Harbour of Marsala

The Thousand were 1,089

On the night of 5 May 1860 Giuseppe Garibaldi sailed from Quarto, near Genoa, with 1,089 volunteers on two steamers seized from the Rubattino shipping company and renamed the Piemonte and the Lombardo. Most were students and skilled craftsmen of middle-class families.

They came overwhelmingly from the north: 434 from Lombardy, 194 from Venetia, 156 from Genoa, 78 from Tuscany, with only 45 Sicilians and 46 Neapolitans among them, and 33 foreigners. Some wore red woollen shirts, but estimates of how many shirts there were run from 300 to 1,000; many men landed in civilian jackets and hats.

Landing under British eyes

Around half past one on the afternoon of 11 May, the Piemonte tied up in the harbour of Marsala, on the western tip of Sicily, among British merchant ships. The Lombardo ran aground on a shoal farther out, and rowing boats ferried its men ashore.

The British presence mattered. Marsala was the home of English wine houses such as Woodhouse and Ingham, whose warehouses lined the waterfront, and two Royal Navy ships, the Argus and the Intrepid, lay offshore; their presence deterred the Bourbon navy from interfering.

The Bourbon warships Stromboli, Capri and Partenope arrived too late to stop the landing. The volunteers marched into town through the Baroque Porta di Mare of 1685, crowned by a Habsburg eagle and now called Porta Garibaldi.

From Marsala to Naples in four months

The landing was almost unopposed, and the campaign moved fast. On 15 May the volunteers beat some 3,000 royal troops at Calatafimi; they reached Palermo on 27 May, fought through its streets, and saw the Bourbon garrison capitulate on 6 June.

On 19 August Garibaldi crossed to Calabria, and on 7 September 1860 he entered Naples. On 17 March 1861 the Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed.

Why every town has a Via dei Mille

The landing of the Thousand is the best-known episode of the Risorgimento. Almost every Italian town has a Via dei Mille or a Via Garibaldi because of this afternoon in Marsala.

Not everyone remembers it as liberation. In parts of southern Italy the end of the Bourbon kingdom is viewed critically, and neo-Bourbon accounts tell the story as a conquest.

The harbour itself has been rebuilt, and the exact quay where the Piemonte tied up is known only approximately. The sea gate the volunteers marched through still stands, renamed for the man who led them in.

Sources

• Wikipedia (it): Sbarco a Marsala
• Wikipedia (en): Expedition of the Thousand
• Wikipedia (it): Porta Garibaldi (Marsala)
• balarm.it
• desparsicilia.it