Out with Garibaldi: A story of the liberation of Italy

“To the Invincible Dictator of the two Sicilies. – Naples expects you with anxiety to confide to you her future destiny. – Entirely yours, Liborio Romano.”

A subsequent letter informed him that at a meeting of the ministers it had been decided that the Prince of Alessandria, Syndic of Naples, should go to Salerno, with the commander of the national guard, to make the arrangements for his entry into the capital. Garibaldi, however, did not wait. Were he to arrive at the head of his troops, the Neapolitan garrisons of the castle and other strong places in the city might oppose him by force; and, as ever, wishing to avoid bloodshed, he determined to rely solely upon the populace of Naples. He at once ordered a small special train to be prepared.

“I am only taking with me,” he said to Frank, “a few of my staff. You will be one of the number: you have a right to it, not only as the representative of your mother, to whose aid we are largely indebted for our being now here, but for your own personal services. Signor Forli shall also go: he stood by me on the walls of Rome twelve years ago, he has suffered much for his principles, he is your mother’s father, therefore he too shall come.”

There were but four carriages on the little train that left at nine o’clock in the morning on the 7th of September for Naples. Cosenz, and thirteen members of the staff, represented the national army; the remaining seats being occupied by various personal friends and two or three newspaper correspondents.

“‘Tis an affair not without risk,” Signor Forli said to Frank, as they walked towards the station. “That the people will receive Garibaldi with enthusiasm is certain, but the attitude of the troops is very doubtful. Certainly the flower of the Neapolitan army will have been left in garrison at Naples; and if but a score of these remain faithful to the Bourbons, Garibaldi’s life may be sacrificed. However, I cannot believe that Providence will permit one who has done so great and mighty a work to perish, just at the moment of the completion of his enterprise.”

The station-master at Salerno, as soon as the train had started, flashed the news to the various stations on the road; and the consequence was, that at every village the people assembled, and when half the journey was done the crowds were so vast, that they overflowed on to the line, and the train was brought to a standstill. National guards climbed on to the roofs of the carriages, and decorated them with flags and evergreens. At Torre del Greco, Resina, and Portici, progress became almost impossible, and the train had to proceed at a snail’s pace to Naples. Here the authorities had prevented all access to the station, but outside the scene was an extraordinary one: horses and carriages, men and women of the highest and of the lowest classes; national guards and gendarmes, members of Bertani’s and the Cavourian committees, were all crowded in confusion together. The houses were decorated with flags and tapestry, and thronged with eager spectators from basement to roof; and as Missori and three others rode out from the station on horseback, followed by Garibaldi in an open carriage with Cosenz, and by a dozen other carriages containing his staff and those who had arrived with him, the roar of welcome was overpowering.

It was with the greatest difficulty that the horsemen cleared the way; for all along the road the crowd was as great as at the station. The attitude of the troops, however, at the various points where they were massed, was sullen and threatening. At Castel Nuovo the guns were pointed on the road; the troops stood ready to fire. One shot, and the course of history might have been changed. Garibaldi ordered his coachman to drive slower, and sat in his carriage calmly, with his eyes fixed upon the troops. One officer gave the order to fire; but he was not obeyed. The calmness and daring of the lion-like face filled the soldiers with such admiration that, for the moment, their hostility evaporated; and while some of them saluted as if to a royal personage, others took off their hats and burst into a cheer. Garibaldi acknowledged it by lifting his hat, and by a cheery wave of his hand, and drove on as calmly as before.

In the carriages behind, all had held their breath at the critical moment.

“What an escape! What an escape!” Signor Forli murmured to Frank, who was sitting next to him. “Had but one musket been fired, we should all have been dead men in a minute or two; and, what is of more consequence, the freeing of Italy must have been postponed for twenty years.”

“It was horribly close,” Frank said. “I would rather go through ten hand-to-hand fights, than another time like the last three minutes; it has made me feel quite queer, and I own that what you say about putting back Italian freedom for twenty years never entered my mind. The one thought I had was, that we were all going to be smashed up without having the chance of striking a single blow. I went through some pretty sharp fighting at Palermo, but I was always doing something then, and did not think of the danger. I don’t mind saying that I was in a blue funk just now.”

Garibaldi drove straight, as was the custom of kings on first entering Naples, to the palace of the archbishop. Here the Te Deum was sung; and he then went on to the palace of Angri, where he and his staff took up their quarters. Vast crowds assembled outside the palace, and the general had to appear again and again on the balcony in reply to the roars of acclamation from the enthusiastic population. General Cosenz, who was himself a Neapolitan, was appointed to organise a government. This he did to the general satisfaction – moderate men only being chosen. Garibaldi requested Admiral Persano in the name of Victor Emmanuel to take command of the Neapolitan navy, decreeing that it should form part of the Sardinian squadron; and appointed to the pro-dictatorship the Marquis of Pallavicini, a staunch friend of the king. He had offered Signor Forli an apartment in the palace, and as soon as the first excitement had ceased the latter said to Frank, who had at Salerno received the portmanteau he had left at Genoa: —

“Let us go out and see the state of the city. But before we do so, you had best put on your ordinary clothes: we should simply be mobbed if you were to go out as one of Garibaldi’s officers.”

“Yes; we have had quite enough of that as we came along,” Frank said. “It will really be a comfort to go about for once in peace and quiet.”

They started in a few minutes, leaving the palace by one of the side entrances, and soon mingled in the crowd. The people seemed half mad with delight. As soon as the news of Garibaldi’s arrival spread through the town every house was decorated, and the whole population poured out into the streets. Among the better classes the joy that the government of the Bourbons had come to an end, and that the constitutional government, which had done so much for Northern Italy, would succeed the despotism which had pressed so heavily on all with anything to lose, was deep and sincere. Among the lower classes the enthusiasm manifested was but the excitement of some few minutes, and had Francesco returned a month later, at the head of his victorious troops, they would have shouted as lustily.

It was a fête, a special fête, and it mattered but little to the fickle and excitable population what was its cause. But here, as on all occasions when Italian people give way to bursts of enthusiasm, foreigners were struck with the perfect good-temper, the orderly behaviour, and the entire absence of drunkenness, among the population. In Paris the first step of people excited by a change of government would have been to fall upon those whom they considered to be the agents of their oppressors. The gendarmes, who had so long been feared, would not have dared show themselves in the streets; the emblems of royalty would have been torn down in the public buildings; the members of the last government would have been forced to fly for their lives. There was a little of this in Naples, but, as in Venice, six years later, this feeling of animosity for the past speedily passed away.

But how faint was the feeling of real patriotism in the minds of the Neapolitans is shown by the fact that only one inhabitant of the city joined Garibaldi’s army; that not a single house was open for the reception of his officers or soldiers; that after the battle of Volturno hundreds of wounded men were left lying all day on the pavements without aid or nourishment, without a single mattress being found for them to lie upon, by the inhabitants. Never, except by the King of Italy and the civil and military authorities of Piedmont to Garibaldi and his followers, who had won a kingdom for them, was such national ingratitude displayed as by the people of Naples.

“It is pleasant to see,” Signor Forli said, as he and Frank wandered about; “but it would be far more pleasant if one did not know that it means absolutely nothing. You have told me that it was the same thing at Messina: that, in spite of Garibaldi’s appeal to the ladies of the place, they did nothing whatever to aid the wounded in the hospitals – never contributed so much as a piece of lint or material for bandages; and, frivolous as the people there are, these in Naples are worse. If all Italy were like the Neapolitans, the country would not be worth shedding a drop of blood for. However, one must make some allowances for them. For centuries they have been slaves rather than free people; they have had no voice as to their own disposal, they could not express even an opinion on public affairs, without risking imprisonment or death; there has been nothing left for them but to amuse themselves; they have been treated like children at school, and they have become children. We can only hope that in time, under a free government, they will grow worthy of freedom, worthy of forming a part of an Italy to which the Lombards, the Piedmontese, and the Calabrians belong.”

It was already late in the afternoon, and until some of the troops arrived it would be impossible to take any steps with relation to public buildings. The castle of St. Elmo, and the prison of Santa Maria, with many other places, were still in the hands of the Neapolitan soldiers, whose attitude continued to be hostile, and until these retired nothing could be done; and it was by no means certain that the guns at St. Elmo, which completely commanded the town, might not at any moment open fire.

“I can well understand your impatience to get rid of these troops from the city,” Garibaldi said the next morning. “I do not forget, Percival, the main object that you had in view, and I too long for the time when I may clasp the hand of my old comrade of South America and Rome. I promise you that the moment the prisons are evacuated you shall go with the party who will search them, and search them strictly. You know what these jailors are: they are the creatures of the worst men of Francesco’s government. By years of cruelty and oppression they have earned for themselves the hatred of every one within the walls of the prisons and of their friends and relatives. Our victory means their dismissal – that is, as soon as the prisons are cleaned from the lowest dungeons to the roofs. That they shall superintend: it is they who are responsible for it, and they themselves shall be engaged in the work of purification. It may well be that they will try to hide the lowest and worst dungeons from our search, partly from fear that the natural and righteous indignation excited by the discoveries may end in their being promptly punished with death for their accumulated crimes, partly in hopes that the royal troops may yet overcome us and restore Francesco to his throne; in which case they would receive approval for still retaining some of the worst victims of the tyranny of his government.”

“You may be sure that I shall search them thoroughly, general.”

On going out, they found the streets were still thronged by an almost frenzied populace. These invaded the hotels and cafés, and pressed all they could lay hands on to join in the demonstrations. A few murders were perpetrated; the state of things prevailing affording an excellent opportunity for satisfying private revenge, as it needed only a cry that the victim was a spy of the government to justify it in the eyes of the bystanders.

In the quarter nearest to St. Elmo the enthusiasm had a good deal cooled down, as the fear that the guns of the castle might at any moment open fire for the time dissipated any desire for marching about and acclaiming Garibaldi. At four o’clock, however, it was known that two officers of the castle had gone down to the palace, and at six the welcome news spread that the garrison had capitulated, and would march out on the following morning.

Frank had little sleep that night. All along his hopes had been high that he should find his father here; but now that the question would be so soon decided, his fears were in the ascendant. He remembered that the evidence in favour of his father’s death was extremely strong, the only hopeful fact being that his body had not been discovered. So slight did even his mother and Signora Forli deem the chance of his being alive, that for two years neither had breathed a word to the other as to the existence of a possibility that he might be still living. Undoubtedly the release of his grandfather had increased his own hope, but he felt now that there was but small ground for the feeling. Had his father been hidden away in a fortress, he might also have survived; but the probabilities seemed altogether against this. It was not until midday that St. Elmo was evacuated, and several companies of the national guard marched in. A colonel of the staff had, with Frank, been charged with the duty of searching the dungeons. They had brought with them fifty lazzaroni, who had been engaged for this repulsive work. A dozen of the Garibaldian troops were to accompany them; the prison officials were all ordered to go with the party, and they, as well as the lazzaroni, were told to bring pails and brooms.

The castle of St. Elmo covers an area of no less than four acres; it was cut out of the solid rock, and is surrounded by a sunken ditch, sixty or seventy feet deep, and fifty wide. This great mass of stone is honeycombed in every direction with a network of corridors and subterranean apartments, and there is ample space to hold several thousand prisoners. The upper tiers of chambers were fairly clean; these were, in fact, the barracks of the troops. The guns looked out from embrasures. Several batteries of field artillery, with waggons and all fittings, still remained there, and the chambers were littered with rubbish of all kinds, discarded by the troops before leaving. It was not here that prisoners were to be found. The national guard had already opened the doors of the cells and chambers in the stage below, and had liberated those confined there; the work of searching those still lower began at once. The extent was so vast and the windings were so intricate that the work seemed interminable. In order to make sure that each passage had been searched, a pail of whitewash was sent for, and a splash made at each turning. Each story was darker, and the air more stifling, than that above it, for they were now far below the level of the castle itself.

Frank had taken the advice of Signor Forli, and had bought several bundles of the strongest cigars; and he and the officer in command, the officer of the national guard who attended them and the soldiers all smoked incessantly. At the worst places the lazzaroni and turnkeys were set to work with their buckets and brooms. It was not until late in the evening that they came to the conclusion that every cell and chamber had been searched. About a hundred and fifty prisoners had been found and released, but among them Frank looked in vain for his father. The lowest dungeons of all had been found empty; and this, and the solemn assurances of all the prison officials, who had been threatened with instant death should further search discover any prisoners, convinced him that at any rate his father was not there.

The next day the neighbouring prison of Santa Maria was searched. It had formerly been a monastery, and the upper cells were lofty and capacious. The jailors declared, indeed, that these were the only cells, but a careful search showed a door in the rock. This was burst open, and a series of subterranean passages was discovered. The jailors declared that these had never been used in their time, and, they believed, never before. That they had been used, however, was evident, from the marks where lamps had been hung on the walls, and by many other signs. No prisoners were found here, all having been released directly it was known that the garrison of the castle had capitulated. The search occupied the whole day, so extensive were the underground galleries; and a passage was discovered that evidently at one time formed a communication between St. Elmo and this prison. As he came out into daylight, Frank staggered, and would have fallen had not one of the soldiers caught him. He had been ill the night before; and the effects of the close air, noxious smells, and the work, which had been even more trying than on the previous day, and his bitter disappointment, had now completely overcome him. After some water had been dashed in his face and he had taken a draught of some wine which one of the prison officials fetched, he partially recovered. He was assisted by two of the Garibaldians down the road to the town, and then, obtaining a vehicle, was driven to the palace, and managed with assistance to get up to his apartment. A minute or two later Signor Forli joined him, one of the attendants having summoned him as soon as Frank arrived.

“Do not trouble to speak, my dear boy,” he said. Frank was lying on the bed sobbing convulsively. “You have failed – that I can well understand; but you must not altogether lose heart. We had thought this the most likely place; but there are still other prisons, and we will not give up hope until every one of these has been ransacked. I am sorry now that I did not accompany you, but I am afraid, after what I have gone through myself, that only a few minutes in one of those places would overpower me; and I wonder how you, young and strong as you are, were able to spend two days in such an atmosphere.”

“I shall be better to-morrow,” Frank said. “That last place was awful; but I think that it was as much the strong tobacco, as those horrible stinks, which upset me. It was a choice of two evils; but I would smoke even worse tobacco if I could get it, if I had to go through it again.”

“I will get you a glass of brandy and water, Frank; that will do you more good than anything.”

The next morning Frank was still too unwell to be able to get up; his failure had completely broken him down, and he felt indisposed to make the slightest exertion. At twelve o’clock, however, Signor Forli came in.

“I have a piece of news to give you,” he said, “news which affords us some shadow of hope that you have not failed altogether. Last night I was talking with the general and one or two of his staff. Garibaldi is, as you know, intensely interested in your search, and sympathises with you most warmly. Suddenly he said, ‘Is it not possible that he may have been removed before the king and his court retired?’ Had Percival been found in the prisons, it would have rendered the bad faith and mendacity of the government more glaring than ever, and would have deprived it of any little sympathy that was felt for it in England. Therefore, feeling sure that the prisons would be searched as soon as I entered, Percival, had he been here, may, with other special prisoners, have been sent to Capua, which is so strongly fortified a place that they may well believe it to be impregnable to anything but a long siege by troops possessing a battering train.”

Frank sat up. “That is indeed a good idea,” he exclaimed. “How stupid of me not to have thought of questioning the prison people! Yes; it is quite likely that if any of the prisoners were removed, he would be one of them.”

“I have no doubt you would have thought of it, Frank, if it had not been that you were completely upset by that strong tobacco. Mind, I don’t blame you for taking it: it is better to be poisoned with nicotine than by the stenches of a Neapolitan prison. The thought only struck Garibaldi after we had chatted over the matter for some time. I went over there this morning with Colonel Nullo. Although the officials at first asserted that no prisoners had been taken away, they soon recovered their memories when he said that he would interrogate every one of the warders separately, and if he found that any prisoners had been sent away he would have them taken out into the courtyard and shot for lying to him. They then remembered that four prisoners had been taken away, but all declared with adjurations to all the saints that they did not know who they were: they were delivered over to them under numbers only. One had been there seven years, and two had been there five years, and one two years. Again threatening to examine all the turnkeys, he learned that the last prisoner received had been confined in one of the lower dungeons, where they yesterday asserted that no one had for years been imprisoned; the other three were also kept in the most rigid seclusion, but in the upper cells.

“I insisted on seeing the man who had attended on the prisoner kept in the lower cell. He was a surly ruffian, and it was not until Nullo ordered four men to load, and to put the fellow with his back to the wall, that he would answer my questions. He said then that the prisoner was, he should say, between forty and fifty, but it was not easy to judge of age after a man had been below there for a few months. He had never said more than a few words to him, and it had never struck him that he was not an Italian. I questioned him more closely as to this, and he admitted that he had sometimes, when he went down, heard the prisoner singing. He had listened, but could not understand the words, and they might have been in a foreign language. He had no more interest in that prisoner than in any other. He supposed, by his being sent down below there, that it was hoped he would die off as soon as possible. They seldom lived many months in those dungeons, but this man seemed tougher than usual, though his strength had failed a good deal lately. He was able to walk up from his cell to the carriage when he was taken away. Now we mustn’t feel too sanguine, Frank, but although there is no proof that this prisoner is your father, the evidence, so far as it goes, is rather in favour of such a supposition than against it.”

“It is indeed,” Frank said eagerly. “The fact that they put him down into the cells where, as the man says, it was almost certain he would soon die, and that when it was found that he had not done so, he was at the last moment taken away, shows that there was some very strong motive for preventing the fact that he was a prisoner becoming public; and we know that they had the very strongest reason in the case of my father. The age would be about right, and the fact that he was singing would show, at any rate, that it was some one who was determined not to give in, but to keep up his spirits till the very last, and I am sure my father would have done that. Well, I will get up now. I could not lie here quietly; it would be impossible, after what you have been telling me.”

“I think you are right, Frank. I will have a basin of soup sent in for you. When you have eaten that, and dressed, we will take a carriage and go for a long drive by the road along the shore to Pompeii. The sea-breeze will do you more good than anything, and the lovely view, and a stroll through Pompeii itself, will distract your thoughts. There is nothing to be done until Capua is taken, which may not be for a long time yet. However, events are moving. We hear that Victor Emmanuel and his government, alarmed at the success of Garibaldi, and feeling that if they are to have any voice in the matter they must not be content to rest passive while he is carrying all before him, have resolved upon taking some part in the affair. Under the pretext that in order to restore peace and order it is necessary that they should interfere, they are about to despatch an army to Ancona by sea; and, landing there, will advance into Central Italy, and act, as they say, as circumstances may demand. All of which means, that now Garibaldi has pulled the chestnuts out of the fire for them they will proceed to appropriate them.”