Giuseppe Garibaldi

It is personal ambitions which blind the Pope-king, and urge him to oppose this national movement, so great, so noble, so pure—yes, so pure—that it is unique in the history of the world.

It is the Pope-king who retards the moment of the complete liberation of Italy.

I love and venerate the religion of Christ, because Christ came into the world to deliver humanity from slavery, for which God has not created it.

But the Pope, who wishes all men to be slaves—who demands, of the powerful of the earth, fetters and chains for Italians—the Pope-king does not know Christ: he lies to his religion.

Well, the Genius of Evil for Italy is the Pope-king.

Let no one misunderstand my words—let no one confound Popery with Christianity—the Religion of Liberty with the avaricious and sanguinary Politics of Slavery.

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!

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.

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…

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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

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 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 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.

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 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…