Friedrich Engels 
Garibaldi in Sicily 

New-York Daily Tribune. 
Nr.5979, 22.Juni 1860 

Garibaldi in Sicily. 

After a variety of the most contradictory information, we receive, at last, 
something like trustworthy news of the details of Garibaldi's wonderful 
march from Marsala to Palermo. It is, indeed, one of the most astonishing 
military feats of the century, and it would be almost unaccountable were it 
not for the prestige preceding the march of a triumphant revolutionary 
general. The success of Garibaldi proves that the royalist troops of Naples 
still hold in terror the man who has borne high the flag of Italian revolution 
in the face of French, Neapolitan, and Austrian battalions, and that the 
people of Sicily have not lost their faith in him, or in the national cause. 

On the 6th of May, two steamers leave the coast of Genoa with about 
1,400 armed men, organized in seven companies, each of them, evidently, 
destined to become 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 sort of argument or other, 
to furnish them with coal, ammunition, and four field pieces. On the 10th, 
they enter the harbor of Marsala, at the extreme western end of Sicily, and 
disembark with all their material, in spite of the arrival of two Neapolitan 
men-of-war, who are powerless, at the right moment, to prevent them; the 
story about British interference in favor of the invaders has proved false, 
and is now abandoned even by the Neapolitans themselves. On the 12th, the 
small band had marched to Salemi, 18 miles distant in the interior, and On 
the road toward Palermo. Here the chief men of the revolutionary party 
appear to have met Garibaldi, to have consulted with him, and collected 
insurrectionary reénforcements amounting to some 4,000 men; while these 
were being organized, the insurrection, repressed but not quelled afew weeks 
before, was kindled afresh all over the mountains of Western Sicily, and, 
as was proved on the 16th, not without effect. On the 15th, Garibaldi, with 

Friedrich Engels 

his 1,400 organized volunteers and 4,000 armed peasantry, advances north- 
ward across the hills upon Calatafimi, where the country road from Marsala 
joins the high road from Trapani to Marsala. The defiles leading to Cala- 
tafimi, across a spur of the lofty Monte Cerrara, called the Monte di Pianto 
Romano, were defended by three battalions of Royal troops, with cavalry 
and artillery, under General Landi. Garibaldi at once attacked this position, 
which was at first obstinately defended; but although in this attack Garibaldi 
could not have employed against the 3,000 or 3,500 Neapolitans more than 
his volunteers and a very small portion of the Sicilian insurgents, the Royal- 
ists were successively driven out of five strong positions, with the loss of 
one mountain-gun and numerous killed and wounded. The loss of the Garibal- 
dians is stated by themselves at 18 killed and 128 wounded. The Neapolitans 
profess to have conquered one of Garibaldi's flags in this engagement, but, 
as they found a flag left behind on board one of the abandoned steamers at 
Marsala, they are quite capable of having exhibited this same flag at Naples 
as a proof of their pretended victory. Their defeat at Calatafimi, however, 
did not compel them to abandon that town the same evening. They left 
it on the following morning only, and after that they appear not to have 
offered any further resistance to Garibaldi until they reached Palermo. They 
did reach it, but in a terrible state of dissolution and disorder. The certainty 
of having succumbed to mere "fillibusters and armed rabble" reproduced 
in their minds all at once the terrible image of that Garibaldi, who, while 
defending Rome against the French, could yet find time to march to Velletia 
and send to the right-about the advanced guard of the whole Neapolitan 
army, and who had since conquered, on the slopes of the Alps, warriors 
of a far superior mettle to any that Naples produces. The hurried retreat, 
without a show even of further resistance, must have still increased their 
despondency and the tendency to desertion which already existed in their 
ranks; and when all at once they found themselves surrounded and harassed 
by that insurrection which had been prepared at the meeting at Salemi, their 
cohesion was utterly lost; of Landi's brigade nothing but a disorderly and 
dispirited mob, greatly reduced in numbers, reentered Palermo in small 
successive bands. 

Garibaldi entered Calatafimi on the day that Landi had left it—on the 16th; 

marched on the 17th to Alcamo (10 miles) ; on the 18th to Partenico (10 miles), 

and beyond that place toward Palermo. On the 19th, incessant torrents of 
rain prevented the troops from moving. 

In the mean time, Garibaldi had ascertained that the Neapolitans were 
throwing up intrenchments around Palermo, and strengthening the old, 
decayed ramparts of the town on the side facing the Partenico road. They 
were still at least 22,000 strong, and thus far superior to any forces that he 

5 

Garibaldi in Sicily 

could bring against them. But they were dispirited; their discipline was 
loosened; many of them began to think of passing over to the insurgents; 
while their generals were known, both to their own soldiers and to then- 
enemy, to be imbeciles. The only trustworthy troops among them were the 
two foreign bataillons. As matters stood, Garibaldi could not have ven- 
tured upon a direct front attack upon the town, while the Neapolitans could 
not undertake anything decisive against him, even if their troops were fit for 
it, as they must always leave a strong garrison in the town and never move 
too far away from it. With a General of the common stamp in the place of 
Garibaldi, this state of things would have led to a series of desultory and 
undecisive engagements, in which he might have trained a portion of his 
levies to warfare, but in which also the royal troops would very soon have 
recovered a good deal of their lost confidence and discipline, for they could 
not help being successful in some of them. But such akind of warfare would 
neither suit an insurrection nor a Garibaldi. A bold offensive was the only 
system of tactics permitted to a revolution; a striking success, such as the 
deliverance of Palermo, became a necessity as soon as the insurgents had 
arrived in sight of the city. 

But how was this to be done? Here it was that Garibaldi brilliantly proved 
himself a general, fit not for petty partisan warfare only, but also for more 
important operations. 

On the 20th and succeeding days, Garibaldi attacked the Neapolitan 
outposts and positions in the neighborhood of Monreale and Parco, on the 
roads leading to Palermo from Trapani and Corleone, thus making the enemy 
believe that his attack would take place chiefly against the south-western 
face of the town, and that here his main forces were concentrated. By a 
skillful combination of attacks and feigned retreats, he induced the Neapoli- 
tan General to send more and more troops out of the town in this direction, 
until, on the 24th, some 10,000 Neapolitans appeared outside the town, 
toward Parco. This was what Garibaldi intended. He at once engaged them 
with part of his forces, slowly retreated before them so as to draw them 
further and further away from the town, and when he had got them as far 
as Piana, across the main range of hills, which run across Sicily, and here 
divide the Conca D'Oro (the golden shell, the Valley of Palermo), from the 
Valley of Corleone, he at once threw the main body of his troops across 
another part of the same ridge, into the Valley of Misilmeri, which opens 
out to the sea, close to Palermo. On the 25th he took up his headquarters 
at Misilmeri, eight miles from the capital. What he further did with the 
10,000 men entangled on a single line of bad road in the mountains, we are 
not informed, but we may be sure that he kept them well occupied with some 
fresh apparent victories, so as to make sure they would not come back too 

Friedrich Engels 

soon to Palermo. Having thus reduced the defenders of the town by nearly 
one-half, and transferred his line of attack from the Trapani road to the 
Catania road, he could proceed to the grand attack. Whether the insurrection 
in the town preceded Garibaldi's assault, or whether it was produced by his 
knocking at the gates, the conflicting dispatches leave unsettled; but certain 
it is, that on the morning of the 27th, all Palermo rose in arms and Garibaldi 
thundered at the Porta Termini, on the south-east face of the town, where 
no Neapolitan expected him. The remainder is known—the gradual clearing 
of the town, with the exception of the batteries, the citadel, and the royal 
palace, from the troops; the subsequent bombardment, the armistice, the 
capitulation. Authentic details of all these proceedings are still wanting; but 
the main facts are pretty certain. 

In the mean time, we must declare that Garibaldi's maneuvers preparatory 
to the attack on Palermo, at once stamp him as a General of a very high order. 
Hitherto we knew him as a very skillful and very lucky guerilla-chief only; 
even in the siege of Rome his mode of defending the town by constant salues 
gave him scarcely an opportunity of rising above that level. But here we have 
him on fair strategic ground, and he comes from the trial a proven master 
of his art. His manner of enticing the Neapolitan commander into the blunder 
of sending one-half of his troops out of reach, his sudden flank-march and 
reappearance before Palermo, on the side where he was least expected, and 
his energetic attack while the garrison was weakened, are operations far more 
imprinted with the stamp of military genius than anything that occurred 
during the Italian war of 1859. The Sicilian insurrection has found a first-rate 
military chief; let us hope that the politician Garibaldi, who will soon have 
to appear on the stage, may keep unsullied the glory of the General.