Garibaldi and the Expedition of the Thousand

Giuseppe Garibaldi, a professional guerrilla fighter who had fought in South America and defended the Roman Republic, became the popular hero of Italian unification. In April 1860 a revolt broke out in Sicily against the Bourbon Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. In early May Garibaldi sailed from near Genoa with about a thousand volunteers, the Redshirts, landing at Marsala in western Sicily. Cavour did not openly support the expedition but did not stop it.

Helped by Sicilian rebels and peasants hoping for land, Garibaldi won at Calatafimi and took Palermo, then crossed to the mainland and entered Naples in September as the Bourbon state collapsed. Cavour feared that Garibaldi, a republican sympathizer, might march on Rome and provoke France, so Piedmontese troops moved south through the Papal States. Garibaldi chose to hand his conquests to Victor Emmanuel II. The expedition shows how popular action and monarchist diplomacy, though often in tension, together produced unity.