A G-ARIBALDIAN ACCOUNT OF MENTANA.
I N a singular journal, Les Etats Unis d'Europe, sprung from the Geneva Peace Congress of last autumn, and professing to be the " organ of the International League of Peace and Liberty,"—the importance of which as an element in Continental politics is not to be estimated by its greater or less congruity with English tastes and feelings,—there has lately appeared a remarkable series of papers on the " Roman Campaign of 1867," by one of Garibaldi's Lieutenant-Colonels, who com- manded his second column, Frigyesi, forming the most com- plete and authentic account of this strange adventure which has yet appeared on the Garibaldian side. The writer does not seem, indeed, to have taken part in the first por- tion of the campaign, having been arrested at Florence on the occasion of Garibaldi's first attempt to cross the frontier, and forced to take refuge at Geneva. On hearing, however, that the expedition was persevered in, he "succeeded, by means of several
changes of costume and of route, in deceiving the vigilance of the Royal police ;" and after a week reached Terni, where he found a good many comrades, organized in two days a column of about 1,000 volunteers, and having sent off a first battalion in advance, left on the 16th of October with the two others to rejoin Menotti Garibaldi. We have here clear proof that up to this time the Rattazzi Cabinet was in earnest in trying to stop the movement.
On the 24th, Frigyesi received the first intelligence of Gari- baldi's having passed the frontier, and being already nigh at hand, and by the evening he had rejoined them. Frigyesi gives from his own lips the story of Garibaldi's escape from Caprera, at 11 p.m., October 14, in a small boat which lay in his tiny harbour water- logged and abandoned, to the island of Maddalena, where " Mrs.
Collins" hid him till the following night, when crossing the island on horseback, he left for Sardinia in another boat, which lay in waiting for him. In Sardinia a rendezvous was missed by his friends ; he was himself recognized by a shepherd, in spite of a dyed beard and of a disguise. They left, however, on the 17th for the continent, and on the 19th, the night being very dark, landed at Vada, half losing themselves in sea-weed first and then in a morass, and wandering about for hours with their feet constantly in water, the chief suffering, moreover, much pain from his Aspromonte wound. They were, however, most hospitably received at last by the Vada folk, and sent on in carts the next day to Leghorn, thence in a carriage to Florence, which they reached on the 20th. "Far from opposing my expedition against Rome," Garibaldi says, " the Government authorized me to speak to the people ;" and he left again by special train, amidst the acclaim of the population. In short, the Rattazzi Cabinet had by this time completed its right-about-face.
The soldiers, meanwhile, were famished, whilst Garibaldi him- self, on arriving, had not yet broken his day's fast. Yet all were ready, Colonel Frigyesi tells us, to march on at once to Rome.
They did march on that evening, but to Monte Rotondo. " The night was dark and cold, the road precipitous. My young volunteers had no over-clothing, most of them were very lightly clad, many barefoot. Yet by 6 a.m. we were before Monte Rotondo." The taking of this latter place was the one brilliant exploit of the campaign. The Garibaldians had two " microscopic " pieces of artillery, which they hid carefully to conceal their smallness, and whose voices they tried to swell by shouting the Garibaldi Hymn. They were armed with old rusty muskets ; their ammunition failed partially in the midst of the fight. They had to attack a walled town on a height, of which every window, every crack in the wall was defended ; two pieces of cannon (a 24- pounder and a 12-pounder)stood before the gate. The fight lasted all the day of the 25th October, till 7 p.m., when the white flag was hung out. The two pieces of cannon, 300 prisoners, 50 horses, besides arms and ammunition, were the fruits of victory. Scarcely had the capitulation been completed when a relieving column appeared, which hastily fell back at sight of the Garibaldian flag.
Colonel Frigyesi does not state what the action at Monte Rotondo cost the Garibaldians. Assuming, however, that it was worth while to pay the price, whatever it might be, for the
acquisition of a stronghold overlooking the Tiber valley and the road and railway to Rome, the want of promptness in follow-
ing up his victory becomes henceforth inconceivable in an experi- enced partizan chief, who better than Marshal Saxe should have known that " victories are not won with men's arms, but with their legs." Monte Rotondo was stormed, we have seen, on the 25th; on the 27th only, in the afternoon, Colonel Frigyesi resumed his advance. On the evening of the 28th he was occupy- ing Castel Giubileo, Sette Bagni, Villa Spada, the Colle Serpen- tino, lighting a long line of fires to warn the Romans of their liberators' approach. On the 29th, in the morning, they saw Rome before them, and no one, he tells us, had any doubt of succeeding. But an order of the day took now the place of an advance ; on the next day a forward movement was begun, then countermanded, and in the night a retreat upon Monte Rotondo was ordered. On the let November another order of the day protested against the French invasion. On the 2nd, at night, Frigyesi received the order to march the following morning towards Mentana.
Many of the volunteers had meanwhile lost heart. They had looked upon Rome on the 29th of October 8,000 strong. On the 4th of November, at 11.30 a.m., they were but 4,529 on the road to Mentana, with the enemy in front of them, with no artillery but their two captured guns, each with 70 charges, and Frigyesi's " pocket cannon " without ammunition, and only twenty men mounted. The fight began by a front and flank attack of the Papal troops on a covering battalion of the Garibaldian vanguard under Menotti, as it debouched from Mentana, but soon became general, Garibaldi not choosing to allow his men to be crushed. After falling back step by step under the walls of Mentana, there was a moment, Colonel Frigyesi tells us, when, thanks to the effective fire of their artillery and to an impetuous bayonet charge, the Garibaldians remained masters of the field, and deemed them- selves the victors. But they had evidently been outmanoeuvred, as the enemy, more numerous, now tried a rapid flanking movement, before which they had to retreat. In vain they try again three desperate bayonet charges, their ammunition being almost all exhausted. In the midst of the last-4 p.m.—the "hymn of St. Chassepot " breaks on their ears. " Henceforth it is no more a battle, but a massacre. How are we killed ? Who kills us? Without knowing, we defend ourselves still." But at 5 they have to make their final retreat, a movement which is effected in good order, unmolested by the enemy, who remains encamped on some neigh- bearing heights. So desperate, however, was the condition of the Garibaldians that during the fight and on the return to Monte Rotondo, Colonel Frigyesi was obliged himself to pick up the ammunition contained in the pouches of the dead and wounded, in order to distribute it cartridge by cartridge to his menl Yet he declares that the total number of deaths among the Garibaldians was but 200 (the figure 150 seems to be a mistake, as the total of killed and wounded is given at 406), whilst the allies had 256 ; and of wounded Garibaldians 206. And he goes on to say—some- what inconsistently, it would seem, with what he had stated above, —that fighting in open order, whilst the enemy fought often in close order and in echelon, and firing at very short distances, Garibaldi's- wretched guns had really as much effect as the Chassepots. As to- the Papal artillery—two batteries—he declares it was so badly served that it did not cost the Garibaldians a scratch.
It follows from his narrative that, although at one particular period the Garibaldians thought the day their own, yet it is nevertheless true, as stated by their opponents, that they were practically defeated by the Pontificals, at the time when the French with their Chassepots came up, and that the effect of these was rather moral than material. It is really absurd to use the word " massacre" of an action in which, by the writer's own showing, the total loss in killed and wounded was only 406, in killed not more than 200, out of a force of 4,529; and would be so, even had the Chassepots been at work from the beginning, instead of only making their appearance within the last hour. On the other hand, Colonel Frigyesi points out several faults committed by the enemy, including especially the omission to cut off the Garibaldian retreat. He made all his preparations, the writer says, for attacking Monte Rotondo on the following morning, forgetting only one thing, that it might be evacuated the same evening, and leaving open the Monte Rotondo station, the road to- Rome, and three-fourths of the space into which the Garibaldians might have been hemmed up. But the retreat was begun at 8 p.m. ; by midnight Monte Rotondo was evacuated, and on the following day they had passed the frontier without again seeing the enemy. One cannot forbear asking,—were they not allowed to escape? Would it really have suited the lord of the Tuileriea either to have such a prisoner as Garibaldi on his own hands, or to leave him to the tender mercy of the Pontificals ?
On the whole, it seems difficult to avoid drawing the following conclusions from Colonel Frigyesi's interesting and evidently honest narrative :—The Garibaldians fought most bravely, but whatever slender chance of success they had was ruined by irresolution and bad generalship ; they were outmanoeuvred in battle as well as overpowered by numbers ; and the door was purposelyleft open for their escape. It is not the less certainthat the half starved and ill clad men who could carry by assault a moun- tain position defended by artillery, charge repeatedly with the bayonet an enemy far superior in numbers, and meet the fire of breech-loaders with rusty old muskets, are foes whom, on equal terms, no army in Europe could afford to disdain. Nor should any military men turn away in supercilious disdain from the following conclusions of one fresh from an encounter with the most deadly weapons yet used in fight :—
"The finest weapons are worth less than is supposed. After the most loudly praised inventions for destruction, man remains by far the most valuable utility, even from the military point of view. A chief who will know well how to dispose his forces in open order will always beat an enemy operating in close order. In other words, guerrilla war-
fare, defensive, revolutionary warfare, the only one which is not criminal, is not anti-human, shall one day give victory to people's over despots. The old system will be vanquished; the volunteer will kill the soldier."
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