The Expedition of the Thousand

The island of Sicily has been conquered, captured, occupied, or subjugated by almost every single power in recorded history. The Ancient Greek colonists, the Romans, the Byzantines, the Arabs, the Normans, the Spanish, The French, the British, the French again, the Spanish also again, and finally their fellow Italians, all have occupied or used Sicily’s strategic location in the Mediterranean to their advantage. The Sicilian people as a result have a unique Italic language and culture compared to mainland Italy. Their language (although mistakenly considered a dialect but still similar) is distinct from Italian as it is an amalgamation of different languages from the people who conquered and occupied them. In only very recent history (1860) has Sicily joined the Italian mainland as a unified state, the first time since the collapse of the Roman Empire. The Italian expedition to unite Sicily with Italy is a fascinating and dramatic tale of revolution and local uprising being used by a greater power. This article will detail the uniting of Sicily with the boot peninsula and the factors that led to its success.

In the 1850s-1860s, the Italian peninsula was in the throes of a revolution against greater European powers after centuries of oppression and control. The House of Savoy, a royal house originally hailing from Sardinia, started to spread its control from the north of Italy, pushing a message of a united Italy being the only way to prevent meddling European powers from engaging in Italian misadventure. This unification process became known as the Risorgimento, or Italian for resurgence. At the same time, the Sicilians were under the control a despised regime situated in Naples. This kingdom, known as the Kingdom of Two Sicilies, was a Spanish-Bourbon monarchy that acted with impunity in Sicily, causing widespread resentment from the population. In 1848, while the rest of Europe engaged in widespread revolution against monarchy and centuries old powers, Sicily attempted to do the same against the regime in Naples, only to be met with brutal repression and a violent put down of the Sicilian independence movement. This was not forgotten by the people in 1860, when Italy started to be united under the House of Savoy in the north of the peninsula. Guiseppe Garibaldi, a charismatic leading figure in the Risorgimento movement of Italy, set his eyes on the Kingdom of Two Sicilies once most of the north was united. Sicily and the south of the peninsula, while wanting to be rid of the dynasty in Naples, were less interested in the anti-clerical pro-industrial message being pushed by the House of Savoy and instead launched an internal struggle separate from the movement in the north.

Garibaldi was a young upstart that attached himself to the Savoy early on and helped lead the struggle against the Austrians in the north. Once the Austrians were defeated, Garibaldi, more nationalistic than most of his allies, wanted to keep pushing south until Italy was fully united under the Savoy banner. Garibaldi decided to launch an audacious expedition to conquer Sicily, raising a small force of around 1,000 men. These 1,000 volunteers (the Mille) consisted of soldiers, young nationalists, workers, and opportunists, extremely loyal to Garibaldi himself. Garibaldi had his work cut out of him, while the Sicilians chaffed under the yoke of the Bourbon Neapolitans, they were a different people than the northern Italians. Mostly agrarian and uninterested in industrialization, they were also deeply religious and loyal to the catholic church. The House of Savoy was used to uniting people under a pro-industrialization message and a rejection of the authority of the Catholic Church and its clerics. This message had to be modified if Garibaldi was going to succeed. Garibaldi would especially drop the message of anti-church and employed priests (some of whom even fought) in his columns of men to put an image of church support of his cause. In advance of the expedition, representatives and agents were sent to Sicily to stoke the population’s support and an uprising broke out in Palermo on 4 April 1860, which was violently and brutally suppressed by the Neapolitan Bourbon forces there.

Garibaldi set sail from Genoa on 5 May, 1860 with his around one thousand volunteers and landed at Marsala in Western Sicily on 11 May. His landing was aided by good timing as the Bourbon navy, trying to stop Garibaldi before his landing, were afraid to engage Garibaldi’s ships at Marsala due to the coincidental presence of two British Royal Navy vessels. Fearful of sparking a wider war, they let Garibaldi land unopposed, although the British remained neutral in the expedition, denying aid and supplies to both sides. Initially, Garibaldi’s prospects didn’t look great, most of his men were untrained and ill-equipped for the task at hand, but planned on tapping into the Sicilian people’s resentment to bolster their forces. This surging of his manpower with Sicilian volunteers however didn’t appear right away. The Thousand, with their flashy red shirts and grey trousers, were not taken seriously at their landing.

Garibaldi found little interest from the Sicilians to support his cause, as they were hesitant to support his tiny force against 20,000 Neapolitan forces loyal to King Francis II. Garibaldi declared his intention to liberate the island from Naples, while also declaring himself dictator of the island in the name of King Victor Emmanual II of Savoy and began his march towards Palermo. He was met by a force of Neapolitans twice his size at the three-hour long Battle of Calatafimi, resulting in a mostly inconclusive engagement. However, the battle was a massive moral blow to the Neapolitans as they retreated upon running out of ammunition, leaving Garibaldi’s thousand to press towards Palermo. Only at this point did the Sicilian people and partisans see that Garibaldi may have a chance, but he had a large obstacle to overcome, the Sicilian capital city, Palermo. Palermo had around 18,000 forces loyal to King Francis II but were led by an incompetent 75-year-old commander. Once Garibaldi laid siege to the city on 27 May, the population of Palermo (around 180,000) rose up and aided the Thousand, allowing Garibaldi to enter the city and capture portions on the first day. The Bourbons retreated and shelled the lost sections of the city, killing hundreds of civilians in the process that further stoked resistance by the population. By May 28, the Bourbon troops found themselves cornered and began to fight back against the resisting population but they were unable to gain momentum against the Thousand and the popular uprising. Two battalions of well-trained Bavarian mercenaries employed by the Bourbons arrived and began to push back the Mille. Although Garibaldi began to lose ground and men, the Bourbons started facing uprisings in Catania and other parts of Sicily, and quickly realized that with the population uniting against them and the morale of their men beginning to collapse, they would have to surrender the city and retreat eastwards back to the mainland. On 30 May, they surrendered Palermo and retreated fully on 6 June 1860.

While Garibaldi’s Thousand is the most well-known expedition, he did not conquer the island alone. In all, around 20,000 volunteers began to arrive from other parts of Italy to aid the Mille and land around various areas of Sicily. It was these new arrivals that ultimately convinced King Francis II’s forces to abandon the island and return to defend their holdings in mainland Italy, allowing Garibaldi and the Savoy forces to march east, fighting retreating Bourbon forces and gaining more troops from Sicilian partisans in the process. Finally on 1 August, the Bourbons surrendered the whole of the Island after losing engagements in Messina and Syracuse, allowing Garibaldi to establish a dictatorial government under the authority of King Victor Emmanual II and uniting Sicily to Savoy Italy.