Giuseppe Garibaldi

The “Hero of the Two Worlds,” Giuseppe Garibaldi, was one of the most important men of the nineteenth century. He is known as the man who liberated and unified Italy. I am going to tell you about this hero’s story and explain why I admire him.

Giuseppe Garibaldi was born on July the 4th 1807, in Nice, and like his father, he became a merchant navy officer. During his travels around the Mediterranean Sea, he met lots of Italian emigrants. One of them, Giuseppe Mazzini, was a member of the revolutionary movement “Young Italy”, whose aims were the liberation and the unification of Italy. Garibaldi joined it in 1833, and in 1834, he organized an insurrection in Genova but failed. Sentenced to death, he escaped to South America. There, he became a military leader totally committed to the local patriotic movement and he helped young states like Uruguay to become free. It was there that he met his wife, Anita, and he created the “Red Shirts”, volunteers wearing red shirts. In 1848, thanks to the European revolutions, Garibaldi came back to Italy to take part in the new revolutionary movement, the “Risorgimento”. With three thousand volunteers, he fought against the Austrians in the Alps. Discomfited, he went to Rome, where Mazzini had created a republic. But the French troupes came and took Rome in 1842. During Garibaldi’s retirement, his wife, who had fought at his side, was killed by the Austrian troupes and alone he went to New York. There, he built a candle factory.

Garibaldi welcomed in London, 1864

One year later, Garibaldi came back to Italy to make an alliance with the king of Sardinia, Victorio Emmanuelle II. Together, between 1859 and 1860, they won lots of battles like “The Expedition of the Thousand”. This military operation, lead by one thousand “Red Shirts”, made the annexation of Sicily and Piemonte-Sardinia possible. So in 1861, the Italian Kingdom was born. But Rome wasn’t part of this kingdom yet. Between 1862 and 1867 Garibaldi attempted to take possession of Rome. But he failed, and it was only in1870 that the annexation of Rome by Italy took place, without his participating: he was fighting with the French Republic against the Prussian troupes. Elected to both French and Italian parliaments, he refused and went back to his Island of Caprera, where he died in 1882.

Garibaldi statue in Washington Square Park, N.Y.

Why have I chosen to write about Giuseppe Garibaldi and his influence on my life? First I was born and I live near Nice, the birth city of Garibaldi, so he is my local hero. Moreover, my grand father is Italian, and Garibaldi is his national hero. Since I was a child, he has told me stories about Garibaldi’s battles. But Garibaldi is also one of my heroes because of his adventures around the world and the fact that he always followed his ideas and he never betrayed them even when everything was against him. This is a thing that I find essential: if you want to live and feel good you must agree with yourself.

As a conclusion, Garibaldi is for me one of the most important people in History, because of his participation in the unification of my grandparents’ country and his personality: I think that if you have a dream or a goal in your life, you must try and do everything you can to transform this dream into reality!