Page 42 - General Giuseppe GARIBALDI - english version

40 GENERAL GIUSEPPE GARIBALDI

through Montevideo a few years later, wished to shake the hand of the Hero
of Paranà and express his admiration to such a young person that had demon-
strated, together with the fiery courage particular of his age, the skills of the
most capable and consummate sea captains.
Italy had in fact acquired on the 15 August 1842 an admiral, but it didn’t
know it then as unfortunately didn’t understand it later…».

Garibaldi spent some months in Esquina to reorganise his bedraggled
troops and then, by order of the Government of Montevideo, marched to San
Francisco, on the Uruguay River, to join the army of Rivera. But in San
Francisco he found that Rivera had already left to fight against Oribe on open
field. He had in fact met him at Arroyo Grande where he had been totally
defeated (6 November 1842). A fatal defeat, because it left a free road to
march on Montevideo against the ferocious Oribe and his troops.
In that extreme predicament, new men had been placed at the head of the
Republic. The new war minister, the brave and generous soldier and poet
Colonel Pacheco y Obes, a great friend of Garibaldi, rushed to call to
Montevideo the Hero from Nice to help him to defend the capital. And so
started that memorable siege of Montevideo, lasting 10 years, with all kind
of acts of heroism, so much so that the strong city was compared to a new
Troy, because of the ardour and the tenacity demonstrated in the magnificent
defence.
This opens the second act of the Garibaldi’s epic deeds on the Uruguaian
theatre of action, that is, the great exploit of our Hero by sea and land, in the
defence of the city in the course of that memorable siege.
It was February 1843. At the beginning, admired as he was by everybody
as a superb squadron commander on the sea, he was ordered to put together
a fleet of small vessels to use as a defence from the sea in view of which the
city was rising a line of defence and decreed the draft on mass of the citizens
and the arming of all the slaves that had been freed for this purpose.

Garibaldi armed some cargo ships as well as possible and, taking advan-
tage of the lucky capture of an enemy’s brigantine, took from it five very good
guns and some other precious tools, which he used to strengthen his impro-
vised fleet.
In the meantime though, the implacable enemy, general Oribe, advancing