Giuseppe Garibaldi

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

The same ignominious disasters might, and no doubt would, have fallen to the lot of any body of men, no matter of what nation, similarly recruited, and deceived, and neglected, and sent into the field without the training and education…

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.

Till some government be established in the centre of Italy, which can be maintained without ten thousand French troops to garrison the capital, and five and twenty thousand foreign mercenaries to sack insurgent towns, it is in vain to hope…

The spectacle of a people kept down by such means is an outrage on the civilization of the age, and a danger and menace for all the rest of Italy.

The best proof of that oppression is the fact that the Pope dares not trust his own subjects with arms, but places himself, like Dionysius of Syracuse, in the hands of foreign mercenaries.

The presence of those troops was also an insult to Italy, as their express object was to oppose the movement in the free territories.

The war, in fact, was begun by the rulers and their hired butchers against the people, before the Sardinian troops crossed the frontier.

You will teach, by your example, forgiveness of injuries, and Christian tolerance to him who in his folly has compared to Islamism our love for our country, Italy.

You go not to avenge the injuries done to me and to Italy, but to prevent the bursting forth of popular hatred and vengeance against misrule.

You have not to combat powerful armies, but to free unhappy Italian provinces from foreign bands of mercenaries.

SOLDIERS: You enter the Marches and Umbria to restore civil order in their desolated cities, and to afford the people the opportunity of expressing their wishes.

So striking is the resemblance between those changes and the scenes recorded in the Bible, that the mind is filled with solemn awe and grateful adoration while contemplating them in comparison.

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.

This the world has seen proved within the past few months, in ways and modes, in a degree and to an extent, which only those who were acquainted with popery, with human nature and with Italy would have expected.

If events take such a course as we may anticipate, the Pope's temporal power will soon be entirely gone, and his respectability in the eyes of the world will be only such and so much as can be bought with two millions of dollars a year…

Priests of Italy! we can conquer without you, but do not wish to.

The courageous Genoese carabiniers, who formed the left of the division Medici, did not wait for any command to charge the enemy again.

Few, but splendid with the crown of valor, the Hungarians, French and English, who attended the southern army, worthily sustained the martial fame of their countrymen.

At Castel Morone, Bronzetti, a worthy rival of his brother, at the head of a handful of Cacciatori, repeated one of those deeds which history will surely place by the side of the combats of Leonidas and the Fabii.

On the 1st of October, a fatal and fratricidal day, when Italians fought, on the Volturno, against Italians, with all the energy which man displays against man; the bayonets of my companions in arms found also on that occasion the victory…

Had he been as mindful of the rights of his subjects as of the convenience of his brute favorites, there would have been no need of the fortifications of Gaeta, the protests of Europe or the invasion of Garibaldi.

Ah! what a pity that Caserta should so long have been the only spot in the dominions of Bomba where peace and happiness could be seen!

You have been misled; taught to look on us as enemies.

Bonds of affection, community of fatigue, of danger, of glory, bind me to you with indissoluble ties; moved from the very depths of my soul, with my conscience as Italian, I know that you will not doubt my words.