In May 1860, Giuseppe Garibaldi sailed from Genoa with about a thousand volunteers to invade Sicily. (a) Describe the main events of Garibaldi's campaign in...

(a) The main events of Garibaldi's campaign in Sicily and southern Italy in 1860 [4 marks]

Giuseppe Garibaldi sailed from Genoa on 5 May 1860 with approximately 1,000 volunteers known as the Red Shirts (the Mille, or "the Thousand"). They landed at Marsala in western Sicily on 11 May. Garibaldi won a crucial early victory over a larger Neapolitan force at the Battle of Calatafimi on 15 May, which encouraged local Sicilians to join his cause. He then captured Palermo, the Sicilian capital, after fierce street fighting at the end of May. After securing control of most of Sicily, Garibaldi crossed to the Italian mainland in August 1860, marching northward through Calabria with minimal resistance. He entered Naples, the capital of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, on 7 September 1860 as King Francis II fled to the fortress of Gaeta, which held out until February 1861.

(b) Why Garibaldi was able to conquer the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies so rapidly [6 marks]

The Bourbon regime in Naples was deeply unpopular, particularly in Sicily, where resentment of Neapolitan rule ran deep. Sicilian peasants initially rallied to Garibaldi, hoping he would bring land reform and relief from heavy taxation. The Neapolitan army, though numerically superior (approximately 100,000 men), was poorly led by officers who lacked initiative and suffered from low morale and divided loyalties.

Garibaldi was an experienced and charismatic guerrilla commander who had fought in South America and in the Italian campaigns of 1848-49. He inspired fierce loyalty from his followers and was able to motivate local volunteers to join his forces, which swelled from 1,000 to over 20,000 during the campaign. The British navy tacitly supported the expedition by not intercepting Garibaldi's ships, and the British government privately sympathised with Italian unification. Local revolts broke out ahead of Garibaldi's advance, weakening Bourbon authority and creating chaos that the regime could not control. Behind the scenes, Cavour secretly supplied Garibaldi with weapons, money and volunteers, despite officially disapproving of the expedition to avoid provoking France or Austria.

(c) How important was Garibaldi's role in the unification of Italy? [10 marks]

Garibaldi's contribution was of fundamental importance. His conquest of Sicily and southern Italy brought the entire southern half of the peninsula into the unified kingdom, effectively doubling the territory under Victor Emmanuel II's rule. Without Garibaldi's expedition, Italian unification would have been limited to northern and central Italy, and a separate Bourbon kingdom would have continued to exist in the south. Garibaldi was the most popular and charismatic figure of the Risorgimento, a folk hero whose personal bravery and romantic idealism captured the imagination of people across Italy and beyond.

His decision to hand his conquests to Victor Emmanuel II at the famous meeting near Teano on 26 October 1860 was a selfless act of enormous political significance. Garibaldi was a lifelong republican who had fought for Mazzini's vision of a democratic republic, yet he sacrificed his republican ideals for the sake of national unity, accepting that unification under a monarchy was better than a divided Italy. This act of political maturity prevented a civil war between the Piedmontese army and Garibaldi's volunteers.

However, Garibaldi did not act alone. Cavour's diplomacy had created the international conditions that made unification possible: the French alliance, the annexation of central Italy, and the management of European opinion. Without Piedmont's army, state apparatus and administrative capacity, it would have been impossible to govern the territories Garibaldi conquered. Garibaldi's expedition might well have failed without Cavour's covert assistance in the form of weapons, funds and volunteers. The acquisition of Venetia in 1866 depended on Prussia's victory over Austria at the Battle of Sadowa (Koniggratz), and the acquisition of Rome in 1870 depended on the withdrawal of French troops during the Franco-Prussian War. Neither event involved Garibaldi in a decisive role.

On balance, Garibaldi was indispensable for bringing southern Italy into the unified kingdom, and his personal charisma, military skill and political generosity made him one of the most important figures in the Risorgimento. However, Italian unification was the product of contributions from many individuals, including Mazzini (the ideologist), Cavour (the diplomat) and Victor Emmanuel II (the constitutional figurehead), as well as favourable international circumstances.