Page 333 - General Giuseppe GARIBALDI - english version

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THE FRENCH CAMPAIGN 1870 - 1871 315

physical pain that tormented him in 1870. He was 63, but a life spent among
restless fights had taken it out of his body before the due time and in a dev-
astating way. Gout obliged him to frequent periods of a very painful immo-
bility. Struck by a serious attack in December, for fifteen days his health con-
ditions raised serious concerns; he could barely stand with the help of a stick
and the wound received in his foot at Aspromonte was still open and had
deleterious effects on his condition, and he often could not mount a horse.
However, in the most delicate moments of this campaign, despite the rigours
of the climate and often hiding his suffering, Garibaldi went out on contin-
uous, long reconnaissance tours on horseback or in a coach and wanted to
personally control and direct everything, and, in the days when battles were
fought, he was always with his soldiers, in the front line, as in the epic days
of the Italian campaigns. The Hero’s intellectual activity had not suffered any
diminution; his extraordinary mental faculties remained fully lucid, his moral
energy and the power of his character were intact.
Despite all this, in this campaign, his command position required a
greater support from his collaborators, and these unfortunately had not the
intelligence and the bravery of his former comrades; he no longer had with
him people like Medici, Bixio, Sirtori, Bertani, Sacchi, and Bronzetti.
A strange, enigmatic man was at his side, a man that the General fully trust-
ed and that he had appointed as his Chief of Staff: Colonel Bordone, from
Avignon, former navy doctor, who had fought in 1859 and among the ranks of
the Mille. He certainly possessed a lively mind, was very active and strong, but
also violent, quick to take offence and lacking moderation, gifted with a diffi-
cult character for which everybody disliked him and with everybody he quar-
relled. In that particular situation, he was not certainly the suited person to set-
tle difficulties and eliminate disagreements; on the contrary, he created some
serious problems, and sometimes for this reason Garibaldi had to work hard to
exercise his command and especially to carry out his relationships with the
already ill-disposed, not to say hostile, French civil and military authorities.
However, Bordone was a very influential person in politics and therefore
the rulers feared him; Freycinet, although saying that he was Garibaldi’s left
arm, and Gambetta, although reluctantly, not to make an enemy of him, tol-
erated his presence at the General’s side and often exaggerated in being lavish
with compliments and praises, and at the same time they tried by all means
to get rid of him.