The Young Idealist: Red Shirts

Quando finisce una guerra
le bugie degli sconfitti vengono smascherate,
le bugie dei vincitori diventano Storia
(Arrigo Petacco)

Palerm, March 4, 1861. Monday.

The sun shines on Palermo. It is 12:20pm when the old steamer Ercole releases its moorings. It is headed to Naples. On that steamship the last members of the expedition of the Thousand Red Shirts, the last ones left in Sicily, have embarked - the arrival is scheduled for the following morning. Three hours later also the Pompei left the port of Palermo, a steamship by far faster than the Ercole. On the same route, there are also two rickety tartanes with high-sounding names, the Angel Raffaele and La Madonna dell'Arco, and also an English war vessel is on the same route. It wouldn't be solitary navigation. But after turning a few degrees north-east and disappearing on the horizon the Ercole vanished, without any trace of ever existing.

Can the bad be more abundant than the good?

Red Shirts 

Once I believed in The Providence, but not now, not any longer. I thought The Providence was a moral force that ruled the world. Now instead I believe in the power of my strength, the only power that keeps me alive.
Time writes moral not God. Men write moral not God. Flesh and bones write moral not God.
Blood writes moral.

Incerto tempore incertis locis[1].

My life spanned two centuries. Therefore, I know the slight following of the many possibilities of life from a direction to another direction. I know the secret of swerving. There cannot be a free and fulfilled personal life until there is no free possibility to choose in compatibility with what the Moral has preordained for you.
It’s because of these wanderings of mine that I have been putting together my own particular idea of Patria.
For her, I knew the victory, for her I knew the defeat. For her, I knew the fight. For her, I knew the war. For her, I knew the honesty. For her, I knew the calumny.
I survived all them, though. And I loved, I loved all the women I met. But one above all others.
And I found life to be good, the day I knew how to choose, and I learned how to take control of my destiny.

We left Palermo; I see the skyline in the distance from the deck of the ship. We are headed to Naples. Tomorrow I will be in Naples. Magical and mysterious land, where the sun generates fruits in one day when elsewhere a month wouldn’t be enough.

I was ordered to take my account books to Turin. They are waiting for me. Garibaldi has made many enemies in that city. 

Dear Silvia,
I started this voyage to Turin, right now. I am on the deck of the steamship. I watch the see…and if I must be honest with you, I am afraid. I am afraid of this sea. I don’t know why but it just scares me. And this is the first time in my life, that I have fear of the sea. It is probably because I am seized by a state of anguish that it is not difficult to collect all my memories, now. Above all those of my childhood.
One thing has been spinning around my head for the last weeks. I am a child of despair. A child born to a desperate mother. I inherited it from her. A poor thing, my mother, ousted from her family in Venice, she died in a hospital and left me in the custody of filthy priests. Jesuits. I still have a vague memory of their slippery hands trying to caress my hair. And I shudder when I think about their bad breath lurking behind me.
I’ve never known my father. It was said that he died from heartbreak at being abandoned by my mother. For these many reasons, I say that I am a son of despair. I wrap myself in the darkness of my solitude, and in the desperation of my innocence.
I am depressed, Silvia.
I put all my passion for serving my ideals to forget my despair and overcome the depression. Foscolo's words come to mind "O my Lorenzo! I don't have the peace I hoped for from solitude”.
Dear Silvia, I hoped in solitude. I hoped in its power to heal the suffering that I carry within me. I am sure that you can understand me. You can understand what I mean. I believe you are born with an innate knowledge of human nature.
Do you remember how proud I felt, when we were children, and I enjoyed your favours for three days running?
We played a comedy, you me and the other boys. I don’t think there was any Court of Love ever ruled by one woman with such tyranny. We had to obey you at all costs, adore you as you demanded, and smile and laugh because you disliked everybody who was moody, and you were immediately prone to discarding him.
In those days I knew the disorders of precocious senses, that your spirit had awakened in my flesh.
Now vice is with us, it grows everywhere. Vice, corruption and betrayal. But these are not times in which the mortification of the moral can be a remedy. It's time for a new will and vigour. 

The same sea, the same island had offered their welcome on May 11, 1860, to a thousand of young people in red shirts and grey trousers. At approximately 1:00 p.m, two steamers had come in sight, under Sardinian colours, and, steaming right up to the mole, began to discharge large bodies of armed foreigners. Boats of all kinds were soon around to assist in landing the men.
Five or six miles distant was a Neapolitan steamer of war, and, further off, a large sailing frigate. The first bore up for the port. The armed foreigners in red shirt were out of the vessel aground, but, for some reason, the Neapolitan steamer did not open fire till they were all formed and marching into the town. The frigate also came down, with a strong breeze, in time to deliver one ineffectual broadside. And before they could reload the guns, the new arrivals were safely inside the walled town of Marsala.
Strangely enough when they had half of Garibaldi’s force trapped on a grounded vessel and the other half poorly armed sitting on the docks of Marsala harbour the two Neapolitan warships didn’t manage to capture, wound or kill a single invader.

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[1] In an uncertain, undetermined place and time