Such considerations as these could not, however, deter Garibaldi. He grew wroth at the thought that any foreigner--were he even the Emperor of the French--should be consulted by Italians in the achievement of their independence. Eluding both the Neapolitan and the Piedmontese cruisers, he crossed to the mainland and took Reggio after a sharp fight. From that moment his progress towards the capital resembled a triumph. And when, on September 7, accompanied by only a few officers, he entered Naples, though there were still a dozen or more Bourbon regiments in garrison there, the soldiers joined with the civilians and the loud-throathed _lazzaroni_ in acclaiming him their deliverer. Yet only a few hours before their King had sneaked off, too craven to defend himself, too much detested to be defended. Think what it meant that this should happen,--that the sovereign, the source of honor, the fountain of justice, the symbol of the life and integrity of the state, should not find in his own palace one loyal sword unsheathed in his defense, even though the loyalty were hired, like that of the eight hundred Swiss who gave their lives for Louis XVI! By an inevitable penalty, Bourbon misrule in Naples passed vilely away; it had been, as Gladstone declared, the embodied “negation of God:” even in its collapse and ruin there was nothing tragic, portending strength; there was only the negative energy of putrefaction. Having taken measures for temporarily governing Naples, Garibaldi prepared for a last encounter with the Bourbons. King Francis still commanded an army of forty thousand men along the Volturno, near Capua. There Garibaldi, with hardly a third of that number, fought and won a pitched battle on October 1. A month later he welcomed Victor Emanuel as sovereign of the kingdom which he and his Thousand had liberated. The republicans, instigated by Mazzini, had wished to postpone, if they could not prevent, annexation; but Garibaldi, whose patriotic instinct was truer than their partisanship, insisted that Naples and Sicily should be united to the Kingdom of Italy under the House of Savoy. In all modern history there is no parallel to his bestowal of his conquests on the King, as there is nothing nobler than his complete disinterestedness. He declined all honors, titles, stipends, and offices for himself, and departed, almost secretly, from Naples for Caprera the day after he had consigned the government to its new lord.