A legend in his lifetime

There is a brand of Toscano cigars called Garibaldi. Until given a new design recently, the packet proclaimed him as ‘the hero of two worlds’ as well as a devoted smoker of cigars (‘naturalemente Toscani’). The description was fair. Garibaldi was the most famous man of his time, the most famous since Napoleon. His image was everywhere, like Che Guevara’s in our time. A Polish historian has called him ‘the symbol of popular revolution, and a model of a people’s military leader’. When he died a French newspaper described him as a citizen of the world. Like the knight errant, the medieval paladin, he had as many homelands as there were oppressed peoples. His image has replaced that of Napoleon in many of our peasants’ hovels and is found in the Bulgarian’s shack just as in the Indian’s tent on the pampas.

Others compared him to the semi-legendary hero of the early Roman Republic, Cincinnatus,who was called from the plough to save Rome from invasion and returned contentedly to his farm when the job was done. He was the hero of English Liberals. G. M. Trevelyan told the story of his Italian exploits in three books, impassioned and still very readable, perhaps his best work (strangely absent by the way from Scirocco’s bibliography).

He fought always for liberty, or at least for his idea of it: in Brazil, on behalf of the Republic of Rio Grande do Sul, which sought independence from Rio de Janeiro. (A young Brazilian of Italian extraction recently told me, ‘He is very respected and admired here, as one of the heroes of our “Revolution” ’); in Uruguay against Argentinian domination; in Italy; and, finally, when over 60 and crippled by arthritis, commanding the Army of the Vosges on behalf of the French Republic against Prussia.