On 6 May two steamers left the coast of Genoa with about 1,400 armed men. These men are organised into seven companies, all evidently intended to form the nucleus of a battalion to be recruited among the insurgents. On the 8th they land at Talamone, on the Tuscan coast, and persuade the commander of the fort there, by some argument, to supply them with coal, ammunition and four field guns. On the 10th they put into the harbour of Marsala, in the extreme west of Sicily, and land with all their material in spite of the arrival of two Neapolitan warships which are unable to prevent them at the right moment; the rumour of British interference in favour of the insurgents has proved false and is even dropped by the Neapolitans themselves. On the 12th the little troop marched 18 miles inland to Salemi, which lies on the high road to Palermo. Here the leading men of the revolutionary party appear to have met Garibaldi, consulted with him, and collected a reinforcement of about 4,000 insurgents. While these were being organised, the insurrection, which had been suppressed a few weeks before but not stifled, was rekindled throughout the whole of the West Sicilian mountain country, and – as was shown on the 16th – not without success. On the 15th Garibaldi advanced with his 1,400 organised volunteers and 4,000 armed peasants northwards over the mountains on Calatafimi, where the high road from Marsala joins the main road from Trapani to Marsala. The defiles leading to Calatafimi across an offshoot of the high Monte Cerrara – called Monte di Pianto Romano – were defended by three battalions of the royal troops with cavalry and artillery under General Landi. Garibaldi at once attacked this position, which at first was stubbornly defended. Although in this attack against the 3,000 or 3,500 Neapolitans Garibaldi could employ only his volunteers and a very small portion of the Sicilian insurgents, the royalists were successively driven from five strong positions, losing a mountain howitzer and numerous killed and wounded. The loss of the Garibaldians is given by themselves at 18 dead and 128 wounded. The Neapolitans claim to have captured one of Garibaldi’s standards in this encounter; but as they found on one of the steamers left at Marsala a standard left behind, they may well be credited with having exhibited the same standard in Naples as a token of their pretended victory. Their defeat at Calatafimi did not, however, compel them to evacuate the town that same evening. They did not leave it until the following morning, and after that they seem to have offered no further resistance to Garibaldi until Palermo. They reached it, but in a frightful state of dissolution and disorder. The certainty of having succumbed to mere “filibusters and armed mob” suddenly recalled to them the terrible idea of that Garibaldi who, while defending Rome against the French, still found time to march to Velletri and drub the vanguard of the whole Neapolitan army – who later, on the slopes of the Alps, defeated soldiers with a far greater courage than Naples ever produced. The precipitate retreat, without the slightest attempt at further resistance, could not but increase the discouragement and propensity to desertion already existing in their ranks; and when they suddenly saw themselves surrounded and continually harassed by the insurrection which had been prepared at the meeting in Salemi, their cohesion utterly vanished; of Landi’s brigade nothing returned to Palermo but a confused and dispirited heap, numerically much reduced, in small shattered groups.

Garibaldi entered Calatafimi on the 16th, the day Landi had left it, marched on the 17th to Alcamo (10 miles), on the 18th to Partinico (10 miles) and beyond that place in the direction of Palermo. On the 19th incessant rainstorms prevented the troops from advancing further.

In the meantime, Garibaldi had ascertained that the Neapolitans were throwing up entrenchments around Palermo and strengthening the old, dilapidated fortification walls of the city on the side facing the road to Partinico. They were still at least 22,000 strong and thus far superior to any force Garibaldi could bring against them. But they were discouraged, their discipline was loosened; many of them were thinking of deserting to the insurgents, and their generals were known to their own soldiers as well as to the enemy as weaklings. The only reliable troops among them were the two foreign battalions. As matters stood, Garibaldi could not venture a direct frontal attack on the city, while the Neapolitans could undertake nothing decisive against him, even if their troops had been capable of it, since they always had to leave a strong garrison in the city and could never stray too far from it. With a general of the ordinary stamp in Garibaldi’s place, this state of things would have led to a series of unconnected and indecisive engagements, in which he might perhaps have been able to train some of his untrained troops in combat, but in which the royal troops would also very soon have recovered a good deal of their lost self-confidence and discipline; for they would probably have obtained successes in some of these affairs. But this sort of warfare answered neither the requirements of an insurrection nor Garibaldi. A bold offensive was the only tactics befitting a revolution; a decisive success, such as the liberation of Palermo would be, became a necessity as soon as the insurgents came within sight of the city.

But how could this be achieved? Here Garibaldi showed himself to be an excellent strategist, whose capacities are displayed not only in small partisan combats, but equally in the execution of important operations.

On the 20th and the following days, Garibaldi attacked the Neapolitan outposts and positions near Monreale and Parco – on the roads leading from Trapani and Corleone to Palermo – thus making the enemy believe that his attack was principally directed against the south-western side of the city, and that his main forces were concentrated there. By a skilful combination of attacks and feigned retreats, he induced the Neapolitan general to send ever more troops out of the city to that quarter, until on the 24th about 10,000 Neapolitans appeared outside the city, in the direction of Parco. This was exactly what Garibaldi had intended. He at once attacked them with a part of his forces and slowly fell back before them, thus drawing them further and further from the city, and when he had lured them beyond the main ridge of the mountains that run through Sicily – which here separate the Conca d’oro (the Golden Shell, the valley of Palermo) from the valley of Corleone – as far as Piana-dei-Greci, he at once threw the main body of his troops across another part of the same chain of hills into the valley of Misilmeri, which opens towards the sea, close to Palermo. On the 25th he established his headquarters at Misilmeri, eight miles from the capital. What he did further with the 10,000 men entangled on a single line – a bad road running through the mountains – we are not informed, but we may be sure that he kept them well occupied with fresh apparent victories, so as to secure that they would not return too quickly to Palermo. Having thus reduced the defenders of the city by nearly one half, and transferred his line of attack from the road leading to Trapani to the road to Catania, he could proceed to the main assault. Whether the insurrection in the city preceded Garibaldi’s storm or was brought about by his knocking at the gates, the contradictory despatches leave open; it is certain, however, that on the morning of the 27th the whole of Palermo rose in arms and Garibaldi thundered at the Porta Termini, on the south-eastern side of the city, where no Neapolitans expected him. All the rest is known – the gradual clearance of the city of the troops, with the exception of the batteries, the citadel and the royal palace, the subsequent bombardment, the armistice, the capitulation. Authentic details of all these events are still lacking; but the main facts are fairly certain.

Incidentally, it may be remarked that Garibaldi’s movements preparatory to the attack on Palermo at once stamp him as a strategist of the first rank. Hitherto we knew him only as a very skilful and very successful guerrilla leader; even during the siege of Rome, his method of defending the city by constant sorties hardly afforded him an opportunity to rise above this level. But here he was confronted with a decidedly strategic task, and in this test he proved himself a master of the art. His way of inducing the Neapolitan commander to commit the blunder of sending half his troops out of his reach, the unlooked-for sudden flank march and the reappearance before Palermo on the side where he was least expected, and his energetic attack on the weakened garrison are operations which bear far more the stamp of military genius than anything that occurred during the Italian war of 1859. The Sicilian insurrection has found a military leader of the first rank; let us hope that the politician Garibaldi, who must soon appear on the scene, will leave the glory of the general unstained.