Page 7 - General Giuseppe GARIBALDI - english version

PREFACE

Over the course of the years, the Historical Office has dedicated to
Giuseppe Garibaldi several works, essays and articles that were of fundamen-
tal help in the consultation and study of the Hero of the Two Worlds and the
national and international historical context in which his exploits took place.
On the bicentenary of his birth, the Historical Office considered it appro-
priate to offer again one of this works, untraceable for a long time, edited for
the first time in 1932 on the occasion of the 50 th anniversary of his death
and titled “Garibaldi condottiero”(Garibaldi the Commander).
This choice was made for two reasons: the overall vision of the General’s
military life given by the essays that constitute the volume, ranging from the
South American years that saw him involved in both land, sea and river bat-
tles until the 1870-71 campaign in France, when his volunteers managed to
take from the Prussians, the only flag they lost during the entire duration of
the war. The thirty-five years that separate those two events, represented for
Garibaldi the most intense and important moment of his life apart from
being a milestone towards Italian Unification. This period is marked by clash-
es and battles, sieges and landings, from Varese to the Volturno, from
Calatafimi to Bezzecca, from Rome to Marsala, always under the insignia of
volunteerism that saw Garibaldi as major general first of the Armata Sarda
(the Sardinian Army) and later of the Italian army. The Italian army, born in
that period, still retains, in the name of some of its prestigious units, the
memory of their Garibaldian origin and is proud of its first Chief of Staff,
Enrico Cosenz, and all the other officers of all ranks, of the same origin, that
served up to the beginning of the 20 th century.
The other reason for this choice is connected to the desire to remember,
in some way, on this occasion, the authors of the different essays in this vol-
ume, all of them Officers, all of them lovers of - and in some cases more than
that – the military history in a time that, it must be remembered, writers in
uniform had and in some cases deserved the exclusive right in dealing with