Marsala

Marsala is the Sicilian coastal town where Giuseppe Garibaldi’s volunteers landed in May 1860, opening the campaign against Bourbon rule that would transform the political order of southern Italy. In the novel, the landing first enters Don Fabrizio’s immediate world through a newspaper: a distant military event arrives as a report of piracy and impending disorder, and his composed reaction exposes the gap between official alarm and the upheaval already underway.

The Landing and the Campaign

In early May 1860, Giuseppe Garibaldi sailed for Sicily with a thousand volunteers, acting against Cavour’s wishes. His Redshirts landed at Marsala and defeated Bourbon troops at Calatafimi. Within three weeks they had occupied Palermo; Giuseppe Garibaldi then gathered more volunteers, crossed to the mainland, and entered Naples. After further Bourbon defeats, he handed southern Italy to King Victor Emmanuel and withdrew from public life. Marsala’s importance in the novel’s historical frame lies in its place at the opening of this rapid sequence: the landing made the end of the Bourbon Kingdom of the Two Sicilies a present political possibility rather than a distant prospect.

The Newspaper Report

The landing reaches Don Fabrizio in a newspaper brought up from Palermo with a letter from his brother-in-law Màlvica. The paper dates the landing to 11 May and calls it an act of piracy. It reports that the armed band numbers about eight hundred, says its members avoided the royal troops, and places their movement in the direction of Castelvetrano. Its language presents the volunteers as brigands threatening peaceful citizens and spreading devastation. This account differs in emphasis and number from the book’s broader historical introduction, which describes a thousand volunteers setting out for Sicily. Together, the accounts show how the event is refracted through both historical overview and the anxious news available to people at the time.

Don Fabrizio’s Response

Don Fabrizio laughs at Màlvica’s panic and dismisses him as a habitual coward. The landing unsettles him more when he sees Giuseppe Garibaldi’s name, but he reassures himself that the king will have the adventurer under control. He puts the newspaper away and resumes his preparations for the family’s evening Rosary. Even the image on the drawing-room ceiling becomes part of his private response: Vulcan reminds him of lithographs of Giuseppe Garibaldi that he had seen in Turin. His passing amusement and refusal to treat the report as decisive sharpen the contrast between the old order’s habits of composure and the political change gathering beyond the household. Marsala thus functions not only as the geographical point of invasion, but as the distant origin of a crisis that the novel first stages through domestic news and aristocratic disbelief.