Giuseppe Garibaldi

The shame falls not on Ireland, but on those who insnared unwilling recruits to prop a bad cause.

PEOPLE OF SOUTHERN EUROPE: My troops are advancing among you to establish order.

To a life wholly consecrated to the cause of liberty—to the thought of our nationality—nothing else have I added, nothing else do I wish to add, but the right to speak the truth—to speak it equally to the powerful and the people.

The canker, the ruin of our Italy, has always been personal ambitions—and they are so still.

To-morrow, Victor Emanuel, the king of Italy, the elect of the nation, will cross the line which has divided us from the rest of our country for so many centuries; and, listening to the unanimous voice of this brave population, will appear…

Let us receive, in a becoming manner, him who is sent by Providence, and scatter in his path, as a pledge of our rescue and of our affection, the flower of concord, so grateful to him, so necessary to Italy.

Italy one, as the people of this metropolis have expressed it, and the gallant king, be the perennial symbols of our regeneration and of the greatness and prosperity of the country.

That the Two Sicilies, which owe their rescue to Italian blood, and who have freely chosen me as Dictator, form an integral part of Italy, one and indivisible, with her constitutional king, Victor Emanuel, and his descendants.

You who are here—you, the educated and cultivated portion of the citizenship—you have the duty to educate the people.

This stupendous page of our history must be followed by one more glorious still; and the slave will finally show to the free brother a sharpened iron which belonged to the links of his chains.

To arms all!—all!—and the oppressors, the supremely powerful, shall be turned into dust.

I regarded Rome as the centre of Italy, for the union of which I ardently longed.

If it were so, then I should never have seen Italy again; never fought for her—which was the great wish of my life: but then, too, I never should have seen her sink into ignominy.

The stranger shall not then trample upon your soil; he shall not contaminate your air.

I had never thought of matrimony, but had considered myself incapable of it from being of too independent a disposition, and too much inclined to adventure.

He, beyond all question, was the principal champion of the gigantic struggle sustained by his country against foreign invasion; a struggle which will serve as an example to future generations, and to all nations who are not willing to…

Thus it was, that by insignificant, or at least small but successful enterprizes, a cause was fostered and raised up, which had been considered by many as desperate.

Such is the Italian soldier; such are the sons of the despised nation, when struck with the generous idea of what is noble.

If the enemy, instead of charging in line of battle, forming an extended line, had charged in column, or in alternate platoons, they must have destroyed our force.

The earth is the Lord's; the earth, on which, and for which, Jesus, first, and after him all the holy martyrs of mankind, shed their tears and their blood.

A general amnesty will cause to disappear the traces of civil discord.

Nor is this to be wondered at, when ignorance was rewarded and learning discouraged by those twins of darkness, the sovereign and the clergy, and the only hopes of the Bourbons and the Vatican depend upon brutalizing the national mind.

But not only have the hopes of good Italian patriots been gratified: the prophecies of God himself have been fulfilled, by the recent astonishing course of events in Italy.

It would be very unjust, however, to consider this to be in any degree a stain on the gallant Irish nation, whose impetuous courage and many excellent military qualities, every one must recognize and admire.

Educate them to be Christian—educate them to be Italian.