page 237 - General Giuseppe GARIBALDI - english version

FROM THE STRAITS TO THE VOLTURNO 235

for the goals to be achieved, many casualties and many prisoners! But, as we
said, the fights of the 19 th and the 20 th were not useless, since they succeed-
ed in confusing the royal forces who were about to launch a general attack
just when the volunteers had not yet gathered and Garibaldi was absent,
called elsewhere by those men who usually fought with words and ideas,
whereas it would have been better to take up arms..

THE BATTLE OF THE VOLTURNO

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On October 1 , at the Volturno, the famous battle took place – one of
the most important battles in our Risorgimento, and for sure the greatest
among Garibaldi’s feats - between the Bourbon troops that had come out of
Capua for the reconquest and Garibaldi’s troops who had taken up a defen-
sive position on the left bank of the river.
The ground on which the fate of the last Bourbon army was decided
between dawn and sunset of that hard day is an area of hills usually called
Tifatini Mounts, (from Mount Tifata, that rises east of Capua) stretching
between the river and the long series of built-up areas that cover the distance
between the old city of S. Maria and the royal city of Caserta, with its splen-
did Palace designed by Vanvitelli for King Charles in the mid 18 th century.
It is a land that can be travelled over, despite the roughness of the ground that
makes some mistake those hillocks for mountains. In the west, in a bend of
the Volturno, lies the triangle-shaped city of Capua with its old ramparts and
the castle of Charles V that after 1848 had become the sullen prison of the
Neapolitan patriots.
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After the sad events occurred between the 19 th and the 21 , no remark-
able feat of arms had occurred between the two enemy armies.
Since by then all Garibaldi’s units were flocking to the Volturno, the
Dictator could finally organise a firm occupation of his positions. To this
end, on September 22 nd , he gave precise directives in an order drafted in his
characteristic style of a soldier that was not too much familiar with writing
but that knew what he wanted and said it in clear words. After stressing the
importance of Maddaloni, the core of the communications leading to Naples,
«the key of the position», as it was said at that time, he ordered the establish-
ment of strongholds, gave directives for the surveillance of the passages across