Garibaldini

The Garibaldini, also known as the Redshirts, were the volunteers who accompanied Giuseppe Garibaldi in his 1860 campaign against Bourbon rule. Their rapid advance helped bring southern Italy into the emerging united kingdom, but The Leopard presents their arrival not as a simple reconciliation between conquerors and conquered: the force’s changing names and the reception of its songs expose the persistent distance between Sicily and the mainland.

Formation and Campaign

Early in May 1860, Giuseppe Garibaldi sailed from near Genoa for Sicily with a thousand volunteers, acting against Cavour’s wishes. The Garibaldini landed at Marsala, defeated Bourbon troops at Calatafimi, and occupied Palermo within three weeks. The campaign gave the volunteers a prominent role in the overthrow of Bourbon authority on the island.

After taking control in Sicily, Giuseppe Garibaldi gathered additional volunteers, crossed to the mainland, advanced up the coast, and entered Naples. In the autumn, after Bourbon armies were defeated on the Volturno, he handed southern Italy to Victor Emmanuel II and withdrew from public life. The transfer of power helped close the revolutionary phase of the Risorgimento, although the completion of Italian unification and the declaration of Rome as the capital came later.

A Force with Contested Names

The novel shows that the Garibaldini’s identity remained politically charged even after their military successes. Around the Salina household, Don Fabrizio continued to call the new arrivals Piedmontese, a reassuring label for himself; others called them Garibaldini in exaltation or Garibaldeschi in vilification. The competing terms register different attitudes to the same new power rather than a settled public understanding of it.

The distinction between the volunteers and the forces of the new state also remains visible in the wider history. In 1862, Giuseppe Garibaldi again tried to force the issue of Rome, but Piedmontese troops routed his men at Aspromonte and wounded him. The confrontation ended the revolutionary phase of the Risorgimento; Rome became Italy’s capital in 1870. The volunteers’ history thus belongs both to the struggle against Bourbon rule and to the subsequent conflict over how unification would proceed.

The Garibaldini in The Leopard

The force enters the novel through its presence at the Salina home as well as through its campaign. About June 20, a general in a red tunic arrived with an aide-de-camp after Tancredi Falconeri had given advance notice. Tancredi, newly made a captain on the battlefield, appeared with them in a red shirt and displayed easy familiarity with the officers. Their cordial visit, followed by dinners and social evenings, makes the new political authority part of the household’s everyday life, even as Don Fabrizio maintains his wary, distancing vocabulary.

A song associated with the Garibaldini sharpens the novel’s account of that distance. La bella Gigougìn, described elsewhere as a hymn to national concord and associated with the capture of Milazzo, recurs at Donnafugata during the plebiscite campaign, sung by mainland newcomers. In this setting it does not unite the islanders and their invaders: its recurrence instead underscores how little they have to say to one another. The Garibaldini therefore signify a real political and military transformation, while the novel’s local scenes question how far that transformation has produced shared belonging.