There he fought for the rebellious state of Rio Grande do Sul, which was trying to secede from Brazil. He lived a life of hardship and danger. During one campaign he met his beloved Creole partner Anna Maria Ribeiro da Silva (Anita), later mother of three of his children. She followed him when he received command of an Italian legion fighting for Uruguay against Argentina. Leading these first Redshirts, he won a reputation as a masterly guerrilla commander.
In 1848, as Europe caught fire with revolution, Garibaldi returned to Italy to offer his services in the struggle against Austrian hegemony. Spurned by Piedmont (he was, after all, still a wanted man there), he took part in a republican experiment in Rome that saw Pope Pius IX flee the city, and he organized the brave, but hopelessly outnumbered, resistance to the French and Neapolitan forces that restored the pope in 1849.
Garibaldi and several thousand followers retreated across central Italy, evading French and Austrian forces but suffering many losses—including his beloved Anita. Garibaldi himself made it to the coast of Tuscany, going into five years of exile as a trading skipper in New York and Peru.
Finally, in 1854, Garibaldi was able to return to his Piedmontese homeland, where he planned a united Italian monarchy (instead of a republic) with King Victor Emmanuel II and his powerful prime minister Cavour. Napoleon III of France backed the plan. In 1859 Garibaldi, now a Piedmontese major general, led Alpine troops into action against the Austrian Habsburgs in northern Italy, capturing Varese and Como. Austria ceded Lombardy to Piedmont.
In early 1860 Piedmont angered Garibaldi by returning Nice and the Savoy region to the French, in return gaining the sovereignty of the central Italian states. Garibaldi’s thoughts turned to the south, the so-called Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, backward, impoverished and ruled by the Bourbons. With a mere 1146 of his Redshirts, and tacitly supported by Emmanuel and Cavour, he landed in Marsala, Sicily in May 1860 and soon captured Palermo. He forced 20,000 Neapolitan soldiers to surrender and declared himself a very popular dictator. He then crossed the Straits of Messina, entered victoriously into Naples and forced King Francis II to flee. Garibaldi handed over his conquests to Victor Emmanuel, recognizing him as king of Italy. He had nearly achieved his vision of a united Italy; only the French-defended Papal States and Austrian-ruled Venetia remained outside the new kingdom.
Two ostensibly private campaigns by Garibaldi to take the Papal States, in 1862 and 1867, came to nothing, the first leaving him injured at the Battle of Aspromante, ironically by troops sent by Victor Emmanuel to intercept him. (In contrast, the 1867 campaign was secretly funded by the king.) But more success came in the north, when Garibaldi led Italian forces—allied to the Prussians in a wider war—against the Austrians at Bezzecca (July 21, 1866). By complex treaty negotiations, Venetia was ceded to the nascent Italian kingdom.
The Papal States finally surrendered to Italian government troops in September 1871, the last piece of the Italian jigsaw, but Garibaldi played no part. His last adventure was in support of the French against the Prussians in 1870–1. Retiring to Caprera, the island he had acquired in the 1850s, he lived peacefully—as politician, memoirist, novel-writer, but always a living legend who, on his death in June 1882, plunged Italy into mourning.
Mazzini had the philosophies, Cavour the strategies and Victor Emmanuel the crown, but it was Garibaldi, the swashbuckling patriot, who created a nation.
NAPOLEON III
1808–1873
Karl Marx on Napoleon III
Napoleon III’s reign ended in disaster but for twenty years he enjoyed astonishing success, restoring order in France and then restoring France’s position in Europe, winning the Crimean War in alliance with Britain, defeating Austria, helping to unite Italy, rebuilding Paris. Described by Bismarck as a “sphinx without a riddle” and by Victor Hugo as “Napoleon the Little” in comparison to his uncle Napoleon the Great, he was nonetheless a statesman of talent, and along with his nemesis Bismarck, one of the pioneers of modern politics and electioneering—the quest for the support of the middle classes and the center.
