This year’s celebration of Italian heritage is off to a slow start but I don’t think I’ll disappoint, what I may lack in quantity, I will nail in quality. At least two entries will have great relevance with current events. The other trick will be to deliver entries about people who are not in the easiest/laziest category…show business.
I’ll begin 2012 with the man who graces my header, Giusepe Garibaldi. While many people were involved in creating modern Italy, Garibaldi was the man of action making it happen. You could say he was part George Washington and part Simon Bolivar, just take away the stains of the Washington’s slave ownership and the Bolivar’s penchant for being a dictator.
After the Napoleonic Wars, you may recall there was a rising wave of nationalism sweeping Europe. This manifested itself as larger countries forming around the Central area. When I was in college, Germany got more attention and why not, in America Germans were the top European ethnic group to immigrate until 1900. Italy received some coverage but I would say the same motivation was behind Italy’s formation, a larger unified nation is harder for another Napoleon to conquer. Unlike future Germany, the various Italian kingdoms, republics and city-states were dominated by outside powers: Spain, Austria and France plus the UK wasn’t a friend to an Italian state.
Garibaldi was born in Nice (a French city these days) on July 4, 1807. At the time, his home belonged to the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia. Nice being a coastal place, he grew up learning to become a fisherman. As a young man he was influenced by the father of Italian nationalism Giuseppe Mazzini so he got involved with a republican uprising in 1834 (meaning an overthrow of the monarchy, not the racist, regressive American political party). The rebellion failed (remember rebellions are failed revolutions) and he was sentenced to death. Obviously Garibaldi escaped such a grisly fate by fleeing to South America.
My Marquette history teaching assistant (Larry Woods III) told the class a funny anecdote about Garibaldi’s arrival in Argentina or Brazil. Shortly after disembarking from the ship, he spotted Ana Ribero da Silva (aka Anita), the woman who would become his first wife. He ran up to her and said, “Marry me! You must be mine!” Startled, impressed or both, Anita said yes despite already being married. It’s amusing yet not verifiable. Maybe I should find a definitive book on the guy, I don’t put much stock in Wikipedia on politics or history versus a PhD candidate I knew.
During his years in South America, Garibaldi honed his military/leadership skills by learning how to be a horseman or gaucho from Anita, joining a rebellion in Brazil and eventually commanding the Uruguayan navy in its war with Argentina. The former lifestyle and training is when he picked up his signature red shirt and pants.
Thanks to his success in Uruguay, Garibaldi and Anita were invited back to Europe to participate in the numerous fights happening around 1848; these events were the crux for Marx and Engels to write The Communist Manifesto. King Charles Albert of Sardinia (not very Italian sounding) willingly accepted Garibaldi’s services, experience and leadership in the numerous battles to come, the monarch just didn’t trust the revolutionary. It’s easy to say, the king used Garibaldi out of convenience.
The victories came to end with the defense of Rome in 1850. Several years earlier, the more liberal Pius XI was elected and through his sympathetic actions toward unification, Austria and France decided to topple the papal regime. As outside forces were on their way to invade, Mazzini convinced Garibaldi to command the Roman resistance. Garibaldi accepted. The French defeated him yet he was allowed to withdraw his troops under a truce. I think Garibaldi received lousy follow-up terms because he still had to flee north while being pursued by French, Austrian, Spanish and Neapolitan soldiers. To add to his grief, Anita died along the way, somewhere near Comacchio.
Forced to flee again, he went to New York. There he lived amongst other exiles and worked in a candle factory. Afterwards Garibaldi traveled by ship around the Pacific. This was from 1850 to 1854.
He went back to the Italian peninsula in 1854 due to his brother’s death and I suppose the powers who wanted him dead/arrested lost interest or figured he was harmless. Garibaldi bought part of an island and took up farming.
Five years later, a new conflict erupted between Austria and Sardinia. Garibaldi was recruited by the Sardinian forces as a major general to lead a volunteer force called the Hunters of the Alps. He had numerous victories but his allies gave his hometown (Nice) to the French in exchange for assistance. Garibaldi was pissed. Throughout the remainder of his days, he agitated for Nice’s return to the Italian fold.
1860 was off to a rough start. Garibaldi married his second wife, 18-year old Giuseppina Raimondi. The marriage didn’t survive the day. After the ceremony, the bride confided to him she was already pregnant courtesy of another man. It’s not clear if Garibaldi got an annulment, a divorce (unlikely in the 19th Century) or just bailed. He did go off to fight another campaign and this one made him an international celebrity because he was incredibly successful. Many details are covered through a podcast from the Stuff You Missed in History Class, I recommend listening to it. The runtime is under 20 minutes. The link to it is here. Scrolled down to the one dated 3/10/10.
Here’s when Garibaldi intersects with current events. Right now, America is in the midst of remembering (sometimes reliving) the sesquicentennial of its Civil War. Depending upon the source, either Garibaldi was recruited by President Abraham Lincoln to help lead the American Army against the Confederacy as per this NY Times piece. Or he offered. If you’ve followed the legendary Ken Burns’ documentary and/or read the staggering amount of literature covering the conflict, Lincoln’s generals were inept especially McLellan; this would change when Sherman and Grant got promoted. Lincoln needed to end the war quickly as discontent grew at home and his political rivals, including McLellan who run against him in 1864, began to circle like vultures. It wasn’t meant to be. Lincoln couldn’t agree to Garibaldi’s conditions: make him General of the Army and take the position of abolishing slavery. Keep in mind on the latter, Lincoln was in a precarious spot during the war’s early days and there were four (then five) slave-owning agricultural states on America’s side. When Lincoln did find the legal argument in order to issue his Emancipation Proclamation, Garibaldi congratulated the president in a letter stating:
“Posterity will call you the great emancipator, a more enviable title than any crown could be, and greater than any merely mundane treasure.”
Back to Italy.
The numerous battles starting in 1860 eventually led to Italy’s unification and the area becoming mostly the nation we recognize today in 1861. There were a couple exceptions, the papacy refused to be part of it; this was worked out generations later; and I think borders have changed slightly after the wars which followed.
Garibaldi continued to take up arms through the remainder of the 1860s and early 1870s: annexing Rome, allying with Prussia against Austria-Hungary but against Prussia in the Franco-Prussian War. His reason on the latter, France was a republic.
Garibaldi kept busy during peacetime by returning to the island he bought, helping with land reclamation, being a member of Italy’s parliament and founding the League of Democracy. He probably started the “radical” organization to counter accusations over how the less-republican powers running Italy proved The Who’s old adage, meet the new boss, same as the old boss. The League advocated universal suffrage (Italy had pseudo slavery in Sicily), the abolishment of Church property, emancipation for women (not sure if this is the same as equality) and a standing army, probably to prevent old rivals from breaking the nation back up.
At 73 he married his third and last wife Francesca Armosino. They already had three kids, I guess Garibaldi wanted to make it official and/or wife number two was confirmed to be deceased.
Garibaldi passed away two years later in 1882. Contrary to his wishes for a simple funeral and cremation, he received a national hero’s ceremony. I know the cremation part was ignored because the Catholic Church forbade it then; nowadays it’s allowed under the condition all the ashes are stored/dumped in one location.
Until recently Garibaldi was buried near his farm alongside Francesca and a few of his children. This year his descendants had his remains exhumed for DNA testing to confirm it’s his corpse in the grave. After the results are revealed, a debate will be expected on whether or not his last wish will be granted.
Garibaldi’s legacy is predominantly positive since he tended to fight on the morally better side despite the compromises he made over Mazzini’s objections. Italy isn’t in great shape today, especially after Berlosconi raped their economy and ratcheted up the nativism/racism but the nation he helped form has beaten some nasty odds. After WWII, the allies bickered over the country’s fate. America prevailed though by letting the Italian people hold a plebiscite on which kind of government they wanted instead of carving them up like Germany. Italy voted for the democracy it has today. It may be weird and dysfunctional by our standards yet its theirs. Garibaldi would’ve approved since the UK wanted to impose a constitutional monarchy.
