The city soon gained a reputation as a hotbed of anti-Savoy republican agitation. Genoa was the centre of an important reform movement that put constant pressure on Piedmont to grant the freedom of the press and more liberal laws. The citizens of the republic would not accept being subjects of an absolute monarchy, wanting to be Italian rather than Piedmontese, though relations with Piedmont improved with the war against Austria. However, after the defeat in the First War of Independence and the armistice of Salasco, the Genoese, fearing the loss of freedom and independence as a consequence of a peace imposed by Austria, rose up and hunted the Piedmontese garrison. After the uprising of Genoa, the troops of the general Alfonso Ferrero La Marmora moved against the city, besieged, bombed and sacked it. With the rise of the Risorgimento, reunification of Italy, movement, the Genoese turned their struggles from Giuseppe Mazzini's vision of a local republic into a struggle for a unified Italy under a liberalised Savoy monarchy. In 1860, Giuseppe Garibaldi set out from Genoa with over a thousand volunteers to begin the conquest of Southern Italy among them was Nino Bixio. Today a monument is set on the rock at the point where the patriot embarked, in Quarto dei Mille.