Giuseppe Garibaldi (Italian General) commanded die most successful military force in modern Italian history and led the efforts that unified his country. As a master of guerrilla warfare, Garibaldi established himself as a popular revolutionary leader during more than forty years of military campaigning on both the Italian peninsula and in South America. Great Britain hailed Garibaldi as the “hero of two worlds,” and President Abraham Lincoln offered the Italian patriot a command in the Union army during the American Civil War.
Born into a seafaring family at Nice, France, on July 4, 1807, Garibaldi joined his father aboard ship at age fifteen. He advanced to captain his own vessel in 1832, but his real interest became the Italian revolutionary movement, led by Giuseppe Mazzini in Piedmont, Sardinia, known as “Young Italy.” At the time, Italy did not exist as a unified country; rather, it consisted of a group of states occupied and dominated by foreign rule. In 1834, Garibaldi took a frigate under his command to Genoa to support the fledgling revolution. The insurrection failed, and Garibaldi, under a death sentence, fled to South America.
Garibaldi’s zeal for revolution did not wane in his new home. From 1836 to 1843 he captained a privateer for the state of Rio Grande de Sul against Brazil. He then transferred his services to Uruguay to aid their struggle against Argentina. During this time, Garibaldi became a land commander and perfected tactics that he would employ in future operations. He recruited Italian expatriates like himself and formed them into units that could quickly mass for offensives and then melt back into the civilian population. Since he nearly always faced forces numerically superior to his own, he adapted guerrilla-warfare techniques of fast-hitting, lightning raids while refusing to become decisively engaged in static warfare. Garibaldi also adopted a “uniform” of simple red shirts that soon became the identifying name for his army in South America and later in Italy.
After twelve years in South America, Garibaldi learned of the renewed independence movement Risorgimento (revival) back in Italy and returned home to organize a “Redshirt” corps of three thousand volunteers. After a brief, unsuccessful guerrilla campaign against Austrian occupiers in northern Italy and southern Switzerland, Garibaldi led his volunteers to Rome in 1849 to support his old friend Mazzini in the city’s defense against French forces attempting to restore papal authority. Garibaldi successfully commanded Rome’s defenses for three months against a much larger French force before being forced to seek terms. On July 3 the French marched into Rome as Garibaldi and five thousand defenders withdrew from the city. The cease-fire only guaranteed their exit from Rome, and just outside the city, soldiers from Austria, France, and Naples attacked the rebels, killing or capturing most of the Redshirt army.
Garibaldi himself escaped and eventually made his way to exile in the United States. After a brief time in New York City, where he found employment as a candle maker, he sailed for Peru to again become a merchant-ship captain. In 1854 he returned to Italy to take up residence on the island of Caprera, off Sardinia, and captain the first Italian screw-propelled steamer.
In 1859 war broke out with Austria, and Garibaldi again raised a force of volunteer Redshirts. After briefly fighting the Aus- trians in the Alps, Garibaldi boarded his thousand-man army on two steamers and sailed south to support a Sicilian revolt against King Francis II of Naples. In May 1860 the Redshirts secured Sicily and then crossed to the mainland, where, in February 1861, they occupied Naples and the southern Italian peninsula. All of Italy now hailed Garibaldi as a great hero as he turned his conquests over to Victor Emmanuel II, who, on February 18, 1861, proclaimed the territory the kingdom of Italy.
Garibaldi was a hero not only at home but abroad. In July 1861, Abraham Lincoln offered Garibaldi a command in the expanding Union army that was fighting die newly formed Confederate States of America. Garibaldi declined. He was disappointed because Lincoln had not yet declared an end to slavery and because the offer did not posidon him as “supreme” commander. A few years later, Great Britain also recognized the Italian liberator when, during his April 1864 visit to London, a huge, spontaneous gathering hailed him as the “hero of two worlds.”
Despite honors bestowed outside Italy, Garibaldi was unsatisfied with developments within his homeland. Rome had remained under papal rule, and Garibaldi desired complete Italian control of everything within its borders. In 1862, and again in 1866, he led offensives against the papal states, but on each occasion the stronger enemy defeated and captured him. After each fight, because of his nadonal and worldwide popularity, his captors released him and allowed him to return to Caprera.
Garibaldi, along with his two sons, assisted France in their war against Prussia in 1870, so he was not present when Italian forces finally occupied Rome in October of that year. In 1874 his admiring public elected Garibaldi to the Italian Parliament, where he served for two years before retiring from public life in 1876. During his final days he expressed support for socialism and championed the rights of labor and the emancipation of women. Garibaldi also supported racial equality and expressed his opposition to capital punishment before dying at his Caprera home on June 2, 1882, at age seventy-four.
Garibaldi impressed both his followers and his enemies with his honesty and integrity. Beginning in South America and then continuing throughout his campaigns in Italy, he demonstrated a mastery of guerrilla warfare. His lack of formal military training, however, became apparent when he attempted conventional operations, and he usually suffered defeat when he ventured beyond guerrilla tactics.
More than a legacy of specific military procedures or strategies, Garibaldi bequeathed his spirit of nationalism and undying support of independence of his country. He remains today honored as a great patriot and the driving force behind the unification of Italy. His selfless dedication to the liberation of his people gained him a lasting place in the honored history of his country and established him as a symbol to future revolutionaries around the world, regardless of cause or belief.