Gone are the adventures of Giuseppe Maria Garibaldi in it Silver riverthe combats in Uruguay and in Santa Catalina where he met Anita, the woman of his life. They were already memories of her days with the Italian Legion in Montevideo where he taught a future Argentine president the secrets of Dante’s language (which Miter would use to translate the Divine Comedy), his days in Peru as captain of a guano ship, his stay in New York where he worked as a laborer and his time in Nicaragua greeted by Ruben Dario.
No one will be able to forget his struggles in the Italy he was trying to reunify, nor the death of his beloved Anita (1821-1849) who had accompanied him in glory and despair. Now no one will be able to stop remembering the Expedition of the Thousand and its red shirts, dyed that color to hide the blood they shed for the nascent homeland. His sword was at the service of “any oppressed people” and given his status as a hero of two worlds, nations disputed his libertarian leadership: lincoln (1809-1865) summoned him as a general of the federal army during the civil war, Lord Palmerston (1784-1865) received him as a hero in England, was a deputy in the French Assembly (after all he was born in Nice in 1807), Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870) unconditionally supported his feat and Greece, Albania and Hungary requested his services to achieve their independence… but his heart was in Italy, the homeland he had tried to unify. After the capture of Rome he was elected deputy of the new parliament, but soon resigned due to discrepancies with the institutional order, Garibaldi could never give up his republican beliefs.
Tired of so much pilgrimage, he retired to Sardinia where he spent the last 25 years of his life. He passed away on June 2, 1882 at the age of 74. It was in the small town of Caprera that Garibaldi exclaimed: “I am free at last!”
This man who had faced the thousand faces of death, well knew what he wanted for when the Fates cut the thread of his life: the cremation. I wanted to be ashes to return to nature. Then the Church had prohibited this practice, but it didn’t matter to the man who had dissolved the Papal States to make Italy one. Garibaldi defined himself as a believer but not a practicing man. As a Freemason he disdained the earthly power of the Church.
The surviving images of his death see him surrounded by sorrowful people, reduced to a bed that covered him with sheets as white as his beard. He died of a pharyngeal paralysis that prevented him from breathing. His last words were for his homeland: “I die with pain of not seeing Trento and Trieste redeemed”. Even Italy was not one…
How he knew there would be resistance to fulfilling his last will, he left it in writing. That they cremate him near his house, facing the sea. She even left recorded what wood they should use to light the death pyre, equal to that of the Greek heroes whom he had surpassed in courage and intrepidity. He also asked that the citizens of the Italy he had liberated use his ashes so that new trees and flowers would grow in the gardens of his homeland. It was his way of consubstantiating with the land for which he had fought.
However, his will was not carried out and his body was embalmed in the garden of his house, which had become a family cemetery and a place of pilgrimage for a people who idolized him.
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After his death, the rumor spread that one of the followers who would have gladly given his life for this charismatic and brave chief had decided to fulfill his posthumous wish. One night, secretly, he dug up his boss and burned his remains and thus fulfilled his last will, at least that’s what was said for years, and his granddaughter believed so, Anita Garibaldi.
Convinced of the story, Anita worked so that all Italians would know if that tomb housed the remains of the father of the country, or if it was just a cenotaph to remember the hero. In 2012 the tomb was opened and there were the remains of Garibaldi, unrecognizable because it had been poorly embalmed.
Now everyone knows that in this small cemetery lies the hero under a large rock accompanied by his last wife. Francesca Armosino (1880-1882) and many of his descendants, although his last wish has not been fulfilled and, apparently, will never be fulfilled.
Source: Ambito
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