Riding the wild horses and chasing the wild cattle of the Pampas, his
eyes covering the immense spaces untrodden by man, this corsair of
five-and-twenty drank deep of the innocent pleasures of untamed
nature, when not occupied in fighting by land or sea, with equal
fortune; or rather, perhaps, with greater fortune and greater proof of
inborn genius as commander of the naval campaign of the Paran[=a] than
as defender of Monte Video. No adventures were wanting to him; he was
even imprisoned and tortured. In South America he found the one woman
worthy to bear his name, the lion-hearted Anita, whom he carried off,
she consenting, from her father and the man to whom her father had
betrothed her. Garibaldi in after years expressed such deep contrition
for the act which bore Anita away from the quiet life in store for
her, and plunged her into hardships which only ended when she died,
that, misinterpreting his remorse, many supposed the man from whom he
took her to have been already her husband. It was not so. Shortly
before the Church of San Francisco at Monte Video was burnt down (some
twenty years ago), the marriage register of Garibaldi and Anita was
found in its archives, and a legal copy was made. In it she is
described as 'Doña Ana Maria de Jesus, unmarried daughter of Don
Benito Rivevio de Silva, of Laguna, in Brazil.' The bridegroom, who
during all his American career had scarcely clothes to cover him,
parted with his only possession, an old silver watch, to pay the
priest's fees. Head of the Italian Legion, he only took the rations of
a common soldier, and as candles were not included in the rations, he
sat in the dark. Someone reported this to the Government, who sent him
a present of £20, half of which he gave to a poor widow.
When the first rumours that something was preparing in Italy reached
Monte Video, Garibaldi wrote a letter offering his services to the
Pope, still hailed as Champion of Freedom, and soon embarked himself
for the Old World, with eighty-five of his best soldiers, among whom
was his beloved friend, Francesco Anzani. Giacomo Medici had been
despatched a little in advance to confer with Mazzini. At starting,
the Legion knew nothing of the revolution in Milan and Venice, or of
Charles Albert having taken the field. Great was their wonder,
therefore, on reaching Gibraltar, to see hoisted on a Sardinian ship a
perfectly new flag, never beheld by them out of dreams--the Italian
tricolor.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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