The Siege of Gaeta (1860–1861) is presented through both distant signs of military pressure and grim reports carried to Sicily. The fortress still displays the Bourbon tricolour, but a tightening blockade and the destruction of its powder magazines make it seem increasingly impossible to save; the siege thus registers not only as a military crisis but as evidence of a political order nearing its end.

The Fortress Under Pressure

During an excursion, the wind passes across a landscape marked by the upheaval: it ruffles Giuseppe Garibaldi’s hair and raises dust around Neapolitan soldiers hurriedly reinforcing Gaeta’s battlements. The soldiers’ hope appears as futile as the rabbit’s frantic flight. The scene does not describe a clash at the fortress; instead, it places the preparations for its defense within the same broad, indifferent movement of the wind.

The passage then returns to Don Fabrizio Corbera, Prince of Salina, and Don Ciccio Tumeo resting beneath cork trees. They share food and drink, and the hungry dogs gather before them. Their pause and ensuing drowsiness contrast with the military urgency at Gaeta, making the siege feel both geographically distant and inseparable from the changing political landscape.

News from Gaeta

Later, local men gather hoping that Father Pirrone, recently arrived from Palermo, will offer reassuring political news. He instead gives them a bleak account: although the Bourbon tricolour still flies over Gaeta, the blockade is tight and the fortress’s powder magazines are being destroyed one by one. In his assessment, little can now be saved there beyond its honour.

His account also places Gaeta within a wider and uncertain international situation. Russia is friendly but distant, while Napoleon III is close and unpredictable. He says little about risings in Basilicata and Terra di Lavoro, expressing shame about them. The information offers the group little comfort: the fortress’s continued resistance does not, in his telling, amount to a credible prospect of rescue.

Political Consequences and Narrative Significance

For the people listening, the siege is bound up with anxiety about the new Italian state. Father Pirrone warns that the emerging government will bring expropriation laws and conscription, which he expects to extend from Piedmont southward. His warning turns news from a besieged fortress into a local anticipation of political and social change, while his partly sincere and partly tactical manner complicates the role of his report as simple reassurance or neutral analysis.

The novel sets the tightening siege against ordinary pauses and conversations rather than presenting it as a sustained battlefield episode. Gaeta’s threatened defenses and the discussion among Sicilian landowners together convey the weakening of Bourbon power and the uncertainty surrounding what will replace it. The evidence establishes the fortress’s worsening position and the fears it provokes, without narrating the siege’s final outcome.