Abstract
Historiography rarely concerns itself with investigating the capacity that war volunteering has to endure and persist across time; that is, not only the continuation of memories passed down from one generation of fighters to another, but also its ability to reactivate itself as soon as a new movement of volunteers begins. Between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, there were successive generations of volunteers who, as well as wearing the Garibaldian red shirt and aligning themselves with that tradition, were also political activists belonging to extreme left-wing organizations. In these cases, it was not only that Garibaldinism was considered to be an important part of the political horizon, but also – and this is what will be explored in this article – that there was a tradition of war volunteering that was passed down through generations and that was clearly linked to the Garibaldian red-shirt tradition. The article will follow Amilcare Cipriani’s biography. A young Garibaldi volunteer, he soon moved towards internationalism (he was one of the defenders of the Paris commune) and lived a good part of his life moving continuously between Europe and Northern Africa. At the end of the century, in 1897, he was amongst the principle actors in a Garibaldian campaign that would pave the way for the next steps in the red-shirt volunteering tradition.
Why do people spontaneously involve themselves in armed conflict? What driving force could be so strong that a man, or a woman, consciously chooses to risk his or her own life? These same questions are at the heart of every study undertaken on the complex world of war volunteering. Over the last ten years, a more systematic analysis, which attempts to reflect upon this phenomenon, has begun to emerge. This includes the nineteenth-century struggles for independence (specifically, those of the Greeks, Poles and Italians), World War I, and the Spanish Civil War. 1 It is undeniable that non-state mobilization in European history, at least until the end of World War II, saw a progressive move away from volunteering for patriotic/nationalistic causes, and a definite shift towards transnational ideologies and supranational forms, which are perhaps more difficult to understand. The earlier type is best exemplified by the international volunteers who disembarked in Sicily in May 1860 or those foreigners who fought against the Napoleonic invasion of Spain. The second type is illustrated by the anti-fascists who enlisted in the International Brigade in Spain, starting from the autumn of 1936, or by the foreigners who fought within the French Resistance during World War II. 2
Even with this differentiation it is clear that links can be made which bring together these varied experiences that have taken place at different moments in history. Historiography rarely concerns itself with investigating the capacity that war volunteering has to endure and persist across time; that is, not only the continuation of memories passed down from one generation of fighters to another, but also its ability to reactivate itself as soon as a new movement of volunteers begins. This endurance has been recently highlighted by Eva Cecchinato and Mario Isnenghi in a study concerning volunteers in the Italian Risorgimento. 3
In the early 2000s, the French historian Gilles Pécout led the ‘Volontaires dans la Méditerranée’ project, which sought to review the extent and the characteristics of war volunteering in nineteenth-century Europe, focusing more specifically on the south of the continent. The researchers involved sought to gain an understanding of the political cultures which inspired generations of volunteers. 4 Pécout wondered if within these generations there existed a subscription to greater political ideals that went beyond a mere ‘romantic’ engagement with the phenomenon of war volunteering. 5 It seems certain that this is true. Between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, there were successive generations of volunteers who, as well as wearing the Garibaldian red shirt and aligning themselves with that tradition, were also political activists belonging to extreme left-wing organizations. In these cases, it was not only that Garibaldinism was considered to be an important part of the political horizon but also – and this is what will be explored in this article – that there was a tradition of war volunteering that was passed down through generations and that was clearly linked to the Garibaldian red-shirt tradition. In February 1937, Italian members of the International Brigade received a package of books that they had been awaiting for some time, specifically, some books on the history of the Italian Risorgimento. 6 A few months later, the same anti-fascists declared that for them the name Garibaldi represented ‘the ultimate expression of the Italian people’ and was an expression of the ideals of the ‘freedom and independence of all peoples’. 7 Those volunteers, who logically considered the fight against fascism to be their first priority, saw themselves as the modern embodiment of a tradition that had its roots in the battles of the Risorgimento. How so? What linked these drastically different causes? Over the next few pages, we will try to provide an answer to these questions.
In Italy, between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries there was an ‘official’ memory of Garibaldi. After his death, this turned into a cult: ‘from the 1880s onwards, and as part of a wider process commemorating the Risorgimento, monuments and plaques to Garibaldi were raised all over Italy’. 8 The former Garibaldino Francesco Crispi, once he was appointed Italy’s Prime Minister, became particularly active in promoting a toned-down version of Garibaldinism that included red-shirt volunteers in an ideal national pantheon together with King Vittorio Emanuele II and Cavour. The political goal was clear: a shared and unified memory of the Italian Risorgimento. 9 Italian institutions held the view that any acceptable version of Garibaldinism, in its military form, had stopped when its primary political objective (the birth of a united Kingdom of Italy) was reached.
In reality, things were not that simple, and Garibaldinism, after 1861, was not simply locked away in the collective memory. In 1874, in Cesenatico, the Italian state’s Carabinieri dissolved a worker’s society that had been causing concerns since its foundation due to the fact many known subversives in the region had been active within it. When the police raided the offices of the society, they found eight red and black flags – evidence of internationalist support. However, the most important detail was something else: the society was named after Francesco Nullo, a Garibaldino who had fallen in Poland in 1863, and the honorary president was Giuseppe Garibaldi. 10 Eight years later, when Garibaldi died, local internationalists in Forlimpopoli took part in a public ceremony organized by the authorities. On that occasion, flags and political symbols were not displayed, but the internationalists paraded through the streets exhibiting red and black scarves around their necks. 11 In 1907, an editorial in the Ravenna Newspaper La Libertà, stated that Garibaldinism, as a movement, could no longer be said to exist because it had died along with Giuseppe Garibaldi. According to the author of the piece, the republican Umberto Serpieri, the fault lay with those followers of ‘The Hero of Two Worlds’, who, in the aftermath of Italian Unity, made compromises with monarchical institutions. In reality, despite what Serpieri wrote, Garibaldinism not only remained in the memory, but survived. There is no doubt that this is thanks to some of the veterans of the Risorgimento wars. 12 In September 1917, the elderly libertarian Egisto Gabriellini died in Pisa. In his obituary, printed in the Pisa newspaper L’Avvenire Anarchico, it was highlighted that as a young man he had volunteered with Garibaldi and that he had been buried ‘covered with a red shirt and a black flag’. 13
Italian historiography has rarely talked about the resurgence of Garibaldinism after 1861, unless referring to the participation of many Garibaldini veterans in the first episodes of social and political conflicts during the first decade after unification. 14 These continuities have however been upheld in an anecdotal way, and as Marco Fincardi has justifiably stated, the contribution of the most politicized of Garibaldi’s followers to the creation of networks that ‘have developed a democratic sociability’ and the relations between Garibaldinism and political radicalism are rarely taken into consideration. 15 For many veterans, joining the Garibaldi struggle represented a pivotal moment, normally the first step in the process of politicization. Although Garibaldinism itself was never capable of transforming itself into a permanent structure, that is, into becoming a true political force, it was its exponents who kept the traditions and practices alive, in their subsequent political and personal affairs. 16 How can we reconstruct these continuations and influences on a medium to long-term basis? We believe that the most effective method is by taking a biographical approach which allows us to consider accounts and trajectories of individuals and collectives, working across boundaries, and to understand what remains and what has been lost. 17 The biographical dimension will allow us also to reflect on the proliferation of the movement, on its transnational networks and cultural exchanges which played such an important role in the Risorgimento wars. 18
To try and explain the significance of Garibaldinism, even from this biographical perspective, it seems necessary to take into account not just the political impact but also the social impact, habitus according to Pierre Bourdieu’s definition. 19 As we will see over the next few pages, the driving forces of Garibaldinism provoked political change but also changes in social practices rooted within that same universe. This article will try to demonstrate how, through Garibaldinism itself and recurring instances of war volunteering, there was a strong link between Risorgimento traditions and broader internationalist ones, not only on the level of ‘transmitting emotions and ideas’ but also, and above all, on a biographical and practical level. 20 It therefore makes sense to first consider the following quote from Maurizio Degl’Innocenti on the persistence of Garibaldinism: ‘the myth manifests itself alongside an agent and an interested subject; it occupies a territorial, cultural, political and social space; and it changes depending on the destination and functional reworking’. 21 Amilcare Cipriani (1843–1918) is the perfect candidate to represent ‘the agent’ in our reflections. A young Garibaldi volunteer, he soon moved towards internationalism (he was one of the defenders of the Paris commune) and lived a good part of his life moving continuously between Europe and Northern Africa. At the end of the century, in 1897, he was amongst the principle actors in a Garibaldian campaign that would pave the way for the next steps in the red-shirt volunteering tradition. In 1912, Luigi Campolonghi, who would become a leading exponent of anti-fascism in exile, dedicated a short pamphlet to Cipriani: ‘Amilcare Cipriani belongs to that generation which… hold in their hearts, with their love for their homeland, hatred for all forms of oppression. He is an Italian fighting for the unity of his country… But Cipriani is also a socialist and a revolutionary’. 22 Through a biographical reconstruction of Amilcare Cipriani’s life, we hope to identify the links, the cross-overs and the oppositions between Garibaldinism and political radicalism in late-nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century Europe.
Before we continue we must make a clarification. In this article, beginning with the biographical details of Amilcare Cipriani’s life, we will explore Garibaldinism in its most radical and extreme left-wing version. In reality, as aforementioned, this was not the only version present in Italy or indeed throughout Europe between 1800 and 1900. As well as serving as an official reminder of Garibaldi’s achievements, Garibaldinism was also able to resurface in more conservative environments. That is why there are recordings of volunteering in a national or nationalistic framework. As Mario Isnenghi states, experiences such as the occupation of the city of Rijeka during the aftermath of World War I by Gabriele D’Annunzio’s volunteers, the appropriation of the legend of Garibaldi on behalf of Fascism (and the consequential backing of the Regime by a part of the family) or the Battaglioni Garibaldi’s presence in the Italian Social Republic after September 1943, all serve as evidence of another type of Garibaldinsm, pertaining to the opposite side. 23 We must also mention the attempt of the new Italian state, following the unification of the country, to institutionalize the figure of the war volunteer through the creation of the Società di Tiro a Segno. As Giles Pécout has demonstrated, through these organizations the aim was, in the first instance, to keep a close eye on what was left of Garibaldi and, secondly, from the 1880s, to contain the population using a paramilitary system. During those years, the most conservative part of society saw the Società di Tiro as a kind of training for military service, and a way to spread militarism outside of the army itself. 24 This is far-removed from the focus of this article. In summary, the aspect of Garibaldinism that we will talk about is just one possible interpretation of his legacy after the unification of Italy, perhaps not the most important but undoubtedly the most transnational.
1. From Garibaldino to Subversive: 1843–1862
Born in 1843 in Anzio, Amilcare Cipriani grew up and was educated in Rimini, where his family moved when he was still an infant. Growing up in a place characterized by hostility towards the Papal States left an indelible mark on the young man. 25 The family environment did the rest, his parents were both fervent patriots who had grown up with similar influences. In mid-nineteenth-century Italy, this signified an even greater probability of Cipriani growing up proudly fighting for his country. 26 And so it was. Cipriani was not even 15 when, at the beginning of 1858, he ran away from home to fight with the Piedmontese army. 27 His rebellious inclination saw him deserting the Savoy ranks and joining Garibaldi and his men in Sicily in 1860. At the end of the Expedition of the Thousand, the young man was given amnesty and went back into the army, where he was sent to fight against the Brigantaggio in Abruzzo. 28 In August 1862 he deserted once again, having served as a soldier in the 37th infantry regiment. 29 Amilcare and his brother, Camillo, were part of a group of around 30 officers who decided to join Garibaldi; the new Garibaldian army was organized to march on the Papal States and resolve the so-called ‘Roman Question’. According to Cipriani himself, the decision to desert was born also from the frequent correspondence he was maintaining with Mazzini: ‘it was him that urged me to continue along the path that I had chosen’, he wrote years later. 30 Garibaldi, within a few weeks, had managed to rally around 4000 volunteers. 31 The response from the Italian army was harsh: Garibaldi was injured and he and his men were stopped in Calabria, in the Aspromonte mountains. Cipriani was detained along with the same comrades with whom he had deserted, and some of them were immediately shot: ‘alienated in front of rifles’, Cipriani would remember it later: ‘those young men stoically awaited their death, and they welcomed it with the battle cry they had learned from their general: ‘O Roma, o morte’. 32
This episode, if considered from a Garibaldian perspective, presents an issue that is rarely addressed in Italian historiography: the problem of how difficult it was to demobilize war volunteers. This an important topic which affects every society transitioning from a state of conflict to a state of peace. Over the course of the last few years, historiography has concentrated in particular on the demobilization of the soldiers of the two world conflicts of the twentieth century, reflecting on the violence that continued after the formal conclusion of the wars. As clearly demonstrated by both the Italian and German cases at the end of World War I, the return to civilian life was anything but simple and was not free from the tensions of violence. 33 This happened too, although perhaps in a less radical way, to those involved in the Risorgimento wars. When we deconstruct it, the Risorgimento wars involved two key groups: the official soldier and, of course, the volunteer. The volunteers represented Garibaldian radical spontaneity, whilst the soldiers embodied the official, moderate, monarchic side of the Risorgimento. 34 What occurred at Aspromonte is evidence that demobilization was a complicated, non-linear process. The volunteer momentum could reignite at any moment and the Garibaldian forces were able to reorganize themselves quickly, especially when they had not been able to achieve the ideals for which they had fought in the first instance. It should therefore not be surprising that in the years immediately following unification, as Eva Cecchinato has outlined, the Ministry of the Interior performed systematic checks on hundreds of veterans of the Garibaldi campaigns, classifying them as ‘subversives’. ‘The patriotic militants who had fought alongside Garibaldi represented sufficient grounds for suspicion and checks, and this itself constituted being “subversive”, a discriminating factor which raised suspicion within government institutions’. 35 In Cesena, for example, Eugenio Valzania, who fought regularly alongside Garibaldi, was considered by the sub-prefect at the beginning of 1863 to be the most dangerous subversive in the area because of his faith in the republic and in Mazzini. 36 Other similar figures also came to represent a threat to public order: in October 1867, when Garibaldi was making yet another attempt to resolve the Roman Question, it was Valzania who, in a matter of days, organized and armed a swathe of volunteers who fought against the Papal States. 37 Antonio Danesi, who was born in Forlì, had served as a volunteer in the 1860 Sicilian campaign, and had later decided to join the Italian army. However, he did not find himself at ease, and promptly handed in his resignation and returned to his home town. In 1863, he was classified as unemployed and politically dangerous, and given the label agitatore di piazza (agitator). 38 Here, the veteran associations played a very important role: it was not unusual that many of these men went from feeling simply united in battle to developing more radical ideologies. In the summer of 1870, the sub-prefect of Cesena proclaimed he was worried about the situation in the city. At the time, there were around a thousand affiliates, and, even though the official aim of the organization was mutualism, ‘the foundations on which it is built suggest republican tendencies and subversion in the face of the monarchy’. 39
Returning to events in Aspromonte in the summer of 1862, it can be said that in that moment something ‘broke’, at least when it came to the path of Amilcare Cipriani towards the Risorgimento canon. For the young man, once he had escaped it was not easy to avoid a new capture, but after a few weeks of hiding out, Amilcare got on a boat to Greece along with his brother and other escapees. 40 There the two fought briefly alongside opponents of King Otto of Greece. 41 Events such as these signify a clear passage from Risorgimento militancy to something much more subversive. In Aspromonte there came about, for the first time since unification, a more rebellious and revolutionary form of Garibaldinism which clashed directly with the new Italian state. 42 In the eclectic, and still confused, world of the Risorgimento extreme left, it was only after these events that a very different image of Garibaldi began to spread, one of Garibaldi as the opposition. 43 The ideals of freedom, emancipation and solidarity that had inspired Garibaldi volunteers thus far were founded on a mix of pre-political ideas, but ones that were yet full of political and moral value. These values, then, started to develop on a social level and were therefore brought into line with the burgeoning internationalist movement. 44 Amilcare Cipriani witnessed this, and, along with many of his co-regionalists, in the ten years between Italian unification and the Paris Commune, many of the men who had fought for the Italian Risorgimento (not only Garibaldi volunteers but also journalists and members of the urban bourgeoisie) were unsatisfied with post-unification politics and therefore went from nationalist ideals to a form of socialism, associating themselves with a more subversive way of thinking. 45 The veterans, from their point of view, considered this development in the internationalist community to be a natural evolution of the ideals that had inspired them to fight in the first place and to continue to advocate what could be defined as Garibaldian practices.
2. An Exile in Arms: 1862–1881
After the conclusion of his short adventure in Greece, Amilcare, forbidden to re-enter Italy, went to Alexandria in Egypt, where he worked as a warehouseman for Bank Deriveux. 46 This should not be surprising. In Egypt, especially in Alexandria, revolutionaries had been seeking refuge since the 1820s. 47 The city was considered a safe destination for political exiles and it was also well connected to the rest of the Mediterranean, especially to Italy. Cipirani did not only work while in Alexandria. During his first stay in Egypt, he remained in contact with Mazzini, who spurred him to found a patriotic society. ‘After I had concluded that Alexandria was a nucleus of brave young people’, he would later say, ‘I decided to make something good for my country out of it. I started a society under the very modest name of Mutuo Soccorso [Mutual Aid]…, and then, with the society’s resources and a few lire that I contributed myself, 500 Italians joined, and in Tirolo, we took the name “Legione Egizia” (Egyptian Legion)’. 48 Here Cipriani is referring to the expedition he joined in the summer of 1866, when Garibaldi and his fellows took part in the Third Italian War of Independence. Despite the huge contribution he made to the birth of this legion, Amilcare refused to take its command and preferred to serve as simple soldier in Tirolo.
From there, Cipriani did not go back to Egypt but instead went to the island of Crete, where during these months there had been an insurrection against the Turks that would last nearly two years, with around 200 Italian volunteers participating. 49 During the months he spent in Crete, Cipriani met the young French biologist Gustave Flourens, who was also volunteering on Greek soil. 50 This meeting, which would prove to be very important for Cipriani, is evidence of something which is rarely touched upon in the study of European war volunteering in those decades: the existence of stable, informal, transnational networks that had been created by the volunteers. The Mediterranean was not just a sea but also a space for circulation, communication and fertilization. 51 It was the very existence of these networks, as will be explained in this article, that made the transnational element of the Risorgimento possible, creating the capacity for volunteers to mobilize themselves quickly, and enabling war volunteering across borders.
After he left Greece, Cipriani went back to Alexandria where he picked up what he had left behind. This was in August 1867. Just one month later, however, he was involved in a brawl in which one Italian, Alessandro Santini and two Egyptians, were killed. 52 Despite the assurances of his lawyer that he had acted in legitimate self-defence, Cipriani decided to leave and he had to find a new place to live out his exile. This led him, through networks of exiles from the Risorgimento, to arrive in London. Initially, he lived with the Italian Vincenzo Melandri, a supporter of Mazzini who resided in Soho and who, above all, belonged to a previous generation of Risorgimento conspirators who had been active since the 1830s. 53 Cipriani had obtained this contact through Mazzini, with whom he would collaborate during the next three years in London, later commenting that ‘the affection that he gave me was almost paternal’. In order to make ends meet, the young Garibaldian found work with the Italian photographers Leonida Caldesi and Adolfo Nathan. 54 In London, Cipriani came into contact with Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Years later, he stated that it was their ideals, along with those of the Russian Bakunin, that made him who he was: an ‘atheist, revolutionary, communist, internationalist socialist’. 55
In 1870, after the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war, and, above all, after the proclamation of the Republic in France, Cipriani left London to reach Paris at the beginning of September. Here, he reignited his friendship with his friend Gustave Flourens and enrolled as a volunteer in the National Guard. 56 On 31 October they were both arrested by the Republican authorities for participating in the assault on the Paris town hall. Once Cipriani was released, he organized a small legion (called Garibaldina), which launched an assault on the prison where Flourens was being held. 57 Embroiled once again in the confusing phases of conflict, in January 1871 Cipriani demonstrated outstanding courage at the battle of Montretout. 58 In the following weeks, Cipriani retreated into the Vosges to meet Giuseppe Garibaldi, who had rallied a contingent of Italian volunteers and had been defending the French republic since the previous autumn. Some of the volunteers who joined the Army of the Vosges had a similar background to Cipriani. Celso Ceretti, from Emilia-Romagna, had drawn closer to the internationalists after becoming a go-between of sorts between Garibaldi and Bakunin. 59 The Emilia-Romagna doctor Luigi Musini would become an internationalist after the Paris experience and then a socialist. 60 This contingent was dissolved a few weeks before the birth of the Commune, of which Cipriani was, naturally, an enthusiast supporter. He was nominated colonel of the 20th legion of the Commune. At this juncture, he grew even closer to Flourens. 61 On 3 April, the two participated in a sortie attempting to break the siege in the Nanterre zone. Isolated from their men, they were captured by the enemy. Flourens was shot on the spot, whilst Cipriani was held under arrest. After initially having been condemned to death he had his punishment exchanged for another extreme type of punishment. On 21 January 1872 it was ruled that, along with other key actors in the Commune, he would be deported to New Caledonia. 62 Amilcare Cipriani’s participation in the Paris Commune, although short, was extremely symbolic. For the rest of his life he would be remembered as the Colonel of the Commune. The events also served to create strong, lasting links with the extreme left in France. Cipriani’s involvement with the Paris Commune was also not an isolated incident. There were many other foreigners who defended what was, in effect, the first socialist revolution. The case of the Polish Jaroslaw Dombrowski is only one. 63 After the fall of the Commune approximately 1700 foreigners were arrested by government troops and many of them were immediately passed on to the army. 64 In Paris, there was a substantial Italian community who had been involved with the Commune; an Italian Legion was also formed, composed of two battalions and around 170 volunteers (many of whom were Garibaldi veterans who had fought in the Vosges). 65 In September 1877, Andrea Costa talked of the months in the Commune with a kind of nostalgia. He conveyed the feelings of many Garibaldini who had fought in Paris: ‘Socialism was for us almost a mystery, and we approximated it with a kind of awe. We were attracted to the unknown, and we felt connected to the past and we wanted to share that’. 66 In the same vein, another Italian internationalist, Osvaldo Gnocchi Viani recalled: ‘The Commune changed everything. The minds and the hearts of the passionate young people and the awakened workers became committed to it, and the light and the fire of new hope was lit’. 67
Cipriani spent the next ten years in New Caledonia. In the years he spent far from Europe, and as a result of being forced to live with the leaders of the Commune, Cipriani was able to develop his own anarchism: the internationalists, he wrote to a friend in the summer of 1877, hold ‘the banner of the freedom for all: North, East, South and West’. 68 He maintained a ‘Garibaldian’ approach towards socialist questions; evidence of this can be found in a letter he wrote to Henri Rochefort in December 1880 in which he stated that his homeland was ‘the whole world’ and that he would go anywhere where there was ‘a despot to take down, abuse to fight against, oppression to take down; always ready to fight’. 69
Going beyond Cipriani’s biography, it should be highlighted that the links, and often the overlaps, between the Garibaldi veterans and the internationalists grew stronger after the Paris Commune experience. In 1874, after a failed insurrection in Romagna, the command of the three columns that the Italian revolutionaries had wanted to move to Bologna had been passed onto three former Garibaldini: Alfonso Leonesi, Teobaldo Buggini and Antonio Cornacchia. 70 The same thing happened in Matese three years later, where among the insurgents was the Garibaldino veteran Vincenzo Farina. 71 In general, the Italian internationalist attempts at insurrection that happened in the 1870s were characterized by the fact the they were led by men who had served under Garibaldi. This should not come as a surprise: these veterans not only had a certain familiarity with armed conflict but they were also practiced guerrilla or gang fighters, which appealed to the internationalists. 72 This was how a new generation of volunteers emerged, all politically aligned on Internationalist grounds and willing to fight for what they believed in. In September 1876, the lawyer Giuseppe Barbanti Bordano decided to participate in yet another Garibaldian expedition, this time in the Balkans: ‘down there on the banks of the Morava and the Drina’ he wrote in his diary, ‘we fought a war of emancipation, and, more than anything, social emancipation’. 73 Celso Ceretti and a young Errico Malatesta also participated to this expedition. 74
On 9 November 1880, more than ten thousand people crowded outside the Paris Saint-Lazare station. The crowd was rallied to welcome Louise Michel, an important figure in the Commune and a well-known anarchist, and a group of other comrades who had recently been given amnesty. Among those who returned was Amilcare Cipriani, who was promptly expelled from France. Before going back to Italy, the ex-communard and by now staunch internationalist decided to pass through Switzerland to meet the Italian anarchist leader Carlo Cafiero in person. 75 This was a very important meeting: the two would agree on the need to return to insurgency tactics like the ones used by Garibaldi. Soon after, Cipriani published on the pages of Grido del Popolo a manifesto addressed to the ‘oppressed in Italy’, in which he called for ‘armed protest’ which would unite anarchists, Garibaldi veterans who were still members of the opposition, and Republican Mazzinians. 76 ‘Our revolution has begun’, wrote Cipriani, ‘and our coming will be an armed protest against all forms of dynastic, aristocratic and capitalist despotism’. 77 Amilcare Cipriani was already a convinced revolutionary, who, in line with Garibaldi traditions, tried to form the biggest collaboration possible between different political forces.
3. The Pro-Cipriani Campaigns: 1881–1897
In January of 1881, the Carabinieri arrested Amilcare Cipriani at Rimini rail station. 78 In the arrest warrant, issued by prosecutors in Milan, it was stated that he had conspired ‘against the internal safety of the state’. 79 The accusation did not stand up, but Cipriani was not freed because he had to answer, according to Italian law, to the murder of Alessandro Santini in Alexandria in 1867. The case went to trial in Ancona in February of 1882, and Cipriani was sentenced to 25 years’ imprisonment. Shortly after the sentence was read out, there were violent clashes outside the courthouse. The sentence was confirmed a few months later by the Corte di Cassazione in Rome. It was a political verdict: the primary witness of the prosecution soon denied ever having given a statement accusing Cipriani. 80 In July 1882, the Garibaldino was transferred to Portolongone, on the Island of Elba, where he would be able to finish his sentence.
From his arrest, public opinion supported his innocence; the events outside the court in Ancona were not an isolated event. In March of 1882, all of the prefectures in the Kingdom were invited to monitor the already traditional meetings remembering the Paris Commune which had become public initiatives in celebrating the most famous prisoner in Italy. In Rimini, in a central square, a huge red and black drape was found, and ‘on the edges it had a white paper border with the writing “W la Comune” on one side and “W Amilcare Cipriani” on the other’. 81 At the same time, in Cesena, protests erupted praising the ex-communard. 82 Two years later in Forlì, during commemorations of Garibaldi’s death, there was an even more serious episode. As some young people were lining up behind a red and black flag, they displayed a placard with ‘Evviva Amilcare Cipriani’ written on it. Chaos was unleashed, the police intervened and a there was a riot which resulted in the deaths of ten people. 83
Without going into detail about the campaigns in favour of Cipriani, it is enough to say that, in the following years, he was elected nine times into the Italian Parliament, in the Emilia-Romagna provinces of Forlì and Ravenna (with the aim of guaranteeing him parliamentary immunity). These were elections that were systematically discounted by the Italian authorities but yet had huge symbolic value. Cipriani’s prison number, 2403, became a symbol of state repression. The repeated electoral campaigns were based on presenting a double-image of Cipriani: the hero of the Risorgimento and the libertarian militant. ‘Homeland warrior in all campaigns for independence’ read an 1886 manifesto, ‘rebel in Aspromonte for redemption, wandering knight of independence and brotherhood of nations in Greece and France…, in the fight for the Paris Commune in defence of France and demanding the rights of the proletariat’. 84 The Italian legal system was often accused of isolating the internationalist movement without considering the contribution they had made as patriots. The words ‘Amilcare Cipriani was condemned because he was famous’, appeared in the pages of Lucifero in November 1883, ‘it didn’t matter how kind and generous he was. Or the fact that from a young age he had dedicated his body and soul to the homeland’. 85 Masses of veterans mobilized for Cipriani, even those who had been considered moderates; he was a ‘Garibaldian comrade in battle’. 86 One of those who campaigned in favour of Cipriani was Antonio Fratti, who had volunteered with Garibaldi in Trentino (1866) and in France (1870) and was a staunch republican. Elgido Romanelli, who had been by Garibaldi’s side since 1848, remembered meeting Cipriani in France in 1870, describing him as a ‘real Italian Patriot’. 87 In August 1882, the Veteran Society for battles in Meldola, in Emilia-Romagna, declared him as honorary president. 88 Three years later in Forlì, at commemorations for the anniversary of Garibaldi’s death, there were some tense moments between protestors and security forces when the former began to shout ‘Down with the monarchy, long live social revolution!’. 89
The pro-Cipriani committee in Ravenna is an example of how his supporters came from different backgrounds. The leader of the committee was Ludovico Nabruzzi, a Mazzinian and Garibaldino, who had become an internationalist after the Paris Commune and had been a close collaborator of Bakunin. He continued to believe that Garibaldinism was a key feature among Italian opposition forces: in 1872 he visited Garibaldi in Caprera in order to convince him to act as a ‘go-between’ between the internationalists and the Mazzinianis. At the end of the 1870s, he had grown more inclined to socialism, officially breaking away from the anarchists. 90 In the council there were other collaborators: Nullo Baldini, a socialist and the founder of the cooperative movement in the area; Gaetano Naglia, an uncompromising anarchist who was always fighting against the socialists; Benelli Aristide, also an anarchist, and the count Ugo Ginanni Corradini, who was first an anarchist but drew closer to the socialists. 91 In the name of Cipriani and his Garibaldian activities, he was able to form relationships which alarmed the security authorities.
The Cipriani campaigns were also transnational and included both the community of exiles spread throughout Europe and the Mediterranean and foreign citizens. In 1882, the Rimini committee, which coordinated the pro-Cipriani campaigns, received a donation of 270 lire from London: the anonymous contribution had been sent from Charing Cross, near to the Soho district, where many Italian exiles were living. 92 In April 1886, Henri Rochefort wrote that Cipriani was a champion of freedom for all peoples and that he belonged to ‘us French, as well as you Italians’. 93 A few years before, the poet Ippolito Pederzoli had expressed his support for Cipriani. Already a Mazzinian, he had been living for a decade in Switzerland, far away from any political radicalism: ‘I do not belong to Cipriani’s party, but without hesitation I add my name to the thousands of intellectuals who want this process reviewed’. 94 The ‘Italian exiles in London’ also published a manifesto which was distributed throughout Emilia-Romagna and which encouraged people to vote for Cipriani. 95 The continuous annulment of the election of Cipriani did nothing but continue to radicalize the diverse members of his front: ‘the fight’, wrote Ludovico Nabruzzi to Cajo Renzetti in June 1886, ‘will be re-established in Romagna with the most energy possible and nothing will stop this noble cause being achieved’. 96 In April 1882, news had spread (without foundation) that Carlo Cafiero, assisted by Errico Malatesta, was organizing an armed insurrection to free, manu militari, Cipriani. 97 History repeated itself two years later, when, according to a police informant, again Malatesta was enlisting volunteers in Florence and Livorno to organize an armed military expedition to Elba Island. 98 Over the years, Cipriani became a symbol of radical Garibaldinism. On the afternoon of 23 January 1887, a large group of socialists and republicans marched through the centre of Forlì chanting Cipriani’s name. The procession passed through the local cemetery in remembrance of the Garibaldians who had fallen in France in 1870. 99
Protests and campaigns became so relentless that, in July 1888, the King decided to pardon Cipriani. 100 Amilcare could not be immediately released from the country’s prisons due to the outstanding charges relating to his desertion of 1862, when he reached Garibaldi in Aspromonte. However, the charges were rapidly dropped, mainly due to the defence of Giuseppe Marcora, a former Garibaldino, Mazzinian and radical Member of the Italian Parliament at the time. In order to convince the judges, Marcora once again leveraged the patriotic side of Cipriani’s biography, stating: ‘I think I speak not only to the judges but also to sincere patriots whose enthusiasm for the glorious work of the rebels who fought for Italy is undimmed’. 101 Before leaving Italy, Amilcare decided to briefly visit Romagna. 102 No matter where he visited, he was always welcomed by enthusiastic crowds. In Forlì, the leader of the local internationalists, Germanico Piselli, and representatives of Garibaldini veteran associations donning red shirts greeted him at the station. In Rimini, he was welcomed at the station by the town band, who played Garibaldi’s Hymn as soon as he pulled into the station. 103
After his visit, Amilcare Cipriani was finally able to return to Paris where thanks to his status as a political martyr (which still stands to this day) once again received an energetic welcome. 104 The Revue Socialiste enthusiastically welcomed the news of his release: ‘to our noble friend… we send our most sincere and warmest wishes’. 105 Upon his arrival in Paris, Amilcare founded an organization to which he devoted a large amount of his energy during the early 1890s: the Unione dei Popoli Latini (Latin People’s Union). Its manifesto referred to the necessity of uniting people ‘of Latin descent’ to oppose the ‘King’s conspiracy’. It is interesting to note that during his appeal, Cipriani spoke about the ‘bloodshed’ of several generations of Garibaldini volunteers ‘in Magenta, Palestro and Solferino, in Dijon, Nuit and Talau’ which would create ‘a bond that will never be broken’ between the comrades-in-arms. Cipriani saw a vision of a revolutionary movement in his former co-religionists, a movement that could unite the Mediterranean population. The aim of this revolutionary association was clear: ‘danger is imminent, our weapons are ready, the fuse is lit’. 106 Amilcare tried to immerse himself in the experience of his old friend Domenico Francolini: ‘This core group quickly joined the unification of nations; it is a group created with the sole purpose of putting up a barrier against the policies of Crispi and Bismark’. 107 Francolini declined the invitation because he thought the association’s agenda seemed too confusing. He particularly did not understand why it only included Latin people. Cipriani responded with a frank and direct rhetoric, very similar to one often used by Giuseppe Garibaldi. The former Communard stated that he had not made a more general appeal because he believed that, at that particular moment in history, coordination amongst the Latin population was essential to fight in favour of extending the republican model through a revolutionary war. 108 Cipriani’s response shows the radical evolution of Garibaldinism. The Unione dei Popoli Latini grew to approximately 15,000 members in just a short few months. 109
4. Passing on the Baton: 1897 and Beyond
1897 was an important year in Amilcare Cipriani’s life. To fully understand the effectiveness of Cipriani as an ‘agent’ of radical Garibaldinism, we must focus on a transitional period, which is represented by the Garibaldi military expedition to the Greek-Turkish war in 1897. It was during these weeks in Greece that Cipriani was finally able to bring together the two sides of Garibaldinism: a red-shirted war volunteer and a radical internationalist. Those Italian volunteers who claimed to be inspired by the Garibaldi tradition met some political divisions for the first time in Greece: the main group led by Ricciotti Garibaldi, the son of Giuseppe, was composed mostly of Republicans, and included many veterans. They opposed joining two other divisions: one commanded by the socialist Colonel Enrico Bertet and the other by Cipriani. These last two were composed primarily of socialist and libertarian volunteers. 110 The political faith of many of the volunteers caused Ricciotti Garibaldi to look upon them with suspicious eyes, as he had expected a body of Garibaldi’s volunteers to be more ‘classic’ and linked to the Risorgimento tradition. A correspondent for the daily Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera wrote, ‘there are young men who have come here, it seems, not only to help Greece and honour Italy, but mainly to réclame the Socialist Party. They do not wish to depend on Ricciotti Garibaldi [and] would like to imitate Cipriani with a red and black flag’. 111 The socialists participated with enthusiasm in this expedition: the Sicilian socialist Nicola Barbato was among the first to arrive in Crete. ‘Our preaching will not be silenced, not even on quiet days’, he wrote in a letter published in the socialist newspaper Avanti, ‘any of our lives could be lost on the battlefield, and believe me, it would be worth it’. 112 The young Anselmo Marabini, who had been commissioned by the Socialist Party to coordinate recruiting in the upper Romagna region, managed to gather around a hundred volunteers. The majority of the volunteers were socialists who did not manage to depart for Greece because the Italian police caught them. However, Marabini managed to reach Greece alone, posing as a trader. 113
Cipriani made his preparations in Paris. He had the financial support of Guscio, the director of the Anglo-Egyptian Bank. The former Communard arrived in Pireo on 12 March. 114 Cipriani managed to gather a group of a hundred Italian and French volunteers who fought in Macedonia for a few weeks. 115 A member of this group was Giuseppe Ciancabilla, a young Roman, born in 1872, who in addition to being a volunteer also served as a correspondent for the socialist newspaper, Avanti. After his experience in Greece, Ciancabilla moved from socialism to the libertarian movement, becoming one of the main leaders of the Italian anarchist movement in the United States, until his untimely death in 1904. 116 ‘We will follow Cipriani’, wrote Ciancabilla in one of his letters, ‘[we are] almost all socialists, anarchists and republicans’. 117 A similar path was that of Giulio Rossi, an anarchist from Verona who, after volunteering in Greece with Cipriani, transferred to London and became a significant figure of anarchism across the water. 118 A brief exchange of words between the Corriere della Sera reporter and Colonel Bertet confirms the importance of the 1897 expedition in the overall series of events of the Garibaldi tradition. When the reporter asked the elder Colonel why, regardless of not wanting any association with Ricciotti Garibaldi, the volunteers wore red shirts, Bertet was annoyed and stated that it was not a ‘monopoly of the Garibaldi family’. 119 Oreste Grossi also believed that the red shirt ‘is not a legacy, nor the monopoly of one, the red shirt is a concept and those who fight for that concept have the right to wear it’. 120 Amilcare Cipriani, in a somewhat tense context, is the trait-d’union between the different entities of Garibaldinism, perhaps by virtue of his long and sincere friendship with Ricciotti Garibaldi. 121 In fact, Amilcare fought alongside Riciotti’s Garibaldini (as did many veterans from his military column) in the famous battle of Domokos on 17 May, in which he was severely injured. On that day, the former Communard found himself casually commanding a military column that had just arrived on the same front line that tallied 19 fatalities and numerous injuries. 122
The year 1897, as Eva Cecchinato has rightly pointed out, represented a turning point: the Italian labour and socialist parties, in a broad sense, had their first experience of war volunteering, anticipating the mobilization of the Garibaldi family. 123 The largest contingent of volunteers for Greece, as reported by the Bologna-based newspaper Il Resto del Carlino, had actually consisted ‘of those who advocate broader and liberal ideas, members of the most advanced parties’, along with republicans, socialists and anarchists. 124 Years later an elderly Anselmo Marabini would look back at what happened in Greece as the golden hour of Italian war volunteers. ‘Some thousands of young people, led by Ricciotti Garibaldi and Colonel Berté [sic] – socialists, republicans, anarchists, went to Greece together to wear the red shirt. In Greece, and then in Spain [during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s], the columns of volunteers marched waving the red flag of human claims and the tricoloured Italian flag’. 125 This link has also been discovered in the biographies of some volunteer families. The 22-year-old anarchist Communardo Braccialarghe had fought in the battle of Domokos where he earned his rank as lieutenant. Almost forty years later, in 1936, his son Giorgio was among the first to leave for Spain, where he became Randolfo Pacciardi’s (the field commander of the Garibaldi Battalion) aide-de-camp. 126 Ernesto Diotallevi, a Roman born in 1876, fought alongside Cipriani; his cousin Angelo, born in 1890, later fought in Spain for the Italian Section of the Ascaso Military Column. 127
It was the Greek experience that definitely made Amilcare Cipriani a symbol of alternative Garibaldinism and brought him close to the most radical political forces. As stated in a document by the Forlì Socialist League in 1898, ‘This man has beaten all of his homelands’ battlefields, he has raised the Garibaldian flag on the saddest hills in Greece leading a group of volunteers’. 128 With the Greek experience over and recovering from his wounds, Cipriani returned to Paris. At the turn of the twentieth century, an ageing Cipriani began to travel less and was less politically active, although he continued to follow Italian events enthusiastically. During these years, he wrote in the Italian press on several occasions to preach the necessity of unifying the republican, socialist and libertarian movements. In February 1909 he wrote: ‘The unity of all of our forces is a duty that… imposes itself… Oppressed, starved, persecuted, affected and destroyed by the enemy. We must unite to fight against it’. 129 This hope, which became a personal obsession during the last years of his life, sheds light on a central element of Cipriani’s life: the constant search for political and strategic synthesis of, what he believed to be, entities of the same movement (republicans, socialists and anarchists during the early twentieth century; Mazzinians, Garibaldini and internationalists in the second half of the sixties of the previous century). 130 On the morning of 2 May 1918, the Directorate General of Public Security received a brief telegram from Paris: Amilcare Cipriani was found dead, ‘completely abandoned’ during the night of 30 April. 131 Over the following days, many European newspapers published the news of his death. For instance La Correspondencia de España wrote: ‘He died at the age of seventy, a companion of the Garibaldi battles’. 132 Towards the end of the month, the New York Times reported the death of the ‘famous Italian revolutionist’. 133
In 1942, a short book entitled Freedom for Italy was published in New York. The book was written by Gaspare Nicotri, a Sicilian exile who served under Cipriani in Greece in 1897. Forty-five years later, he left his red-shirted experience to write a pamphlet against the Italian regime and sell the legacy of red-shirt voluntarism in the anti-fascist field. Nicotri linked the 1897 volunteers to those who fought in Spain from 1936: ‘memory of these pages of the Garibaldian epic, in Greece and Spain, is at once a comfort and an auspice of the liberation to come to these nations now under totalitarianism’. 134 Even Anselmo Marabini, as we have seen, had been a volunteer in Greece inspired by the figure of Cipriani. In the following years, he would become the first member of the leadership of the Italian Socialist Party, then one of the founders of the Communist Party of Italy and, finally, head of the International Red Aid in Moscow. Between 1943 and 1945, during the Italian Resistance, he addressed Romagnan partisans through numerous appeals broadcasted by Radio Moscow. A now mature Marabini often made reference to the Garibaldi tradition. On 1 May 1944 he said, ‘the Italian population must demonstrate that it is capable of fighting to redeem its own, and the nation’s, honour… that it is capable of fighting with tenacity and valour under the glorious Risorgimento flag; under the flag waved by Giuseppe Mazzini and Giuseppe Garibaldi’. And on 26 June: ‘The time has come to multiply our efforts and show that we are worthy of our region’s patriotic traditions. Remember this supreme hour for our country and our glorious ancestors… Remember that they are from Romagna… Colonel Valzania, one of the most valiant soldiers of our Risorgimento [and] Amilcare Cipriani’. 135
5. Conclusion
As noted by Elizabeth Eisenstein in her work regarding Filippo Buonarroti, it was during the nineteenth century that professional revolutionaries emerged: men and women who made revolutionary militancy a distinctive feature of their lives. 136 These were figures who followed fully transnational routes, with the ability to intertwine relationships and contacts within the entire European continent and beyond. They were real militant cosmopolitans whose actions, both human and political, went beyond a single nation, at a time when nations were newly built and internationalist ideals were spreading like wildfire. They emerged as a particular generation, they arose from a passage of national struggles to internationalist ideals and lived up to this change in perspectives. Amilcare Cipriani was one of these; in his case it was to spread an alternative version, a radical, revolutionary but at the same time inclusive and transnational Garibaldian legacy.
In conclusion, I would like to return to some reflections stimulated by Gilles Pécout regarding philhellenism and war volunteering in an attempt to amplify the ideas of Garibaldinism that have been explored throughout this article. According to the French historian, philhellenism should be understood as a political movement, or perhaps we should say pre-political, capable of making the ‘brotherhood of peoples’ a long-term political and military mobilization tool. 137 Adolfo Rossi, a correspondent in Turkey in 1897, unwittingly captured this period of Garibaldinism in the short report he wrote about Amilcare Cipriani calling him ‘an agitator, far less dangerous than the public believed, a kind of austere Don Quixote of war and contemporary revolutions, always ready to risk his life whenever he thought there was a weak cause to defend’. 138 Rossi, who deeply distrusted the volunteers who called themselves socialists or anarchists, gave a place to Cipriani as representing a Garibaldi movement other than the ‘original’ family that was accepted by the Italian authorities. Gilles Pécout also noted the importance of the transmission of memories from the philhellenic movement, particularly those of war, passed down from generation to generation. In the case of Garibaldinism, something similar happened, and figures like Amilcare Cipriani arose who allowed its survival within affinity circles, which went further than those of family or friendship, and impacted on the socio-political environment. Cipriani, who was in Greece in 1866 and then in 1897, was a clear example of this. ‘It was Cipriani’, wrote Pécout, ‘whether dressed in black or in red, whose adventures personified the revolutionary and nationalist mission of the international Garibaldino movement’. 139 Conspirator, war volunteer, revolutionary zealot, defender of the Parisian Commune; Cipriani was the living synthesis of anarchist and socialist ideals towards the end of the century.
One might say that Garibaldinism represented an extremely important cultural background for the leftist political forces that is often ignored by historiography. Pécout suggested that the Greek military expedition of 1897 marked the end of the Garibaldi tradition, and the beginning of a new internationalist phase, which saw the rise of international war volunteers. 140 In reality, it was more than just a simple change in direction, it was an evolution. The Garibaldino movement was not yet depleted and numerous war volunteers continued referring to France in 1914, and Spain in 1936 and, to some extent, the resistance movements that developed in Europe during the Second World War. When referring to Celso Ceretti, Renato Zangheri rightly noted that the closeness to international ideals did not signify a decline in the enthusiasm which the Risorgimento movement brought about. In actual fact, it was the ‘elements and motives of the national movement’ which pervaded ‘the new socialist sentiments and ideals’. 141 Therefore, another Garibaldinism, which had so far managed to escape Italian and European historiography, existed in European history and has been conveyed thanks to subsequent generations who passed on the baton and, inevitably, the red shirt. 142
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the MSCA-IF-2015-EF – Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF-EF) [project ID: 704152, Project title: Garibaldinism and Radicalism: Traditions of Transnational War Volunteering in Southern Europe, 1861–1936]. This article was translated into English by Anwen Roys and Laura Tatlock.