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| The scourge of the rich who
founded a nation |
Garibaldi founded the Italian nation as we
know it, and challenged the powerful on behalf of the downtrodden,
says Illtyd Harrington
Rome or Death by David Pick
Jonathan Cape, £16.99
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General Guiseppe Garibaldi
Italian nationalists Camillo Benso di Cavour
Giuseppe Mazzini
Benito Mussolini
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THE last great icon of the left was Che Guevara. In many ways,
he reflected the talents of his 19th-century predecessor, General
Guiseppe Garibaldi.
This maker of Modern Italy was fearless, flamboyant and nomadic
– known by his cap and gaucho and the way he excited passionate
enthusiasm.
But as far as I know there was no T-shirt. At the height of his
fame he came to London in 1864 to be greeted by 500,000 Londoners.
The radical paper Reynolds News described him as “the greatest
man by whom England has ever been visited”.
David Pick is professor of cultural history at Queen Mary’s
College London, as well as a psychoanalyst. Here he follows Garibaldi’s
defiant return from Caprera, his rocky island retreat between Corsica
and Sardinia in 1875. His intention was nothing less than diverting
the River Tiber and thereby tackling the killer disease malaria
that wrecked havoc, not only in Rome, but in the surrounding region
of Campagna. Rome like London was to have an embankment.
Embarrassed by his presence the government did all it could to frustrate
him. Among his enemies was the Papacy, which had lost its hold on
central Italy, in part thanks to him.
The church bitterly resented his influence and he did not hesitate
in his retaliatory broadsides.
“In all my writings I have waged war against priestly influence,
which I have always believed to be a prop of every vice, despotism
and corruption to be found on this earth,” he said.
The man had an unbreakable spirit. Born in Nice in 1807, he sailed
to Odessa in 1823 and to Rome by 1825.
He was always eager to learn and constantly absorbing experiences.
In 1834, he was convicted of high treason, causing him to flee to
South America, where he led fighting groups of revolutionaries.
A brilliant tactician, his 1,000-strong army the Red Shirts struck
fear into their well-armed opponents.
After the defeat of 1848 “revolutions” he fled to New
York City and became a candy maker. But Italy called him back. Under
the leadership of Cavour, Mazzini and Garibaldi; the brain, soul
and sword, Italy took on its modern shape.
President Abe Lincoln offered him a leading part in the Union army.
Leading French writers Victor Hugo and Alexander Dumar carried him
forward. He led a French army during the Franco-Prussian War of
1870.
At the height of the Cold War, in the 1950 and 1960s his face was
on Soviet and American stamps.
Commemorated here in a biscuit and aperitif Elixir Garibaldi. His
charisma never dimmed.
Pick, I’m afraid, pays excessive attention to Garibaldi’s
motivation for cleaning up Rome.
He suggests that it was caused by the death of his wife from malaria
while in flight from Rome in 1849.
Not withstanding this it is a fascinating reminder of a fisherman’s
son who commanded such enduring loyalty throughout the world. Fascist
dictator Mussolini tried to steal the magic of Garibaldi by draining
the gruesome Pontine Marshes near Rome in 1925.
Garibaldi’s last hurrah as told here was on the side of the
dispirited and dispossessed and even in old age fought the safe
and complacent men wherever they were. |
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