Garibaldi, GIUSEPPE, the Italian patriot, was born at Nice on the 4th July 1807. His father was a simple, God-fearing fisherman, seldom in prosperous circumstances, but he contrived nevertheless to give the boy a tolerable education, possibly with the object of making him a priest. Giuseppe, however, was determined upon becoming a sailor, and rising rapidly in the merchant-service, he was appointed in 1828 second in command of the brig Cortese. His early voyages, which included a visit to Rome, filled him with democratic ardour, whence it is only natural that in 1834 he should have been involved in the 'Young Italy' movement of Mazzini, whom he met at Marseilles, and should have been condemned to death for taking part in an attempt to seize Genoa. He had volunteered for the royal navy with the object of gaining recruits for the cause. Garibaldi escaped to Marseilles and afterwards to South America, where he offered his services to the province of Rio Grande, which was in rebellion against the Emperor of Brazil. He distinguished himself as a guerilla warrior and privateer, was taken prisoner and suspended for two hours by the wrists for attempting to escape, and eloped with and soon married the beautiful creole Anita Riverside de Silva, the companion of his earlier campaigns and the mother of his children Menotti, Ricciotti, and Teresa. After some mingled experiences as drover, shipbroker, and teacher of mathematics, he offered in 1842 his assistance to the Montevideans, who were at war with Rosas, the tyrant of Buenos Ayres. In this struggle Garibaldi won fresh renown, by water as naval commander in a two days' engagement, and on land as organiser and commander of the Italian legion, especially on 8th February and 20th May 1846, when he beat off considerably superior forces of the enemy at Salto San Antonio and the Dayman River. He gives a full account of his various exploits in his autobiography.
The 'red shirt' of Garibaldi had thus already become famous, when in 1847 the reforming pope, Pius IX., ascended the throne of St Peter. Garibaldi, the Montevidean struggle being practically at an end, promptly offered to enlist under his banner, but received an ambiguous reply; and Charles Albert of Sardinia, whom on his arrival in Italy in June 1848 he found besieging the Austrians in Mantua, coldly referred him to his ministers. Garibaldi, however, after the collapse of the Sardinian army, at the head of a body of volunteers performed some notable feats against the Austrians on the Swiss frontier, and then wandered about Italy until he reached Ravenna. In 1849 he threw in his lot with the revolutionary government of Rome against Pius IX., who had retracted his liberal concessions and fled the city. Garibaldi, indeed, voted for the proclamation of the republic in February, drove the French expeditionary force under Oudinot from the Porta San Pancrazio in April, and routed the Neapolitans at Palestrina and Velletri in May, sending them pell-mell over the frontier. Meantime, however, Mazzini had been inveigled by Oudinot into an armistice; and, being abundantly reinforced, the French proceeded to lay siege to Rome. Garibaldi was recalled, much to his disgust. He had refused the dictatorship on June 2, and on July 3, after a brilliant defence, he was forced to abandon his post. He retreated, pursued by the Austrians, to the Adriatic, where poor Anita, worn out by suffering and anxiety, died, and was buried in the sand. Garibaldi was at length arrested by the orders of the Sardinian government at Chiavari, and requested to leave Italy, much to the indignation of the people. He betook himself to Staten Island, New York, where he worked for eighteen months as a candlemaker, then became captain of various merchantmen, paying a visit to New-castle, where he declined a popular demonstration.
He returned to Italy in 1854, and had settled down as a farmer on the island of Caprera, when in 1859 the outbreak of the war of Italian liberation called him to arms once more. He was summoned to Turin by Cavour in February, and at once placed his sword at the disposal of Victor Emmanuel. Though frequently thwarted by the Sardinian generals, Garibaldi and his 'chasseurs of the Alps' rendered valuable service to the allies, especially at Varese in the Valtelline (May 25). After the peace of Villafranca, Garibaldi, with the permission of Victor Emmanuel, went into central Italy as second in command, and helped to consummate the annexation of the territories to Sardinia, but was not allowed as he desired to march on Rome. He was cut to the quick when his native Nice was handed over to France, and decried against Cavour in the chamber at Turin. Meanwhile the Mazzinists had been busily conspiring against the effete Bourbon tyranny in the Two Sicilies, and Garibaldi, in spite of Cavour's efforts to prevent him, prepared to come to the rescue. The enterprise appeared dangerous in the extreme; but, as the English cabinet insisted on the neutrality of France, the Bourbons could look for no foreign assistance, and 'the thousand heroes' on landing at Marsala on May 11 met but a feeble enemy. With the exception of the garrison of Milazzo, which capitulated after a battle on July 24, the disaffected troops of Francis II. fought half-heartedly enough, and within three months Sicily was free. Promptly crossing the straits (August 29) Garibaldi began his military promenade through Naples, and entered the capital (September 7) amid the cheers of King Francis' troops. After a last stand on the Volturino on October 1, the Bourbons took refuge in the citadel of Gaeta. Then Victor Emmanuel, having been elected sovereign of the Two Sicilies by a plebiscite, arrived at Naples, and Garibaldi, refusing all reward, resigned his dictatorship and retired to Caprera. His conduct entailed a quarrel with the Republican party, and he was besides disgusted by the refusal of the Italian ministry to enrol his veterans in the regular army, and at not being allowed to march on Rome and destroy the hated papal government. In this he saw the hand of Cavour, but later publications show that he was mistaken as far as the volunteers were concerned.
During the ensuing years Rome was the centre of his thoughts, though shared with schemes for stirring up rebellion in Hungary, and so causing the Austrians to withdraw from Venice, and in 1862 he embarked on a rash expedition against the capital. If the king and the weak Rattazzi cabinet did not actually egg him on, as Garibaldi said they did, they at all events sat still and allowed him to compromise himself, and then sent troops against him, by whom Garibaldi was taken prisoner at Aspromonte after he had given orders to his troops not to fire (August 28). Badly wounded in the foot, Garibaldi was detained for two months as prisoner at Spezzia, and was then allowed to return to Caprera. He next paid a visit to England to induce the government to espouse the cause of Denmark, and was received with the wildest enthusiasm; but failing to effect the object of his journey, he returned abruptly home at the request of the cabinet. In the war of 1866 he once more commanded the 'Red Shirts' in the Tyrol, but, though his sons Menotti and Ricciotti proved worthy of their father, the campaign as a whole was not marked by very brilliant affairs. Garibaldi accused the government of neglecting to forward men and arms, and their conduct seems to have been marked by unworthy suspicions. Venice was now ceded to Italy, but Rome still remained unredeemed, and, untaught by his previous adventures, Garibaldi in the following year made his last attempt on the Holy City. Arrested on September 22 by the Italian government—whose hands were tied by the convention with France of 1864—he escaped from Caprera in a boat, and placing himself at the head of the volunteers, defeated the papal troops on October 25 at Monterotondo. On November 3, however, the Zouaves, reinforced by a body of French armed with the deadly chassepot, utterly routed him at Mentana. Once more he was allowed to retire to Caprera, whence in 1870 he sent for publication two novels, entitled Cantoni il volontario and Clelia, ovvero il Governo del Monaco. The latter has been translated into English under the title of the 'Rule of the Monk,' but it must be confessed that Garibaldi did not shine as an author, and that the average schoolboy could write as well. In 1872, however, he published a third romance, Il Mille, based on the events of the Sicilian expedition. In 1870, though at first a sympathiser with Germany, owing to his hatred of Napoleon III., he resolved to come to the assistance of the French Republic. Gambetta did not receive him with much enthusiasm, but eventually placed him in command of the volunteers of the Vosges. Badly crippled by rheumatism, however, and hopelessly outnumbered, he confined his movements to the neighbourhood of Dijon and Autun. Even so his troops distinguished themselves, especially on 20th January 1871, when Ricciotti beat off a body of Prussian Pomeranians near Dijon. The Prussian general, Manteuffel, has left a favourable estimate of his tactics during the campaign. Garibaldi was elected to the Assembly at Bordeaux by Dijon, Nice, and Paris, but, as a foreigner, was not allowed to address the deputies.
During the remainder of his life he remained a helpless invalid at Caprera, except on occasions like that in 1874, when he took his seat in the Chamber of Deputies at Rome; and through the generosity of his English friends he became entire proprietor of the island. In 1880 the marriage into which he had been entrapped by an adventuress as far back as 1859 was annulled, and he was promptly united to Francesca, his peasant-companion, who had originally come to the island as nurse to the children of his daughter Teresa, the wife of Stefano Canzio, one of his officers. During the last years of his life manifestoes poured from his pen, in which professions of devotion to the Sardinian dynasty alternated with the wildest republicanism; and his simplicity, like that of Victor Hugo, was easily persuaded to endorse any document containing the commonplaces of cosmopolitanism. But he was ever constant to the ideal of his youth, the unity of the Italian-speaking race. Thence came his participation in the 'Irridentist' agitation; thence too his undying hatred of the papacy. More practical was his advocacy of the creation of a mercantile navy and the reorganisation of the army, and his interest in the drainage of the Campagna and the diversion of the Tiber; but the last project had no adequate result. His religious views latterly embraced a somewhat elementary pantheism: 'God did not make man,' he wrote, 'but man made God,' and death he looked upon as a transmutation of matter. On 2d June 1882 he died, and was sincerely mourned, not only by his fellow-countrymen, but by the lovers of liberty throughout Europe. For though as a soldier he was perhaps nothing more than a good commander of irregulars, and though his ignorance of political considerations sometimes did actual harm to the cause he advocated, yet it would be impossible to overrate the importance to Italian unity of his whole-souled devotion to his country, a devotion which he communicated to all with whom he came in contact. He will always remain the central figure in the story of Italian independence.
Garibaldi's autobiography was published in 1887, and an English translation with a supplementary biography by Mme. Mario in 1889. The best general sketches of Garibaldi are to be found in J. T. Bent's Life of Garibaldi, and in Mme. Mario's Garibaldi e i suoi Tempi (Milan, 1884). Elpis Melena's Garibaldi (2 vols. Hanover, 1884) is also incidentally instructive. Garibaldi's speeches were published in 1882, and his letters, edited by E. E. Ximenes, in 1885.