page_title: Giuseppe Garibaldi
section_title: Campaign of 1860
hierarchical_section_title: Giuseppe Garibaldi / Biography / Campaign of 1860
caption_attribution_description: English: Meeting between Giuseppe Garibaldi and Victor Emmanuel II on the bridge of Teano on October 26, 1860.
context_page_description: Giuseppe Maria Garibaldi was an Italian general, patriot and republican. He contributed to the Italian unification and the creation of the Kingdom of Italy.
  He is considered to be one of the greatest generals of modern times and one of Italy's "fathers of the fatherland", along with Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, Victor Emmanuel II of Italy and Giuseppe Mazzini. 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. After participating in an uprising in Piedmont, he was sentenced to death, but escaped by sailing to South America; he spent 14 years in exile, taking part in several wars and learning the art of guerrilla warfare.
  In 1835, in Brazil, he took up the cause of the Riograndense Republic in its attempt to proclaim another republic within Santa Catarina, joining the rebels known as the Farrapos.
context_section_description: On 24 January 1860, Garibaldi married 18-year-old Giuseppina Raimondi. Immediately after the wedding ceremony, she informed him that she was pregnant with another man's child and Garibaldi left her the same day. At the beginning of April 1860, uprisings in Messina and Palermo in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies provided Garibaldi with an opportunity. He gathered about a thousand volunteers – called i Mille (the Thousand), or, as popularly known, the Redshirts – in two ships named Il Piemonte and Il Lombardo, and left from Genoa on 5 May in the evening and landed at Marsala, on the westernmost point of Sicily, on 11 May.
  Swelling the ranks of his army with scattered bands of local rebels, Garibaldi led 800 volunteers to victory over an enemy force of 1500 on the hill of Calatafimi on 15 May. He used the counter-intuitive tactic of an uphill bayonet charge. He saw that the hill was terraced, and the terraces would shelter his advancing men. Though small by comparison with the coming clashes at Palermo, Milazzo, and Volturno, this battle was decisive in establishing Garibaldi's power in the island. An apocryphal but realistic story had him say to his lieutenant Nino Bixio, "Here we either make Italy, or we die." In reality, the Neapolitan forces were ill-guided, and most of its higher officers had been bought out.
  The next day, he declared himself dictator of Sicily in the name of Victor Emmanuel II of Italy.  He advanced to the outskirts of Palermo, the capital of the island, and launched a siege on 27 May. He had the support of many inhabitants, who rose up against the garrison—but before they could take the city, reinforcements arrived and bombarded the city nearly to ruins. At this time, a British admiral intervened and facilitated a truce, by which the Neapolitan royal troops and warships surrendered the city and departed. The young Henry Adams—later to become a distinguished American writer—visited the city in June and described the situation, along with his meeting with Garibaldi, in a long and vivid letter to his older brother Charles. Historians Clough et al. argue that Garibaldi's Thousand were students, independent artisans, and professionals, not peasants. The support given by Sicilian peasants was not out of a sense of patriotism but from their hatred of exploitative landlords and oppressive Neapolitan officials. Garibaldi himself had no interest in social revolution and instead sided with the Sicilian landlords against the rioting peasants.
  By conquering Palermo, Garibaldi had won a signal victory. He gained worldwide renown and the adulation of Italians. Faith in his prowess was so strong that doubt, confusion, and dismay seized even the Neapolitan court. Six weeks later, he marched against Messina in the east of the island, winning a ferocious and difficult battle at Milazzo. By the end of July, only the citadel resisted.
  Having conquered Sicily, he crossed the Strait of Messina and marched north. Garibaldi's progress was met with more celebration than resistance, and on 7 September he entered the capital city of Naples, by train. Despite taking Naples, however, he had not to this point defeated the Neapolitan army. Garibaldi's volunteer army of 24,000 was not able to defeat conclusively the reorganized Neapolitan army—about 25,000 men—on 30 September at the battle of Volturno. This was the largest battle he ever fought, but its outcome was effectively decided by the arrival of the Piedmontese Army.
  Following this, Garibaldi's plans to march on to Rome were jeopardized by the Piedmontese, technically his ally but unwilling to risk war with France, whose army protected the Pope. The Piedmontese themselves had conquered most of the Pope's territories in their march south to meet Garibaldi, but they had deliberately avoided Rome, capital of the Papal state. Garibaldi chose to hand over all his territorial gains in the south to the Piedmontese and withdrew to Caprera and temporary retirement. Some modern historians consider the handover of his gains to the Piedmontese as a political defeat, but he seemed willing 
caption: Meeting between Giuseppe Garibaldi and Victor Emmanuel II on the bridge of Teano on 26 October 1860
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