Giuseppe Maria Garibaldi (;In his native Ligurian language, he is known as (). In his particular Niçard dialect of Ligurian, he was known as or . 4 July 1807 – 2 June 1882) was an Italian general, revolutionary and republican. He contributed to the Unification of Italy (Risorgimento) and the creation of the Kingdom of Italy. He is considered to be one of Italy's "fathers of the fatherland", along with Camillo Benso di Cavour, King Victor Emmanuel II and Giuseppe Mazzini.Bouchard, Norma (2005). Risorgimento in Modern Italian Culture: Revisiting the Nineteenth-Century Past in History, Narrative, and Cinema. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. p. 76. . Garibaldi is also known as the "Hero of the Two Worlds" because of his military enterprises in South America and Europe.
Garibaldi was a follower of the Italian nationalist Mazzini and embraced the republican nationalism of the Young Italy movement. He became a supporter of Italian unification under a democratic republican government. However, breaking with Mazzini, he pragmatically allied himself with the monarchist Cavour and the Kingdom of Sardinia in the struggle for independence, subordinating his republican ideals to his nationalist ones until Italy was unified. After participating in an uprising in Piedmont, he was sentenced to death, but escaped and sailed to South America, where he spent 14 years in exile, during which he took part in several wars and learned the art of guerrilla warfare.Ridley, Jasper (2001). Phoenix: Garibaldi (illustrated, reprint ed.). London: Phoenix Press. . In 1835 he joined the rebels known as the Ragamuffins (), in the Ragamuffin War in Brazil, and took up their cause of establishing the Riograndense Republic and later the Catarinense Republic. Garibaldi also became involved in the Uruguayan Civil War, raising an Italian force known as Redshirts, and is still celebrated as an important contributor to Uruguay's reconstitution.
In 1848, Garibaldi returned to Italy. He commanded and fought in military campaigns that eventually led to the Italian unification. The provisional government of Milan made him a general and the Minister of War promoted him to General of the Roman Republic in 1849. When the war of independence broke out in April 1859, Garibaldi led his Hunters of the Alps in the capture of major cities in Lombardy, including Varese and Como, until he reached the frontier of South Tyrol; the war ended with the acquisition of Lombardy. The following year, 1860, he led the Expedition of the Thousand on behalf of, and with the consent of, Victor Emmanuel II, King of Sardinia. The expedition was a success and concluded with the annexation of Sicily, Southern Italy, Marche and Umbria to the Kingdom of Sardinia before the creation of a unified Kingdom of Italy on 17 March 1861. His last military campaign took place during the Franco-Prussian War as commander of the Army of the Vosges.
Garibaldi became an international figurehead for national independence and republican ideals, and is considered by twentieth-century historiography and popular culture as Italy's greatest national hero. He was showered with admiration and praise by many contemporary intellectuals and political figures, including Abraham Lincoln,Mack Smith, ed., Denis (1969). Garibaldi (Great Lives Observed). Prentice Hall: Englewood Cliffs. pp. 69–70. . William Brown,"Frasi di William Brown (ammiraglio)". LeCitazioni. Retrieved 2 September 2020. "È il più generoso dei pirati che abbia mai incontrato." Francesco de Sanctis, Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Malwida von Meysenbug, George Sand, Charles Dickens, and Friedrich Engels. Garibaldi also inspired later figures like Jawaharlal Nehru and Che Guevara.Di Mino, Massimiliano; Di Mino, Pier Paolo (2011). Il libretto rosso di Garibaldi. Rome: Castelvecchi Editore. p. 7. . Historian A. J. P. Taylor called him "the only wholly admirable figure in modern history". The volunteers who followed Garibaldi during his campaigns were known as the Garibaldini or Redshirts, after the color of the shirts that they wore in lieu of a uniform.
Early life
Garibaldi was born and christened Joseph-Marie GaribaldiPronounced in French as . on 4 July 1807 in Nice, to the Ligurian family of Domenico Garibaldi from ChiavariBaptismal record: "Die 11 d.i (giugno 1766) Dominicus Antonina Filius Angeli Garibaldi q. Dom.ci et Margaritae Filiae q. Antonij Pucchj Coniugum natus die 9 huius et hodie baptizatus fuit a me Curato Levantibus Io. Bapta Pucchio q. Antonij, et Maria uxore Agostini Dassi. (Chiavari, Archive of the Parish Church of S. Giovanni Battista, Baptismal Record, vol. n. 10 (dal 1757 al 1774), p. 174). and Maria Rosa Nicoletta Raimondi from Loano.(often wrongly reported as Raimondi, but Status Animarum and Death Records all report the same name "Raimondo") Baptismal record from the Parish Church of S. Giovanni Battista in Loano: "1776, die vigesima octava Januarij. Ego Sebastianus Rocca praepositus hujus parrochialis Ecclesiae S[anct]i Joannis Baptistae praesentis loci Lodani, baptizavi infantem natam ex Josepho Raimimdi q. Bartholomei, de Cogoleto, incola Lodani, et [Maria] Magdalena Conti conjugibus, cui impositum est nomen Rosa Maria Nicolecta: patrini fuerunt D. Nicolaus Borro q. Benedicti de Petra et Angela Conti Joannis Baptistae de Alessio, incola Lodani." "Il trafugamento di Giuseppe Garibaldi dalla pineta di Ravenna a Modigliana ed in Liguria, 1849, di Giovanni Mini, Vicenza 1907 – Stab. Tip. L. Fabris. In 1814, the Congress of Vienna returned Nice to Victor Emmanuel I of Sardinia. (Nice would be returned to France in 1860 by the Treaty of Turin, over the objections of Garibaldi.)
Garibaldi's family's involvement in coastal trade drew him to a life at sea.
He lived in the Pera district of Istanbul from 1828 to 1832. He became an instructor and taught Italian, French, and mathematics in the Ottoman Empire. Garibaldi had close ties with the vast Sardinian exile network in the Ottoman Empire, befriending people such as Giovanni Timoteo Calosso.
In April 1833, he travelled to Taganrog, in the Russian Empire, aboard the schooner Clorinda with a shipment of oranges. During ten days in port, he met Giovanni Battista Cuneo from Oneglia, a politically active immigrant and member of the secret Young Italy movement of Giuseppe Mazzini. Mazzini was a passionate proponent of Italian unification as a liberal republic via political and social reform.
In November 1833, Garibaldi met Mazzini in Genoa, starting a long relationship that later became troubled. He joined the Carbonari revolutionary association, and in February 1834 participated in a failed Mazzinian insurrection in Piedmont.
South America
Garibaldi first sailed to the Beylik of Tunis before eventually finding his way to the Empire of Brazil. Once there, he took up the cause of the Riograndense Republic in its attempt to separate from Brazil, joining the rebels known as the Ragamuffins in the Ragamuffin War of 1835.
During this war, he met Ana Maria de Jesus Ribeiro da Silva, commonly known as Anita. When the rebels proclaimed the Catarinense Republic in the Brazilian province of Santa Catarina in 1839, she joined him aboard his ship, Rio Pardo, and fought alongside him at the battles of Imbituba and Laguna.
In 1841, Garibaldi and Anita moved to Montevideo, Uruguay, where Garibaldi worked as a trader and schoolmaster. The couple married in Church of St. Francis of Assisi in the Ciudad Vieja neighborhood, the following year. They had four children; Domenico Menotti (1840–1903), Rosa (1843–1845), Teresa Teresita (1845–1903), and Ricciotti (1847–1924). A skilled horsewoman, Anita is said to have taught Giuseppe about the gaucho culture of Argentina, southern Brazil and Uruguay. Around this time he adopted his distinctive style of clothing—wearing the red shirt, poncho, and hat commonly worn by gauchos.
In 1842, Garibaldi took command of the Uruguayan fleet and raised an Italian Legion of soldiers—known as Redshirts—for the Uruguayan Civil War. This recruitment was possible as Montevideo had a large Italian population at the time: 4,205 out of a total population of 30,000 according to an 1843 census.
Garibaldi aligned his forces with the Uruguayan Colorados led by Fructuoso Rivera and Joaquín Suárez, who were aligned with the Argentine Unitarian Party. This faction received some support from the French and British in their struggle against the forces of former Uruguayan president Manuel Oribe's Blancos, which was also aligned with Argentine Federales under the rule of Buenos Aires caudillo Juan Manuel de Rosas. The Italian Legion adopted a black flag that represented Italy in mourning, with a volcano at the centre that symbolized the dormant power in their homeland. Though contemporary sources do not mention the Redshirts, popular history asserts that the legion first wore them in Uruguay, getting them from a factory in Montevideo that had intended to export them to the slaughterhouses of Argentina. These shirts became the symbol of Garibaldi and his followers.
Between 1842 and 1848, Garibaldi defended Montevideo against forces led by Oribe. In 1845, he managed to occupy Colonia del Sacramento and Martín García Island, and led the infamous sacks of Martín García island and Gualeguaychú during the Anglo-French blockade of the Río de la Plata. Garibaldi escaped with his life after being defeated in the Costa Brava combat, delivered on 15 and 16 August 1842, thanks to the mercy of Admiral William Brown. The Argentines, wanting to pursue him to finish him off, were stopped by Brown who exclaimed "let him escape, that gringo is a brave man." Years later, a grandson of Garibaldi would be named William, in honour of Admiral Brown. Adopting amphibious guerrilla tactics, Garibaldi later achieved two victories during 1846, in the Battle of Cerro and the Battle of San Antonio del Santo.
Induction to Freemasonry Garibaldi joined Freemasonry during his exile, taking advantage of the asylum the lodges offered to political refugees from European countries. At the age of 37, during 1844, Garibaldi was initiated in the Asilo de la Virtud Lodge of Montevideo. This was an irregular lodge under a Brazilian Freemasonry not recognized by the main international masonic obediences, such as the United Grand Lodge of England or the Grand Orient de France.
While Garibaldi had little use for Masonic rituals, he was an active Freemason and regarded Freemasonry as a network that united progressive men as brothers both within nations and as a global community. Garibaldi was eventually elected as the Grand Master of the Grand Orient of Italy.Garibaldi – the mason Translated from Giuseppe Garibaldi Massone by the Grand Orient of Italy
Garibaldi regularized his position later in 1844, joining the lodge Les Amis de la Patrie of Montevideo under the Grand Orient of France.
Election of Pope Pius IX, 1846 The fate of his homeland continued to concern Garibaldi. The election of Pope Pius IX in 1846 caused a sensation among Italian patriots, both at home and in exile. Pius's initial reforms seemed to identify him as the liberal pope called for by Vincenzo Gioberti, who went on to lead the unification of Italy. When news of these reforms reached Montevideo, Garibaldi wrote to the Pope:
Mazzini, from exile, also applauded the early reforms of Pius IX. In 1847, Garibaldi offered the apostolic nuncio at Rio de Janeiro, Bedini, the service of his Italian Legion for the liberation of the peninsula. Then news of the outbreak of the Sicilian revolution of 1848 in January and revolutionary agitation elsewhere in Italy, encouraged Garibaldi to lead approximately 60 members of his legion home.
Return to Italy
First Italian War of Independence