THE GARIBALDI BROTHERS
“THE NAME OF GARIBALDI BECAME A RALLYING CRY FOR THOSE IN ITALY WHO WANTED TO SEE THEIR NATION ENTER THE WAR ON THE SIDE OF THE ALLIES”
Celebrated as the ‘Hero of Two Worlds’, Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807-1882) is best remembered for leading a series of campaigns in Latin America and Italy. His irregular volunteers – nicknamed the ‘Redshirts’ for their trademark loose-fitting, blood-red shirts – were romanticised throughout the world for supporting nationalist causes and fighting against oppressive autocracies.
President Abraham Lincoln showed interest in recruiting Garibaldi to lead his armies during the American Civil War, with the hope that he could “lend the power of his name, his genius, and his sword to the Northern cause”. Garibaldi’s faithful Brazilian wife, Anita (1821-1849), gave birth to four children before her untimely death from malaria while campaigning with her husband. For six decades, men from the Garibaldi bloodline fought around the world to liberate oppressed peoples and to defend republican ideals and democracy.
Ricciotti Garibaldi (1847-1924) followed his father during his campaigns in Italy and France. He took command of a brigade in Garibaldi’s Army of the Vosges during the Franco-Prussian War. He distinguished himself at the Battle of Dijon in January 1871, where he presented the captured standard of the 61st Pomeranian Regiment to his father on the battlefield. Giuseppe Garibaldi died in 1882, but the Garibaldi cult lived on through Ricciotti. He issued a proclamation calling for volunteers and led a Garibaldi Legion against the Ottomans during
