Page 326 - General Giuseppe GARIBALDI - english version

308 GENERAL GIUSEPPE GARIBALDI

guards to sop the enemy from escaping; big fires are lit.
Foreseeing that the battle will be resumed the following day a reinforce-
ment of French troops is requested and prepared in Rome.
The night passes with no alarms.
Garibaldi goes back to Monterotondo at about 17:00 and goes up to the
turret of Palazzo Piombino. He thought of organising a last resistance in
Monterotondo and while he gives orders to strongly occupy the station, orders
the few left available to take a strong position on the high ground in front of
Monterotondo and Villa Ramorini and to barricade themselves in the village.
Garibaldi has no hope of getting help soon. Since the beginning of the
battle he had hoped for the support of the Paggi column (the three battalions
of S. Angelo, Montecelio and Palombara), but this gave no sign of life.
Around 15:00 with the advancing of the French, Garibaldi had ordered
Captain Giacomo Vivaldi Pasqua from his General Staff to go and look for it
“behind Casa Villerma” (Casa Manzi) but then thinking rightly that the if
Paggi had not already acted on his initiative, the call would have been too
late, he cancels the order to Pasqua.
There is no doubt that the inertia of the Paggi column on the 3 rd
November is unjustifiable; its intervention could have had incalculable effects
behind the Papal army. If its battalions had simply run to the take up the
guns – as was their basic duty – given their distance and their position, Paggi,
with his 900 men would have reached the flank and the back of the French-
Papal troops at about 16:00 at the moment when they had almost no more
reserves. It could have been victory, or at least, by attracting the attention and
the efforts of the French on himself, could have made the conditions of the
main corps of the volunteers less disastrous.
But Paggi, after surprising the main corps of the Garibaldians by not occupy-
ing, as he was ordered or retreating from the hills between the Nomentana and
the road to Tivoli, with his inaction he destroyed the last hopes Garibaldi had.
During the battle Garibaldi, after returning from Casa Santucci, remained
almost always at the south exit of Mentana; he went away briefly to personally
set up and start firing his pieces in Salincerqua. When later on the left of the vol-
unteers, with the appearance of the French that were advancing between the
Conventino and Monte S. Croce, there was panic and running away towards S.
Giorgio, Garibaldi waited personally to scrape together his volunteers and return
them to their positions. After ordering the retreat on Monterotondo he person-
ally guides it together with General Lante di Montefeltro della Rovere, who had