Page 337 - General Giuseppe GARIBALDI - english version

THE FRENCH CAMPAIGN 1870 - 1871 319

organisation wandered about the city, awaiting orders.
Garibaldi, who had gone to that city to reach an agreement with the above
mentioned general, heard from him the not so much reassuring statement
that «the mobilisés and the snipers were very bad troops and unable to face
the enemy and that with such elements it was impossible to make war!»
As concerned the snipers, Cambriels was wrong.
The telegrams sent by Garibaldi to explain the situation to his men and to
ask for measures to be taken were either kept by the telegraph offices or sent
with unjustifiable delays; the instructions given by the Delegation generally
remained a dead letter and worsened the consequences of that kind of veiled
obstruction that the authorities seemed to have started and the lack of clothes
and equipment as well as the lack of funds to pay the volunteers coming to
Dôle to enlist in the army, things that had to be provided by the prefect,
proved to be very serious since the beginning.
Anyway, at the end of October, the first units of the Army of the Vosges
«dans un état complet de dénuement», as telegraphed even by General
Cambriels, started to gather in Dôle.
st
At that date, in fact, the 1 and 3 rd Brigades had been established in the
embryonic form described below:

st
1 Brigade: General Bosak-Hauke
st
1 Mobile Battalion from Maritime Alps………………...... 700 men
Snipers «Egalité» from Marseille …...………………............ 400 ”

Volunteers of the Rhône.....………………………………... 230 ”
Explorers of the Rhône…......……………………………… 180 ”
Total 1.510 men

3 rd Brigade: Colonel Menotti Garibaldi
2 nd Mobile Battalion from Maritime Alps..…..................… 775 men
Snipers from Colmar …........................………………........ 350 ”

Mobile Battalion from Lower Alps…… ......………………. 650 ”
Corps of snipers of the Hunters of Africa…….....…….....… 250 ”
Total 2.025 men