THE MAD TOOK OVER THE MADHOUSE

What was meant by being an inmate of a Neapolitan prison was told by Mr Gladstone in his two 'Letters to the Earl of Aberdeen,' which the latter sent to Prince Schwarzenberg, the Austrian Prime Minister, with a strong appeal to him to make known their contents to the King of the Two Sicilies, and to use his influence in procuring a mitigation of the abuses complained of. Prince Schwarzenberg did nothing, and it was then that the 'Letters' were published.

 The impression created on public opinion was almost without a parallel.
 The celebrated phrase, 'The negation of God erected into a system of government,' passing into currency as a short history of Bourbon rule at Naples, kept alive the wrathful feelings which the 'Letters' aroused, even when these ceased to be read.

Gladstone

 Some small errors of fact (such as that of stating that all the prisoners were chained, whereas an exception was made of those undergoing life sentences) were magnified by the partisans of Ferdinand II.; but the truth of the picture as a whole was amply confirmed from independent sources.

Remembrance in Naples of Porio

 Baron Carlo Poerio (condemned to nineteen years' imprisonment) was chained to a common malefactor, the chain never being undone, and producing in the end a disease of the bone from which he never recovered. His case was that of all the political prisoners in the same category with himself.
Luigi Settembrini and the others on whom sentence of death had been passed, but commuted into one of life imprisonment, were not chained, but they were put to associate with the worst thieves and assassins, while their material surroundings accorded with the moral atmosphere they were forced to breathe.

Naples Troops . A general, Imperial Grennadiers and an officer of Engineers

Corps of Guides, Chasseur and a Policeman . All Naples troops or The Kingdom of the Two Sicilie

lancer of naples by beneitosardinian army types

The Neapolitan prisoners did more than suffer for freedom; they delivered the name of their country from being a reproach among the nations. They showed what men the South of Italy can produce. Those who wish to know what types of probity, honour and ideal patriotism may grow out of that soil, which is sometimes charged with yielding only the rank weeds planted by despotism, may read the letters and memoirs of the noble Poerios, of Settembrini, gentlest but most fearless of human souls, of the Calabrian Morellis, all patriots and martyrs; of the Duke of Castromediano, who lately, in his old age, has set down a few recollections of the years he spent at the Neapolitan galleys.
 He records in these notes what he calls the most perilous moment in his life. It was when he was summoned, with six fellow-prisoners who had asked for and obtained freedom, to hear, as he feared, his own pardon pronounced.
 For pardon was equivalent to dishonour; it was granted either in consequence of real submission and retraction, or in order to be able to blacken the character of the pardoned man by falsely asserting that such submission had been made. His fear was groundless. He had been led out, perhaps, in the hope that the example of the others would prove contagious. He was not pardoned. As he returned to his prison, he thanked Divine Providence for the chains which left him pure.

Guides or Riflemen Tuscany

Strange to tell, Ferdinand II. rendered one considerable service to the national cause; not that he saw it in that light, but the service was none the less real because its motive was a narrow one. Austria proposed a defensive league between the Italian Sovereigns: defensive not only with the view to outward attack, but also and chiefly against 'internal disorder.'

Tuscan Troops. Infantry.Cadet.Drum Major

Duchy of Modena

Piedmont was to be invited to join as soon as she had renounced her constitutional sins, which it was sanguinely expected she would do before very long.

Piedmont

 Meanwhile Parma, Modena, Tuscany and Rome embraced the idea with enthusiasm, but the King of the Two Sicilies, who dimly saw in it an opening for interference in his own peculiar governmental ways, boldly declined to have anything to do with it. And so, to Prince Schwarzenberg's serious disappointment, the scheme by which he had hoped to create an absolutist Italian federation, came to an untimely end.

Duchy of Parma

Piedmont

Photo curiosity taken in Naples of a Bourbon Officer called  Domenico Tosi, born Palermo  1808.

 Officer of infantry


In 1846,he was in the sith battalionand took part in putting down the Sicilians in 1849. In 1857 he was aide de camp in the Chasseurs 11th battalion. He went on to a great military career becoming colonel in 1860 and fighting Garibaldi on the Volturno below is how he would have looked in colour

In Naples There has been a resurge of interest and nostalgia for the Bourbon regime. A lot of their actions are seen through rose coloured glasses though. And history seems to be made up as it goes along although not all of it is the wannabee facts of loons

leopold the second

The Leopolda Railway

The idea of a railway line that joined the capital city of the Grand Duchy with its most important port, Livorno, had already been presented in 1826 by the marchese Carlo Ginori Lisci, soon after the first public railway line opened in England, the Stockton-Darlington. Premature for the Tuscany of the epoch, the project was again taken into consideration only a decade later by Luigi Serristori and Piero Dini Castelli. Despite meticulous market research to sound out the situation in the commercial field, and the efforts sustained to find entrepreneurs interested in financing the undertaking, the two promoters saw themselves bypassed by the powerful Florentine banker Emanuele Fenzi and Livornese businessman Pietro Senn who, thanks to greater financial security and the support of influential personages, succeeded in obtaining the concession for the new railway from the Grand Duke.

leopolds bridgde

 Due to the inexperience of Italian engineers, work direction was entrusted to the Englishman Robert Stephenson, the most famous railway engineer of the time, though he later deferred most of the work to his assistants, William Hoppner and Robert Townshend. Among the various routes proposed, one was chosen which passed through Empoli, Pontedera and Pisa: in 1844, the Livorno-Pisa tract was inaugurated, while in 1845, William Bray who had succeeded Hoppner, succeeded in taking the line up to Pontedera, at the same time also inaugurating the freight service. One year later, the railway reached Empoli, and in 1848, the line could be considered as completed. The undertaking was such a success that Fenzi decided to immortalise it in his family coat of arms in which a steam locomotive is depicted between the Cathedral of Florence and the Pisans’ Lighthouse of Livorno. The positive outcome of the first Tuscan railway experiment induced numerous private companies to present Grand Duke Leopold II new projects for another line that would join the capital city to Pistoia and which, in honour of the ruler’s wife, would be called Maria Antonia. The commission, granted to the Società Italiana ed Austriaca, was entrusted to engineer Isidore Kingdom Brunel who, in turn, delegated the job to Benjamin Herschel Babbage. The construction of the first stretch, between Florence and Prato, took about three years (from the second half of 1845 until February 1848) and was contested by the local population, tired of the continuous inconveniences they were subjected to. It was precisely the problems of a social and technical nature that also appeared for the second tract that convinced the concessionaires to grant the commission to the Anglo-Italian Company. The direction of works was thus entrusted to Thomas Woodhouse who succeeded in bringing the undertaking to its conclusion in July 1851.

At the same time as the realisation of the first stretch of the Maria Antonia, Austrian engineer Enrico Pohlmeyer had realised the brief Pisa-Lucca tract, inaugurating it in 1846. Passing through the Duchy of Lucca, which was only annexed to the Grand Duchy of Tuscany in 1847, the Lucchese Railway was to all effects the first Italian railway to join two sovereign states.

Greater problems were instead encountered for the tract that was to join Lucca and Pistoia, completing the sub-Apennine route from Florence to Pisa. Once again entrusted to Pohlmeyer, work indeed suffered a standstill faced with the difficulties encountered in crossing the natural barriers formed by the Pescia River and, especially, by the hills of Serravalle. Decisive in this sense were the intervention of Tommaso Cini, who succeeded the Austrian engineer in the direction of works, and the interest of capitalist Michelangelo Bastogi who imparted new vitality to the undertaking. Cini redesigned the bridge over the Pescia several times in response to the protests of the population and the paper producers of the area, worried for the narrowing of the river bed. Analogously, the tunnel of Serravalle was redesigned, lengthening its route in order to decrease its slope. While the Lucca-Pescia tract could be considered concluded in 1847, the railway reached Montecatini only six years later, while the completion of the entire line, with the opening of the tunnel of Serravalle, was achieved in 1859.

The Grand Duke was briefly deposed by a provisional government in 1849, only to be restored the same year with the assistance of Austrian troops, who occupied the state until 1855. Leopold felt obliged to side with Austria in the Second Italian War of Independence. Tuscany was occupied by Victor Emmanuel II of Sardinia for the duration of the conflict. The Grand Ducal family evacuated Tuscany on 27 April 1859 forBoulogne. On 21 July 1859, Leopold abdicated the throne in favour of his son, Ferdinand. His accession was not proclaimed in Tuscany, and his hypothetical reign was ended by the parliament's delcaration of the deposition of the House of Habsburg (August 16).The idea of a railway that, departing from the route between Florence and Livorno, would reach Siena dates to 1842. The promoters of the new line were Giuseppe Pianigiani and Luigi Serristori formerly involved in the project for the Leopolda Railway, respectively in the capacity of engineer and organisation consultancy), but it was businessman Policarpo Bandini who directed the undertaking. In this case too, the numerous technical problems that emerged, mainly concerning crossing Mount Arioso, in addition to the ferocious criticism levelled at Pianigiani because of the tortuousness of the route he originally proposed, slowed down work. Begun in 1846, the new line became completely operative in 1850, thanks to the use of English tracks and locomotives
.In the same years that the railway for Siena was being planned, various proposals were put forward for a railway that would lead up to Arezzo. The progress of the new line was initially commissioned to Tuscan engineer Francesco Guasti who in 1846 was replaced by Francesco Del Greco and Camillo Giordanengo. Delayed by Leopold’s undecided attitude, the entire affair was heavily conditioned by the mysterious disappearance of the project, which caused the deferment of the matter until the early 1850s. It was in this period that in view of realising a railway which from the north would descend to Rome, the competition with the Sienese line rekindled the debate on the Aretina. Thanks to a strong campaign to arouse public opinion conducted by the Municipality of Arezzo, Del Greco was able to start earthwork between Rovezzano and Pontassieve already in 1852, but the situation of extreme uncertainty as to finding capital led to another deadlock. The project, which originally planned for several tracts with double tracks and others with a single track, was finally entrusted to Frenchman Joseph Ducros who assigned the work to 4 different groups. The solution proved to be anything but successful, and in 1859, for reasons of safety, the Ministry for Public Works prohibited opening the only tract that was theoretically ready, that is to say the one up to Pontassieve. The affair was concluded only in 1866 with the arrival of the railway to Ponte San Giovanni, and the consequent link-up with the Ancona-Roma line.Former protagonist of the Subappennina affair, in 1845 Tommaso Cini proposed the project for a railway that, connecting Pistoia to Porretta, would have put Tuscany in communication with the northern states. At length opposed by the supporters of a line that would pass through Prato and the Bisenzio Valley, instead of the Reno Valley, the project was approved only after the death of its promoter in 1852. In the meantime (1851), the Grand Duke of Tuscany, along with the Papal States, the Duchies of Parma and Modena and the Austrian Government, undersigned an agreement that decreed the creation of a trans-Apennine railway that would connect Pistoia and Piacenza. Work on the Tuscan tract began around 1856. Despite the numerous difficulties offered by the territory, which required deviating the Reno River and creating some 47 tunnels along a course of 130 kilometres, the astute direction of French engineer Jean-Louis Protche made it possible to inaugurate the railway in 1863.The race to progress that characterised the 1840s and 1850s led to a proliferation of projects that for technical and, at times, political reasons soon proved to be impracticable. Among these, one of the most debated was doubtlessly a railway line that could join the Tyrrhenian to the Adriatic, the realisation of which, however, exceeded the technical capabilities of the epoch. There were also merely speculative manoeuvres, the most striking of which was certainly the affair of the Maremmana railway, which obtained the capital but was never built.

Special mention must instead be made of several industrial railways, like the Carbonifera of Montebamboli in Maremma and, for the period following the unification of Italy, the Marble Railway in the Apuane Alps. In particular, the first was born between the middle and late 1840s to transport lignite from the mines at Montebamboli down to the sea, and functioned in part by animal traction (uphill), and in part by exploiting the force of gravity (downhill).

A Look at the Railway System after the Unification of Italy

With the birth of the Kingdom of Italy, Tuscany boasted a railway system of more than 250 km, second only to the networks of Piedmont and Lombardy-Veneto. The development of railways obviously did not stop with the Lorraines, and instead received a new boost from the need to create a more organic system on the national level. The process of railway nationalisation, however, was slow and problematic, and the direct management of the lines previously granted to private companies was assumed by the new Ferrovie dello Stato only in 1905. New constructions were erected and improvements in the technological field were adopted during the fascist period, but the second world conflict damaged most of the pre-existing structures and the recent electrical vehicles. The long and difficult reconstruction after the war led to the Tuscan railway assuming a fundamental role in the development of the entire national transports system, due mainly to the creation of the Rome-Florence "Direttissima" between 1978 and 1991, the first real high-speed railway line of the Italian network. Still under construction are the Tuscan tracts of the new super-fast line (TAV), which should cross the entire peninsula in a few years’ time

The Grand Duke of Tuscany timidly inquired of the Austrian premier if he might renew the constitutional régime in his state. Schwarzenberg replied with the artful suggestion that he should hear what the Dukes of Modena and Parma, the Pope, and King Ferdinand had to say on the subject. Their advice was unanimously negative: Cardinal Antonelli going so far as to declare that Constitutionalism in Tuscany would be regarded as a constant menace and danger to the States of the Church.

leopold I

 The different counsels of Piedmont, conveyed by Count Balbo, weighed little against so imposing an array of opinion, backed as it was by the Power which still stabled its horses in the Convent of San Marco. The Tuscan Statute was formally suspended in September 1850.From that day forth, Tuscany sank lower and lower in the slough. To please the Pope, havoc was made of the Leopoldine laws—named after the son of Maria Theresa, the wise Grand Duke Leopold I.—laws by which a bridle was put on the power and extension of the Church.

The prosecution and imprisonment of a Protestant couple who were accused of wishing to make proselytes, proclaimed the depth of intolerance into which what was once the freest and best-ordered government in Italy had descended.The ecclesiastical question became the true test question in Piedmont as well as in Tuscany, but there it had another issue.

Beaten but not out

Radetsky's mistake was not to have gone on to turin and taken the whole thing.
Bush senio did the same in Iraq.
An army twice beaten, a bankrupt exchequer, a triumphant invader waiting to dictate terms; this was but the beginning of the inventory of the royal inheritance.
 The internal condition of the kingdom, even apart from the financial ruin which had succeeded to the handsome surplus of two years before, was full of embarrassments of the gravest kind.

There was a party representing the darkest-dyed clericalism and reaction whose machinations had not been absent in the disaster of Novara. There the troops engaged in the battle had been given broadsides printed with the words: 'Soldiers, for whom do you think you are fighting? The King is betrayed; at Turin they have proclaimed the republic'?
There were other broadsides in which Austria was called the supporter of thrones and altars.You would not have been far out to find that the catholic church was betraying their own country like they always have done.Traitors were rife then like now with Berlusconi and the lega lombards of Bossi.
 The dreadful indiscipline witnessed towards the end of, and after the conflict was due more to the demoralising doctrines that had been introduced into the army than to the insubordination of panic.
.Victor Emmanuel was not popular. The indifference to danger which he had shown conspicuously during the war would have awakened enthusiasm in most countries, but in Piedmont it was so thoroughly taken for granted that the Princes of the House of Savoy did not know fear, that it was looked on as an ordinary fact. The Austrian origin of the Duchess of Savoy formed a peg on which to hang unfriendly theories.
 It is impossible not to compassionate the poor young wife who now found herself Queen of a people which hated her race,
.Radetsky did not refuse to treat with Charles Albert, as has been sometimes said, but the intolerably onerous terms first proposed by him showed that he wished to force the abdication which Charles Albert had always contemplated in the event of new reverses of fortune.
Radetsky was favourably disposed to the young Duke of Savoy, as far as his personal feeling was concerned.

dragoons of regina 1848

 The Field-Marshal did not forget that he was the son-in-law of the Austrian Archduke Ranieri; it is probable, if not proved, that he expected to find him pliable; but Radetsky, besides being a politician of the purest blood-and-iron type, was an old soldier with not a bad heart, and some of his sympathy is to be ascribed to a veteran's natural admiration for a daring young officer.

vigevano where the armistice was signed

On the 24th of March, Victor Emmanuel, with the manliness that was born with him, decided to go and treat himself for the conditions of the armistice.
 It was the first act of his reign, and it was an act of abnegation; humiliating shouts of "Long live the King" shouted by Austrian soldiers greeted his ears.

austrians back in milan

 .The Field-Marshal took good care, however, that nothing but respect should be paid to his visitor, whom he received half-way, surrounded by his superb staff, all mounted on fine horses and clad in splendid accoutrements.
 As soon as the King saw him coming, he sprang from his saddle, and Radetsky would have done the same had not he required, owing to his great age, the aid of two officers to help him to the ground.
After he had laboriously dismounted, he made a military salute, and then embraced Victor Emmanuel with the greatest cordiality.
 The King was accompanied by very few officers, but the presence of one of these was significant, namely, of the Lombard Count Vimercati, whom he particularly pointed out to Radetsky.

Austrian general staff 1859 saimax italy

While observing the most courteous forms, the Field-Marshal was not long in coming to the point. The negotiations would be generous : instead of beginning his reign with a large slice of territory occupied by a foreign enemy for an indefinite period, the King might open it with an actual enlargement of his frontier, if he would only give the easy assurance of ruling on the good old system, and of re-hoisting the blue banner of Piedmont instead of the revolutionary tricolor.
 The moment was opportune; Victor Emmanuel had not yet sworn to maintain the Constitution. But he replied, without hesitation, that though he was ready, if needs be, to accept the full penalties of defeat, he was determined to observe the  engagements entered into by his father towards the people over whom he was called to reign.

flats of austrians in 1848 by zinnfiguren

That evening, the terms of the armistice were communicated to the Chamber. As was natural, they evoked the wildest indignation, a part of which fell undeservedly on the King.
 Twenty thousand Austrians were to occupy the district between the Po, Sesia and Ticino and half the citadel of Alessandria.
 The excitement rose to its height when it was announced that the Sardinian Fleet must be recalled from Venetian waters, depriving that struggling city of the last visible sign of support from without.
The Chamber sent a deputation to the King, who succeeded in persuading its members that, hard though the terms were, there was no avoiding their acceptance.
General La Marmora had orders to quell the insurrection at Genoa, the motive of which was not nominally a change of government, but the continuance of the war at all costs.
Its deeper cause lay in the old  irreconcilability of republican Genoa with her Piedmontese masters, breaking out now afresh under the strain of patriotic disappointment.
But in Genoa the populace had rebelled against their old masters Piedmont.
 Austria and France offered Victor Emmanuel their arms to put down the revolution, but, declining the not exactly disinterested attention, he made a wise choice in La Marmora, who accomplished the ungrateful task with expedition and humanity.
 An amnesty was granted to all but a very few participators in the revolt.

Defending Venice

venetian cavalry

Civic and National Guards dressed like the Bersaglieri but had different coloured uniforms. I don'y know if this uniform was worn at Venice but will keep you informed

The Venetian army of 20,000 men was reduced by casualties and sickness to 18,000 or less. It always did its duty.

Fort Marghera

 The defence of Fort Malghera, the great fort which commanded the road to Padua and the bridge of the Venice railway, would have done credit to the most experienced troops in the world. The garrison numbered 2500; the besiegers, under Haynau, 30,000. Radetsky, with three archdukes, came to see the siege, but, tired with waiting, they went away before it was ended.

hungarian volunteer fighting for venice

hungarian irregulars ulans

 The bombardment began on the 4th of May; in the three days and nights ending with the 25th over 60,000 projectiles fell on the fort. During the night of the 25th the Commandant, Ulloa, by order of Government, quietly evacuated the place, and withdrew his troops; only the next morning the Austrians found out that Malghera was abandoned, and proceeded to take possession of the heap of ruins, which was all  that remained.

Fort Marghera

there had been little change in austrian uniforms since the napoleonic wars

After the beginning of July, an incessant bombardment was directed against the city itself. Women and children lived in the cellars; fever stalked through the place, but the war feeling was as strong as ever—nay, stronger.

engineer

 Moreover, the provisions became daily scarcer, the day came when hunger was already acutely felt, when the time might be reckoned by hours before the famished defenders must let drop their weapons, and Venice, her works of art and her population, must fall a prey to the savage vengeance of the Austrians, who would enter by force and without conditions.

Returning Triumphant from the battle of Mestre.

And this is what Manin prevented. The cry was still for resistance; for the first time bitter words were spoken against the man who had served his country so well. But he, who had never sacrificed one iota to popularity, did not swerve. His great influence prevailed.

venetian militia from the provinces

 The capitulation was arranged on the 22nd, and signed on the 24th of July. Manin had calculated correctly; on that day there was literally nothing left to eat in Venice.In the last sad hours that Manin spent in Venice all the love of his people, clouded for an instant, burst forth anew.

The Austrians break into the City. Piazzale Maggiore

 Not, indeed, in shouts and acclamations, but in tears and sobs; 'Our poor father, how much he has suffered!' they were heard saying. He embarked on a French vessel bound for Marseilles, poor, worn out and exiled for ever from the city which he had guided for eighteen months; if, indeed, no spark of his spirit animated the dust which it was the first care of liberated Venice to welcome home.

civic venetian guard

 The Austrians broke up his doorstep on which, according to a Venetian custom, his name was engraved. Another martyr, Ugo Bassi, had kissed the stone, exclaiming:

Battle of Mestre.Mestre is joined to Venice by a causeway type bridge. This battle was won by the Venatians at the start

engineer

civic venetian guard

VICENZAN VOLUNTEER TUNIC

vicenza volunteer

'Next to God and Italy—before the Pope—Manin!' The people gathered up the broken fragments and kept them as relics, even as in their hearts they kept his memory, till the arrival of that day of redemption which, in the darkest hour, he foretold.Criticisms

The death of the great patriot Mazzini by Lega

Karl Marx, on an interview by R. Landor in 1871, said that Mazzini's ideas represents "nothing better than the old idea of a middle-class republic." Marx believed, especially after the Revolutions of 1848, that this alleged middle class point of view had become reactionary and the proletariat had nothing to do with it

VENICE .Russians and those Italians in the ACW

Russian infantryCASTELLUM Miniatures presents...Gennady Danshin, th CASTELLUM Miniatures firm, . resin figure – Feldwebel (Sergeant Major), Grouzinski Grenadier Regiment of the Caucasian Separate Corps, Russian Imperial Army, the Caucasus, 1850.

Austria, unable alone to cope with Hungary, committed the immeasurable blunder of calling in the 200,000 Russians who made conquest certain, but the price of whose aid she may still have to pay.

civic guard drummer venice

With the crushing defeat of the Italian forces at the Battle of Custoza and then Novara, the Piedmontese retreated and retired from the war. With Piedmont now out of the war, Sardinia pulled its navy out of Venice fearing heavy losses in a now one sided war.
 Venice now stood alone against the full might of the Austrian armies. After the fall of the last Venetian mainland stronghold at the fort of Marghera on May 26, 1849, Austrian forces blockaded supplies to Venice and laid siege to the city. 
Daniele Manin and General Guglielmo Pepe led a valiant defense of the city, but the odds were stacked heavily against them. With famine setting in and an outbreak of cholera that threatened to become an epidemic, Manin called upon the Republican Assembly for a surrender. The Repubblica di San Marco officially surrendered on August 22, 1848. Five days later, the Austrian troops entered the city and Manin, Pepe, and the other revolutionary leaders were forced into exile. Venice was again in Austrian hands.Below the flag that lasted a year.

 Venice, and Venice only, continued to defy her power.
Since Novara, the first result of which was the withdrawal of the Sardinian Commissioners, who had taken over the government .

manin proclaims the republic

 Venice had been ruled by Manin on the terms which he himself proposed: 'Are you ready,' he asked the Venetian Assembly, 'to invest the Government with unlimited powers in order to direct the defence and maintain order?'
 He warned them that he should be obliged to impose upon them enormous sacrifices, but they replied by voting the order of the day:

volunteer from palmanouva

'Venice resists the Austrians at all costs; to this end the President Manin is invested with plenary powers.' All the deputies then raised their right hand, and swore to defend the city to the last extremity.
 They kept their word.

drummer civil guard

It is hard to say which was the most admirable: Manin's fidelity to his trust, or the people's fidelity to him.
 To keep up the spirits, to maintain the decorum of a besieged city even for a few weeks or a few  months, is a task not without difficulty; but when the months run into a second year, when the real pinch of privations has been felt by everyone, not as a sudden twinge, but as a long-drawn-out pain, when the bare necessities of life fail, and a horrible disease, cholera, enters as auxiliary under the enemy's black-and-yellow, death-and-pestilence flag; then, indeed, the task becomes one which only a born leader of men could perform.

Cavalry officer

The financial administration of the republic was a model of order and economy.
 Generous voluntary assistance was afforded by all classes, from the wealthy patrician and the Jewish merchant to the poorest gondolier.
Mazzini once said bitterly that it was easier to get his countrymen to give their blood than their money; here they gave both.

Naples sent troops to Venice to help under general Pepe

 The capable manner in which Manin conducted the foreign policy of the republic is also a point that deserves mention, as it won the esteem even of statesmen of the old school, though it was powerless to obtain their help.
In the past year, Lord Palmerston, though he tried to localise the war, and to prevent the co-operation of the south, abounded in good advice to Austria. 
He repeated till he was tired of repeating, that she would do well to retire from her Italian possessions of her own accord.
 If the French did not come now, he said, they would come some day, and then her friends and allies would give her scanty support.
 As for Lombardy, it was notorious that a considerable Austrian party was in favour of giving it up, including the Archduke Ranieri, who was strongly attached to Italy, which was the land of his birth.

vicenza volunteerArtilleryman

 As for  Venice, Austria had against her both the principle of nationality, now the rallying cry of Germany, and the principle of ancient prescription which could be energetically invoked against her by a state to which her title went back no farther than the transfer effected by Buonaparte in the treaty of Campo Formio.
 These were his arguments; but he was convinced, by this time, that arguments unsupported by big battalions might as well be bestowed on the winds as on the Cabinet of Vienna.
 From the moment that Radetsky recovered Lombardy for his master, the Italian policy of the Austrian Government was entirely inspired by him, and he was determined that while he lived, what Austria had got she should keep.

GARIBALDIAN VOLUNTEER NO IDEA IF THEY WERE AT VENICE THOUGH

 It was thus that, in reply to Manin's appeal to Lord Palmerston, he only received the cold comfort of the recommendation that Venice should come to terms with her enemy.

NAPLES CAVALRY. How many got to venice no idea but a few did very few

The illustration here depicting the Garibaldi guard is most allarming in that the guard never ever went into action like this. There are no records that I have seen that portray them in action in the uniform shown here.The recent exhibition in NYC shows them as being dressed like this but I would say thats far from the truth.
The ACW Italian soldiers were a diverse and independent minded group of individuals who were both inspired and motivated by the example set down by their hero, Giuseppe Garibaldi. Most came from Manhattan’s lower east side tenements, a hive of political ferment, and daily survival. Many were veterans of the failed revolutions of 1848-1849 in Italy, Austria, Berlin, Warsaw and Paris. Some even served with General Garibaldi during the ill fated Republic of Rome, and were under the penalty of death in their home lands. What they all had in common was their working class status, love of liberty, justice and America as beacon democracy.

“Each immigrant group attempted to form a regiment around their national origins, but were persuaded to consolidate under one banner, one flag, and one inspiration,” said curator Anthony Dilluvio.
 With his blessing, General Garibaldi agreed to lend his name to the regiment, so on May 26th, 1861, men from Italy, Switzerland, Germany, France, Spain, Poland, Portugal, Denmark, Sweden, Austria, Belgium, Croatia and Hungary took the oath of allegiance to the United States of America, under their official designation, the “Garibaldi Guard”, 39th New York State Volunteer Regiment. During the same ceremony, the regiment received their three regimental battle flags. The Italian flag came directly from General Garibaldi, being his personal flag that flew over the ramparts of Rome in 1848, and containing his personal motto “DEO E. POPOLO”.

britains only did one Bersaglieri

The regiment’s uniform was also unique. Dressed like Italian Bersaglieri, cock feathers and all, they march down lower Broadway to the cheers of New York’s multitudes.
The United States Army called the Garibaldi Guard the most cantankerous unit in the service, and so they were. They were also one of the few units that fought for the duration of the war, receiving the appellation “Veteran”. They were at Bull Run, Gettysburg, The Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor and Appomattox. They suffered prejudice, wounds, death by battle and disease, capture and mutiny. Some found ruin, others glory.