length, the greater part of the vast building fell with a roar, amid a cloud of darkness, like a bursting volcano. A score of its defenders were buried under the ruins, but the rest, sheltered by portions of the ground-floor still left erect, came out covered with the subsiding dust, and were quickly reposted among the fallen masonry to resist attack. 'I wish,' said Medici to Hoffstetter, that I had a daguerreotype of these ruins.' At night the French, with fixed bayonets, fell upon them from every side. For three midnight hours the battle raged over the rubbish heap of what had once been a magnificent villa. At dawn Medici was still in possession.' Rome might be taken, but not the Vascello. When the war was over the fallen ruins were cleared away, but by good fortune the walls of the ground floor were left standing, and now that Rome is free will continue to stand as long as Italians have pride in their history. On the shot-dinted wall that borders the public road some old dusty laurel wreaths are hung, and on the tablet which they adorn the stranger may read, in words that here are no idle boast, that he who is fighting for fatherland and freedom does not count the enemy.' Meanwhile, within the walls, the defenders of the Janiculum endured, day after day, the last terrible cannonade, and the other parts of the city did not altogether escape. Not only were the inhabitants of the Trastevere driven in crowds from their ruined houses, but the bombardment did injury on the Capitol, and elsewhere in the very heart of Rome. The French field artillery on the east bank shelled the city, by way of creating a diversion from the main attack; whenever a serious assault was intended on the Janiculan wall, diversions were made from San Paolo on the south and from Monte Parioli on the north; Rome was bombarded from both these quarters, and shells were dropped into the Piazza di Spagna and all that neighbourhood, doing considerable damage. As early as June 25, 1 Beghelli, ii. 387–392 (Medici); Dandolo, 262; Hoff. 255-257, 273; Vecchi, ii. 289; Pasini, 108, 109; Ottolini, 77, 78. Oudinot had received a protest against the destruction of private property and works of art, and the death of peaceable citizens, signed by the consuls of the United States, Prussia, Denmark, Switzerland, and Sardinia, at the instigation of Freeborn, the British Consular agent, whose name appeared at their head, and who was indeed too warm in his friendship for Italy to make allowance for the military needs of her enemies.1 2 While the city below was suffering more or less severely, the defences on the Janiculum were crumbling fast beneath a storm of missiles. It was clear that, in spite of the heroism of the defenders, the French would, in a few days at most, be able to storm the line of the Aurelian wall. In face of this situation the quarrel between Garibaldi and Mazzini broke out afresh. The soldier again urged that the Government and army should migrate from the capital, and continue the national war to the last in the mountains of Central Italy or of the Neapolitan kingdom. He had seen the Republic of Rio Grande, in time of danger, migrate in this patriarchal fashion, and he did not understand why the Roman Republic should not do the same. No doubt, if he had been allowed to have his way on June 27, instead of five days later after the final storming of the Janiculum, he might have carried into the wilderness a still formidable army, including perhaps Manara and his Lombards, instead of the three or four thousand broken-hearted men who left Rome with him on July 2 to share his historic 'retreat.' Mazzini, on the other hand, had perhaps a higher rationality on his side when he determined that the irrational defence of the walls of Rome should be continued to the very last. Garibaldi, finding his advice again rejected, on the evening of June 27 threw up his command, and, in an explosion of anger akin to the primitive, childish wrath of Achilles, carried off his myrmidons of the Legion from the Janiculum to the lower town. The officers of the remaining regiments were horror-struck at finding themselves deserted, and 1 See App. J below, Damage done by Bombardment. • Hoff. 269, 307, 308. 3 2 Mem. 239. their anxiety was increased by the evident incompetence of Roselli, who, when he came in person to take over Garibaldi's command on the west bank, would not even visit the lines, but remained poring over maps in the Spada.' Manara hastened down to find Garibaldi, expostulated with him on his misconduct and exposed to him the fatal consequences that must ensue. Garibaldi listened to his new friend, repented and returned to his post, amid the cheers of the populace, and to the intense joy of the defenders of the Janiculum.' But for Manara's timely interference --the last but not the least service which he rendered to Italy -the siege of Rome would have ended in discord and disgrace, and Garibaldi would have carried through life the stigma of an ungenerous action, to which anger alone had prompted him, but which many of his countrymen would readily have regarded as betrayal. When, at daybreak of June 28, the Garibaldian Legionaries returned to the Janiculum with their chief to share the last slaughter, the welcome they received was all the more enthusiastic because their rank and file on this occasion appeared for the first time in the famous red shirt, which had hitherto distinguished the General's staff. Indeed, many people, ignorant of the crisis that had been averted, supposed that the Legion had gone down to the town only to change the old for the new uniform.3 Those who donned the red shirt in the last days of the siege of Rome, and faithfully wore it during the next month, deliberately chose a dress which, from one end of the Peninsula to the other, exposed the wearer to be hunted like a wolf and shot at sight. In less than twenty years, times had so far changed, and so famous had that garb of heroes become, that poltroons sometimes chose it as the cloak of self-seeking and noisy patriotism that could not stand the stress of battle. But if, in the old age of its founder, the brotherhood of the red shirt partook of the decline of his 'Hoff. 270, 271. 2 Loev. i. 257-259; Hoff. 266-271; Dandolo, 263. 3 Hoff. 270; Loev. ii. 126. See p. 152, above, for the order given by Garibaldi in May for the manufacture of the shirts, only now completed. |