Page 345 - General Giuseppe GARIBALDI - english version

THE FRENCH CAMPAIGN 1870 - 1871 327

els. A village of France has more resources than Montevideo at that time; can
we doubt of the victory in defending the Nation?»

In these concise, but clear directives, the predominant aspect is the moral
one. As all great captains, Garibaldi resorted to it to give his fight tool that
spiritual stamina that only can confer solidity and operative efficiency. Short,
but incisive rules written in a masterly manner and as a person who knows
very well the human soul and the nature of war, gave to the leaders and the
soldiers the complete vision of their duties in facing their enemy. He did not
threaten them with rigorous punishments; by exalting the fundamental civil
and military virtues he looked for the animating flame of sacrifice, obedience,
discipline, convergence of efforts to achieve a common objective and by using
the clearly spiritual formula «one for all and all for one» he put the unshak-
able basis for a collective action.
An experienced soldier, Garibaldi knew the weakness in the military
organisation of his forces and that of his enemy: his forces could be easily
seized with panic and he pointed out to his soldiers the causes of that anxi-
ety generated by panic, indicating them how to neutralise those causes; first
of all, the demoralizing action of the cavalry over an insecure infantry as it
could have been that under his orders, formed by different elements, poorly
trained, poorly armed, poorly organized. With a lapidary style he warned his
soldiers that « only the fear of the Infantryman makes the Cavalry danger-
ous».
As in the moral field, so in the technical one, he fixed principles and sim-
ple procedures that all could understand: to act in mass, to scatter to dimin-
ish the effects of fire, to close the ranks to make the clash effective. He knew
very well how difficult it was for non-experienced leaders such as the ones he
had to manoeuvre large masses; he indicated the more suitable procedures to
operate well against troops as solid and as well trained as the Prussian ones,
the partisan warfare. To carry it out, Garibaldi dictated rational rules and pro-
cedures suitable to obtain the maximum achievement, rules and procedures
that constitute even today a model for this kind of warfare and that reveal in
Garibaldi a full leader, the swayer and the leading spirit of men, the unparal-
leled master of that very difficult art of leading to war an improvised, delicate
and peculiar military Corps for which the strength of the offence had to be
found in their spirit and not in their material equipment. Garibaldi had no
needs; nothing was necessary: it sufficed to want something and everything