Admirers of Giuseppe Garibaldi sprang to his defence yesterday after the mayor of a town in Sicily tore down the sign bearing his name in the main square and branded him “a ferocious murderer in the service of Freemasonry and the British”.

Garibaldi landed at Marsala, Sicily, with his famous red-shirted militia, “The Thousand”, in May 1860, to start the armed struggle to unify Italy known as the Risorgimento .

Every town in Italy has a piazza or main street that is named in honour of its greatest national hero, and often there is also a prominent Garibaldi statue.

This reverence, however, is not shared by Enzo Sindoni, Mayor of Capo d’Orlando, near Messina. He said that it was time that “the myth” of Garibaldi was dismantled, because the regions of Italy – including Sicily – had been forged together by “violence, blood and misery”.

Times Archive, 1890: Garibaldi's memoirs

I have seen our lads throw down their arms and fly, often before an imaginary danger

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In the mayor’s view, Garibaldi was merely the instrument of a “northerner” – Victor Emmanuel II, the King of Piedmont, Savoy and Sardinia and later the first King of united Italy. To vent his fury, the mayor took a hammer to the sign marking Piazza Garibaldi, and renamed it Piazza IV Luglio (Fourth of July Square), chosen in honour not of American Independence but a little-known naval battle of 1299.

He was backed by Raffaele Lombar-do, the president of the Sicilian region, who suggested that the move should be followed by the redesignation of squares and streets named after Count Camillo Cavour, the first Prime Minister of the united Italy, “who after all was Piedmontese”. But other Sicilians were outraged by the stunt. Francesco Renda, a historian who lives in Palermo, said that he was shocked and blamed the “long history of Sicilian separatism” for the misguided protest. “Fine, let us review history, discuss it, debate it – but not smash public place names,” he said.

Vincenzo Consolo, a writer who is of Sicilian origin but lives in Milan, said that the antiGaribaldi movement was ignorant and obscene.

“These people who want to destroy or besmirch the unity of Italy should be ashamed of themselves,” he said. “They have no idea what it has achieved or what it cost to bring about.” Italians had “paid with their lives to unite the country”, he added.

However, the antiGaribaldi revolt was hailed by the Northern League, which has long campaigned for autonomy for northern Italy and is a key component in the centre-right Government of Silvio Berlusconi. Mario Borghezio, a Northern League Euro MP, said that the decision to rename Piazza Garibaldi in Capo d’Orlando had been an act of courage.

“It sends out an important signal – that Sicily wants to liberate itself from a symbol of centralism who brought the island nothing but harm,” Mr Borghezio said. “I ask myself whether we shouldn’t follow suit and tear down such street signs in northern Italy”.

Historians agree that Garibaldi’s landing at Marsala opened the way for unification. It came after uprisings in Messina and Palermo against the Bourbon rulers of Naples and Sicily.

Joined by local rebels, Garibaldi won a remarkable victory against Bourbon forces on the island, allegedly observing to his lieutenant, Nino Bixio: “Today we unite Italy or die.” Some scholars have suggested that he benefited from British support. Britain was alarmed at a sympathetic response by the Bourbon monarchy to overtures from Russia for the use of ports in Sicily and the Mediterranean, and was keen to gain access to Sicily’s prized sulphur deposits.

The Marsala landings took place in the presence of two Royal Navy warships, the Intrepid and Argus. It is also widely accepted that Garibaldi was a Freemason, as was Giuseppe Mazzini, the theoretician of the Risorgimento.

Revolutionary life

— Born in 1807 in Nice

— While serving in the Piedmont-Sardinian navy in 1834, he participated in a failed insurrection and was sentenced to death in absentia by a Genoese court

— Formed the Italian Legion or “Red Shirts” in 1843 in Uruguay with other exiles

— Served with the Sardinian army against Austria, then went to Rome to defend the city against the French

— In 1860, leading 1,000 Red Shirts, won Sicily and Naples for the new kingdom of Italy

— Invaded the Tyrol in 1866, and in return Prussia gave Italy Venice

Sources: www.ohiou.edu ; www.thehistorychannel.co.uk

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