and 15,000 more in readiness to follow. The royalist army in Calabria
numbered about 27,000, including the garrison of Reggio, 2000 men,
under the command of General Galotti. On the 20th, Bixio attacked the
outposts; and on the 21st, Garibaldi fought his way into the
city--not, however, without meeting a strong resistance on the part of
the garrison, which might have been continued longer, and even with a
different result, had not the Calabrian insurgents hurried down from
Aspromonte on hearing the sound of guns, their sudden appearance
making the Royalists think that they were being attacked on all sides.
Next day the castle surrendered, and thus a quantity of valuable war
material fell into Garibaldi's hands. His luck had not deserted him.
Cosenz and Medici landed their divisions in the night of the 21st of
August, near Scilla, in the neighbourhood of which General Briganti
had massed his Neapolitans, 7000 strong. On the 23rd, Briganti found
himself attacked on the south and north--from Scilla by Cosenz, and
from Reggio by Garibaldi. His position was critical but not desperate
had he been able to depend upon his men, who were more numerous than
their combined opponents; but he saw at once that fighting was the
last thing they meant to do, and he had no choice but to surrender at
discretion, almost without firing a shot. Unfortunately, Garibaldi had
no power to keep prisoners of war, even if he wished to do so. Who was
to feed and guard them? Now, as subsequently, he bade the disbanded
troops go where they listed, undertaking to send to Naples by sea as
many as desired to go there. About a thousand accepted; the rest
dispersed, forming the first nucleus of the semi-political and wholly
dastardly brigandage which was later to become the scourge of Southern
Italy. Their earliest exploit was the savage murder of General
Briganti, whom they called a traitor, after the fashion of cowards.
This happened at Mileto on the 25th of August, when Briganti was on
his way to join General Ghio, who had concentrated 12,000 men on the
town of Monteleone. Garibaldi, whose sound principle it was to dispose
of his enemies one by one as they cropped up, prepared to attack Ghio
with his whole available forces, but he was spared the trouble. He
came, he saw, and he had no need of conquering, for the soldiers of
that bad thing that had been Bourbon despotism in the Italian south
vanished before his path more quickly than the mists of the morning
before the sun. No grounds that will bear scrutiny have ever been
adduced for the reactionary explanation of the marvel: to wit, that
the Neapolitan generals were bribed. By Cavour? The game would have
been too risky. By 'English bank-notes,' that useful factor in
European politics that has every pleasing quality except reality? It
is not apparent how the corruptibility of the generals gives a better
complexion to the matter, but the writers on the subject who are
favourable to Francis II. seem to think that it does.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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