Giuseppe Garibaldi
Giuseppe Garibaldi | |
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.jpg) Garibaldi in 1866 | |
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| In office 18 February 1861 – 2 June 1882 | |
| Constituency | Naples (1861–1865) Andria (1865–1867) Ozieri (1867–1870) Rome (1870–1882) |
| Dictator of Sicily | |
| In office 17 May 1860 – 4 November 1860 | |
| Preceded by | Position established |
| Succeeded by | Position abolished |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Joseph-Marie Garibaldi 4 July 1807 Nice, First French Empire |
| Died | 2 June 1882 (aged 74) Caprera, Kingdom of Italy |
| Party |
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| Spouses | Giuseppina Raimondi
(m. 1860; sep. 1860)Francesca Armosino (m. 1880) |
| Children | 8, including Menotti and Ricciotti |
| Signature |  |
| Military service | |
| Allegiance | |
| Branch | |
Service years | 1835–1871 |
| Rank | General |
| Commands | |
| Wars | Ragamuffin War
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| Part of the Politics series on |
| Republicanism |
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Giuseppe Maria Garibaldi (Italian: [dʒuˈzɛppe ɡariˈbaldi] ⓘ;[note 1] 4 July 1807 – 2 June 1882) was an Italian general, revolutionary and republican. He contributed to the Unification of Italy (Risorgimento) and the creation of the Kingdom of Italy. He is considered to be one of Italy's "fathers of the fatherland", along with Camillo Benso di Cavour, King Victor Emmanuel II and Giuseppe Mazzini.[1] Garibaldi is also known as the "Hero of the Two Worlds" because of his military enterprises in South America and Europe.[2]
Garibaldi was a follower of the Italian nationalist Mazzini and embraced the republican nationalism of the Young Italy movement.[3] He became a supporter of Italian unification under a democratic republican government. However, breaking with Mazzini, he pragmatically allied himself with the monarchist Cavour and the Kingdom of Sardinia in the struggle for independence, subordinating his republican ideals to his nationalist ones until Italy was unified. After participating in an uprising in Piedmont, he was sentenced to death, but escaped and sailed to South America, where he spent 14 years in exile, during which he took part in several wars and learned the art of guerrilla warfare.[4] In 1835 he joined the rebels known as the Ragamuffins (farrapos), in the Ragamuffin War in Brazil, and took up their cause of establishing the Riograndense Republic and later the Catarinense Republic. Garibaldi also became involved in the Uruguayan Civil War, raising an Italian force known as Redshirts, and is still celebrated as an important contributor to Uruguay's reconstitution.
In 1848, Garibaldi returned to Italy. He commanded and fought in military campaigns that eventually led to the Italian unification. The provisional government of Milan made him a general and the Minister of War promoted him to General of the Roman Republic in 1849. When the war of independence broke out in April 1859, Garibaldi led his Hunters of the Alps in the capture of major cities in Lombardy, including Varese and Como, until he reached the frontier of South Tyrol; the war ended with the acquisition of Lombardy. The following year, 1860, he led the Expedition of the Thousand on behalf of, and with the consent of, Victor Emmanuel II, King of Sardinia. The expedition was a success and concluded with the annexation of Sicily, Southern Italy, Marche and Umbria to the Kingdom of Sardinia before the creation of a unified Kingdom of Italy on 17 March 1861. His last military campaign took place during the Franco-Prussian War as commander of the Army of the Vosges.
Garibaldi became an international figurehead for national independence and republican ideals, and is considered by twentieth-century historiography and popular culture as Italy's greatest national hero.[5][6] He was showered with admiration and praise by many contemporary intellectuals and political figures, including Abraham Lincoln,[7] William Brown,[8] Francesco de Sanctis, Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Malwida von Meysenbug, George Sand, Charles Dickens,[9] and Friedrich Engels.[10] Garibaldi also inspired later figures like Jawaharlal Nehru and Che Guevara.[11] Historian A. J. P. Taylor called him "the only wholly admirable figure in modern history".[12] The volunteers who followed Garibaldi during his campaigns were known as the Garibaldini or Redshirts, after the color of the shirts that they wore in lieu of a uniform.
Early life
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Garibaldi was born and christened Joseph-Marie Garibaldi[13][note 2] on 4 July 1807 in Nice, which had been conquered by the French Republic in 1792, to the Ligurian family of Domenico Garibaldi from Chiavari[14] and Maria Rosa Nicoletta Raimondi from Loano.[15] In 1814, the Congress of Vienna returned Nice to Victor Emmanuel I of Sardinia. (Nice would be returned to France in 1860 by the Treaty of Turin, over the objections of Garibaldi.)
Garibaldi's family's involvement in coastal trade drew him to a life at sea.
He lived in the Pera district of Istanbul from 1828 to 1832. He became an instructor and taught Italian, French, and mathematics in the Ottoman Empire.[16] Garibaldi had close ties with the vast Sardinian exile network in the Ottoman Empire, befriending people such as Giovanni Timoteo Calosso.[17]
In April 1833, he travelled to Taganrog, in the Russian Empire, aboard the schooner Clorinda with a shipment of oranges. During ten days in port, he met Giovanni Battista Cuneo from