Page 247 - General Giuseppe GARIBALDI - english version

FROM THE STRAITS TO THE VOLTURNO 245

But the soul of the battle, the beating heart of his army, as it was always
the case in all the fights that he led, was the Dictator, the commander,
Garibaldi. Present wherever fate seemed adverse, he was the powerful anima-
tor and inciter: with his look, his words, and his very presence.
No one of Medici’s men could doubt their success when in S. Iorio they
saw him motionless, wrapped in his large cape, with his sabre sheathed on his
shoulder, as was his habit, looking impassibly at the progress of his enemies.
And just when the Bourbon troops obtained the first rapid achievements in
front of Francis II, who had come to the battlefield together with the Counts
of Trapani and Caserta, to witness the defeat of the «Scoundrel» that had
deprived him of his Kingdom and now threatened his crown, and the volun-
teers moved back and the battle took that chaotic aspect that seemed to
announce disorder, withdrawal, retreat, he spread among the ranks of his
men the firm conviction of certain victory.
With the Battle of the Volturno, Garibaldi’s work for the conquest of the
Kingdom of Naples can be considered concluded.
st
But if the fight of October 1 had forced the Bourbon army to retreat to
the positions from where they had left, without achieving the goals they had
in mind, the army of Francis II could not be considered destroyed.
Although the losses had been huge and morale was diminishing daily, as a
consequence of the many defeats and of the revolutionary propaganda, the
King of Naples still had about 40,000 men and, what was more important
for his cause, a reaction was building in the Abruzzo region, where Bourbon
supporters incited the people against the revolution.
On the other hand, Garibaldi’s army was daily loosing its wonderful war-
rior efficiency and the illness, suspended temporarily by the battle of the
Volturno, started again immediately afterward with evident symptoms.
Also Garibaldi’s army had the pros and cons of all volunteer troops. If
those legions had started and achieved an undertaking that seemed the fool-
st
ish dream of a fanatic, they could not, after October 1 , attack fortresses,
proceed with long sieges, continue in a draining guerrilla campaign, in its sac-
rifices, in its endurance, in its discomforts without the beautiful heroic blazes
and the overwhelming outbursts that had fed the fire of their enthusiasm
from their landing in Marsala to the hard days of S, Maria and S. Angelo.
Garibaldi’s army had swollen its ranks along the way, but the growing
number had negative consequences in terms of their cohesion. First of all, the