Battle of Calatafimi
At the Battle of Calatafimi near Calatafimi Segesta , a place near the western Sicilian provincial capital Trapani , Giuseppe Garibaldi's troops defeated the Bourbon forces under General Landi on May 15, 1860 . After the Sardinian War in Northern Italy, Garibaldi organized the so-called " Train of Thousands ". With 1,000 volunteers, he wanted to enforce the Italian unification ( Risorgimento ) in southern Italy against the Neapolitan Bourbons . After landing at MarsalaGaribaldi's 1,000 volunteers, the so-called “red shirts”, met around 3,000 soldiers from the Kingdom of Naples near Calatafimi .
Course of the battle
After disembarking (May 11), Garibaldi marched on a road inland towards Palermo . In this way he hoped to avoid the Bourbon troops in the critical initial phase. In this first phase Garibaldi already received reinforcements in the form of local insurgents. On May 15, Bourbon reconnaissance units sighted Garibaldi's red shirts near Calatafimi. At that time Garibaldi's forces, organized in two battalions , were on the hill of Pietralunga. Landi had about 3,000 soldiers and was preparing for police action against rebels rather than battle. About 1,200-1,300 red shirts and 2,000-2,200 Neapolitans were involved in the battle itself. It began around midday on May 15 with the attack by two Neapolitan hunter companies who had to retreat under the precise fire of Genoese volunteers. The red shirts counterattacked Piante di Romano, the battalion Nino Bixios on the left, Garibaldi and his other battalion commander, Carini, on the right. Then the four Neapolitan cannons opened fire. The counterattack got into trouble mainly because of the poor armament of the red shirts. The Neapolitans managed to capture Garibaldi's troop flag in hand-to-hand combat, but they got more and more into trouble because the enemy was making better use of the terraced terrain to his advantage. Since under these circumstances their gunfire became visibly ineffective, the Neapolitans threw stones and injured Garibaldi in the process. General Landi underestimated his z. Some of the opponents still fighting in civilian clothing and continued to see his use as a kind of counterinsurgency . When Garibaldi ordered the bayonet attack around 3 p.m. , Landi was taught otherwise. The red shirts soon had the upper hand in hand-to-hand combat and also captured one of the Bourbon cannons. Garibaldi's exhausted red shirts did not pursue the soon-to-be-retreating Bourbons, and thus came to a moral rather than a military victory. The way to Palermo was clear. In the city they encountered isolated opposition. In Milazzo near Messina Garibaldi defeated the Bourbons again and thus brought Sicily under his control. This created the basis for the continuation of the campaign on the mainland, which ended in the Battle of the Volturno .
meaning
Given the relatively small size of the Battle of Calatafimi, from a military point of view it could be classified under the heading "Minor Battles". But politically and historically, this battle has a significance for the Italian “ Risorgimento ” and the resulting nation-state that should not be underestimated. The red shirts were close to defeat in their attack on the terraced terrain in front of the Neapolitan positions. At the suggestion of Nino Bixio to withdraw in the face of the desperate situation, Garibaldi uttered the famous words: No, Nino, qui si fa l'Italia o si muore . (“No, Nino, here we make Italy or we die here”.) If Garibaldi had failed in this battle, the result would have been that the House of Savoy would only have expanded its kingdom into northern Italy. In central Italy would Papal States has not been eliminated and the Bourbons had continued its feudal rule in southern Italy. There were (and are) a number of people in Italy in the north and south who advocated such an approach for various reasons.
Further development
Garibaldi's successes in Calatafimi, Milazzo and at Volturno near Naples created the basis for the unification of all of Italy under the House of Savoy . Due to power-political considerations, but also because of the international situation and the desire to consolidate the new state quickly, the establishment of a federal state that was as federal as possible was dispensed with, but it might deal better with the serious cultural, social and economic differences in the various parts of the country would. Instead, the modern, but more Napoleonic-centralized Piedmontese state apparatus was expanded to include all of Italy, with fatal consequences especially for the south of the country. The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies raised almost no taxes and accordingly did little for infrastructure, economy and social affairs. The social structure was still feudal. The new masters did nothing to change this, largely because they relied on the support of the local elite. There was no conscription in the contemporary sense, nor was there any compulsory education . The expectations that the people of Garibaldi had set were quickly disappointed with the immediate transfer of power to the Piedmontese. The southern Italian mentality of hostility towards the state, which had grown over centuries because of the many foreign invasions, not only intensified after the unification of Italy, it turned into open violence against the state. No “foreign ruler” had ever intervened as comprehensively in the “internal affairs” of southern Italian society as the Piedmontese (especially with hair-raising unjust taxes and the new conscription that took urgently needed workers from the fields). The government in Turin spoke of “ brigandism ” and sent up to 140,000 soldiers to restore “law and order” to southern Italy, a particularly impressive number compared to the “Battle of Calatafimi”. From 1861 to 1871 there was a bloody war in Sicily and the rest of southern Italy. The Bourbons supported the "brigands" from exile as best they could in the hope of a speedy return. After the end of this war, large parts of the population regulated their affairs in "parallel administrative structures". (Many see the birth of the modern, often “honorable” mafia here .) For the new state, this had to have corresponding consequences for its internal constitution and the work of its institutions. The Italian army was particularly hard hit in the first decades after the unification .
