Expedition of the Thousand
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Expedition of the Thousand (Italian Spedizione dei Mille) was a military campaign led by the famous revolutionary general Giuseppe Garibaldi in 1860, in which a force of volunteers defeated the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, leading to its dissolution and annexation by the Kingdom of Sardinia.
Contents |
[edit] Background
After the annexation of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, the Duchies of Modena and Parma and the Romagna to Piedmont in March 1860, Italian nationalists set their sights on the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, which comprised all of southern Italy and Sicily, as the next step in the eventual unification of Italy.
In 1860 Garibaldi, already the most famous Italian revolutionary leader, was in Genoa planning an expedition against Sicily and Naples, with the covert support of Great Britain. The latter was worried by the approaches of the Neapolitans towards the Russian Empire in the latter's attempt to open its way in the Mediterranean Sea; the strategic importance of the Sicilian ports was also to be dramtically increased by the opening of the Suez Canal. In has been also suggested that the British support for Garibaldi's expedition was spurred also by the necessity to obtain more favourable economic conditions for Sicilian sulfur, which was needed in great quantities for the new steamers.
[edit] The expedition
[edit] Landing on Sicily
The expedition set sail on May 6, 1860 from a rock in Quarto, a district of Genoa, on the ships Il Piemonte and Il Lombardo[1] steamers, acquired from G.B. Fauché, a fellow freemason of Garibaldi. The corps was formed by some thousand volunteers (Italian: Mille, whence the name), including a woman[2] After a short stop at the promontory of Talamone (May 7), near the city of Orbetello in southern Tuscany, for a supply of water and weapons from Piedmontese troops, they directed the vessels to Sicily.
The ships landed at Marsala, on the westernmost point of Sicily, on May 11, with the help of British ships present in the harbour to deter the Bourbon ships[3]. The Lombardo was attacked and sunk only after the disembarkment had been completed, while the Piemontese was captured. The landing had been preceded by the arrival of Francesco Crispi and others, who had the task of gain the support of the local gangsters for the volunteers.
On May 14, at Salemi, Garibaldi announced that he assumed the dictatorship over Sicily in the name of King Victor Emmanuel II of Sardinia.
[edit] Calatafimi and Palermo
The Mille won a first battle at Calatafamini against around 2,000 Neapolitan troops on May 15. The battle was inconclusive, but boosted the moral of the Mille and, at the same time, depressed the Neapolitans who started to feel themselves abandoned. In the meantime the ranks enlarged to 1,200 with local men joining. With the help of a popular insurrection, on May 27 they laid siege to Palermo, the island's capital. The city was defended by some 16,000 men, but these were under the confused and timid direction of general Ferdinando Lanza, aged 75 (probably one of the Neapolitan officers bribed with the English-freemason money, see Evaluation section).
While two columns of Garibaldines attacked the external perimeter, part of the population, stregthened by 2,000 prisoners liberated from the local jails, rose against the garrison. When his troops were driven back from most of their positions, Lanza ordered them to bombard the city for three days, provoking the deaths of 600 civilians. By May 28 Garibaldi controlled much of the city and declared the Bourbon authority deposed. The following day a desperate Neapolitan counteroffensive was driven back, and Lanza asked for a truce. However, when a reinforcement party of well equipped and well trained troops arrived in the city, the situation became very serious for Garibaldi, who was saved only by Lanza's decision to surrender. Through the mediation of a British admiral, an armistice was signed and the Neapolitan fleet abandoned the port.
[edit] Neapolitan retreat and Battle of Milazzo
The Bourbon troops were ordered to push eastwards and evacuate the island. An insurrection that had broken out in Catania on May 31, led by Nicola Fabrizi, was crushed by the local garrison, but the order to leave for Messina meant that this Neapolitan tactical success would have no practical results.
At the time only Syracuse, Augusta, Milazzo and Messina remained in royal hands. In the meantime the dictator Garibaldi issued his first law. A levy failed to muster more than 20,000 troops, while the peasants, who hoped to an immediate relief from the grevious conditions to which they were forced by the landowners, revolted in several localities. At Bronte, on August 4, 1860, Garibaldi's friend Nino Bixio bloodily repressed one of these revolts with two battalions of Redshirts.
The pace of Garibaldi's victories had worried Cavour, who in early July sent him a proposal of immediate annexation of Sicily to Piedmont. Garibaldi, however, refused vehemently to allow such a move until the end of the war. Cavour's envoy, La Farina, was arrested and expelled from the island. He was replaced by the more malleable Agostino Depretis, who gained Garibaldi's trust and was appointed as pro-dictator.
On June 25, 1860, King Francis II of the Two Sicilies had issued a constitution. However, this late attempt to conciliate his moderate subjects failed to rouse them to defend the regime, while liberals and revolutionaries were eager to welcome Garibaldi.
At the time, Garibaldi had created the Esercito Meridionale ("Southern Army"), reinforced by other volunteers from Italy and some Piedmontese regular soldier disguised as "deserters". The Neapolitans had mustered some 24,000 men for the defence of Messina and the other fortresses.
On July 20 Garibaldi attacked Milazzo with 5,000 men. The Neapolitan defence was gallant, but again the absence of coordination and the refusal of Marshal Clary, commander-in-chief of the army in the island, to send reinforces from Messina granted the Mille another victory. Six days later Clary surrendered the city of Messina to Garibaldi, leaving only 4,000 in the citadel and other forts. The other strongholds surrendered by the end of September.
[edit] Landing and conquest in Calabria
On August 19 Garibaldi's men disembarked in Calabria, a move opposed by Cavour, who had written the Dictator a letter urging to not cross the strait. Garibaldi, however, disobeyed, which received the silent approvation of King Victor Emmanuel.
The Bourbons had some 20,000 men in Calabria, but, apart some episodes like that of Reggio Calabria, which was conquered by Bixio on August 21 but at a high cost, they offered insignificant resistance, as numerous units of the Bourbon army disbanded spontaneously or even joined Garibaldi's ranks. On August 30 a conspicuous Sicilian army, led by general Ghio, was officially disbanded at Soveria Mannelli, while only minor and dispersed units continued the fight. The Neapolitan fleet behaved in similar way.
[edit] The end
King Francis II was thus forced to abandon Naples and entrench himself in the formidable fortress of Gaeta, while a last stand was set up on the Volturno river, north of Naples. On September 7 Garibaldi entered the Kingdom's capital with little harm, hailed as a liberator by the population.
In the decisive Battle of the Volturno (1 and 2 October[4]), Garibaldi, now supported by a Piedmontese army which had, with French approval, crossed through the Papal territories of the Marche and Umbria, decisively defeated the last organized Bourbon force of some 50,000 men.
A few days later (October 21) a popular plebiscite confirmed the annexion of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies to the Kingdom of Sardinia by an overwhelming majority.
The end of the expedition is traditionally set with the famous meeting in Teano[5] (northern Campania) between Victor Emmanuel and Garibaldi (October 26, 1860). Other assign instead the end of the campaign to the King's entrance in Naples on November 7.
Garibaldi asked the King to remain in the former Two Sicilies for a year as dictator. He also asked that his officers were integrated in the new Italian Army. When Victor Emmanuel refused to accept his requests, he returned to Caprera.
However, the military campaign was not yet fully completed, as Francis II held out in Gaeta until February of the next year, when he finally surrendered and left for exile in Austria. Shortly thereafter, in March 1861, the new Kingdom of Italy was formally established.
[edit] Evaluation
The Thousand Expedition has been traditionally one of the most celebrated events of the Italian Risorgimento, the process of the unification of Italy. However, recent studies have pointed out that the whole event was later turned in somewhat an hagiographic one, and that its effective relevance, in particular the extent of the military campaign, was overesteemed by the traditional historiography.
In particular, the rise of the so-called brigantaggio (brigandage), referring to the suppression of the local resistance by Piedmontese troops in the following years, needed at one point the presence of some 140,000 soldiers to maintain control of the former Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Traditionally, the brigantaggio has received a negative judgement by Italian historians, in stricly contrast with the heroism attributed to Garibaldi and his followers; the English historian Denis Mack Smith[6], for example, puts forward the lacks and the reticence of the sources available for the period.
The expedition, moreover, obtained the support of the powerful great landowners of southern Italy, in exchange of the promise that their property were left unscathed under the upcoming new political settlement. Numerous Sicilian peasants joined the Mille hoping instead for a redistribution of the lands to the people working it. The consequences of this misunderstanding became evident at Bronte.
Modern Bourbon supporters have also pointed out the appalling state of Piedmontese finances, depleted by unceasing wars, while the Kingdom of Two Sicilies was instead in a flourishing moment, with the increasing presence of industries testified to by the construction of the first Italian railway; from this point of view, the conquest of southern Italy proved providential for the Savoy treasury.
The ease with which 1,000 men crushed an organized army of some size had been recently explained again with a British secret intervention, in the form of a sum 3 millions of French francs of the times, which were used to bribe most of the Bourbon commanders.
[edit] See also
[edit] Notes
- ^ "The Piedmont" and "The Lombard", respectively. They were property of Raffaele Rubattino, of whose company Fouché was administrator, and had been paid with a guaranty from King Victor Emmanuel and Prime Minister Cavour themselves. After the conclusion of the expedition the debt was extinguished by handing over to Rubattino the entire Florio fleet, captured in Sicily.[1].
- ^ According to some sources, the exact number was 1,089. Most were from the former Lombardy-Venetia and other parts of Italy. There were some foreigners, often not cited in Italian history books, including Englishmen and Hungarians officers.http://www.cronologia.it/storia/biografie/garibal2.htm
- ^ These were: Stromboli (steam corvette), Valoroso (brigandine), Partenope (sail frigate) and the armed steamer Capri. The British had the two gunboats Argus and Intrepid.
- ^ Effective date of the end of the fightings is debated.
- ^ Other sources (including Del Boca) set the location of the meeting at Taverna della Catena, in territory of the modern comune of Vairano Patenora.
- ^ Denis Mack Smith, Italy and Its Monarchy.
[edit] Sources
- Abba, Giuseppe Cesare (1880). Da Quarto al Volturno. Noterelle di uno dei Mille.
- Banti, Anna (1967). Noi credevamo.
- Bianciardi, Luciano (1969). Daghela avanti un passo. Bietti.
- Del Boca, Lorenzo (1998). Maledetti Savoia. Piemme.
- Mack Smith, Denis (1990). Italy and Its Monarchy.
- Zitara, Nicola (1971). L'unità d’Italia. Nascita di una colonia.
[edit] External links
- Names of all 1,089 Mille (Italian)
