prospect of death, were the same for Anita and Garibaldi, this day, as when, nine years before, they had ridden thus side by side in the Brazilian mountains, near the time of Menotti's birth. Nothing was changed, except that love, which then was young, was now rich in memory.

After this first climb they traversed several miles of flat road along a high barren ridge, and night had fallen before they reached another spiral ascent. When they had mounted it they were on the top of the water-shed of Italy. Here, on the Bocca Trabaria, they slept at midnight, though many watched from thirst and sorrow. The carpet of primroses, crocuses, and blue squills, which beautify this remote place in spring time, had vanished with the summer heats; there was no sign of vegetation or of any living thing, but a hungry wind was moaning among the rocks. All were glad when the dawn sprang up over the grey mountain-tops below them, and lighted their way down towards the Adriatic. At first their road ran by a wooded gorge of one of the head-springs of the Metaurus, till after many miles the river opened into a broad valley, in the middle of which lay Sant' Angelo in Vado. Entering its streets on the evening of July 28, they found, to their dismay, blocking their further descent a short distance below the town, another Austrian army under Archduke Ernest, whom D'Aspre had ordered up from Ancona, through Urbino, to cut off Garibaldi if by chance he should succeed in crossing the water-shed. The Italians, who had been greatly elated at the skill with which their leader had extricated them from the Tiber valley, saw themselves once more entrapped.1

Retreat was impossible, for the enemy were following them from behind, while on both sides the mountains shut them in, and in front lay the new foe. But once more Garibaldi found a way overlooked by the slow Austrian generals, where, three minutes walk below Sant' Angelo in Vado, a rough road diverges to the left, leading over the hills into the Foglia valley. Since the enemy, who would Rug. 47-51; De Rossi, 247; Kriegsbegebenheiten, 21.

MURDER OF ITALIAN PRISONERS

269

have had time to occupy the foot of this important pass, if they had known of its existence, had drawn themselves up a mile or so lower down the Metaurus, Garibaldi on the morning of the 29th made a false attack on their position, as if he intended to force their line, and under cover of this feint took the strategic turn to the left, and carried his column over the hills to Pian di Meleto.'

Again the Italians had escaped, but not quite unscathed. A rearguard of cavalry, left in Sant' Angelo in Vado after the main column had started, were surprised by Hungarian hussars, following from the Tiber valley, who galloped in under the unguarded western gateway, sabred the Republicans in the street, and dragged them out of the houses. It was a general massacre, no quarter being given. Indeed, the murder of prisoners, if they belonged to Garibaldi's band, was the rule approved at the head-quarters in Florence by D'Aspre himself. A man-hunt was instituted in Sant' Angelo and the surrounding hills, in which the peasants were forced to assist by threats of burning their houses and crops. In the town itself some of the soldiers were hidden, and afterwards smuggled away in disguise by patriotic citizens, who risked their own lives by these acts of mercy. In all Sant' Angelo there was only one man, a shoemaker, who turned false; the poor fellow whom he denounced was taken and shot; but the traitor, unable to endure the hatred of his fellow-townsmen, went mad, and shortly died."

Meanwhile Garibaldi was struggling over into the Foglia valley; the road winds along a high ridge, whence the northern landscape in the direction of Monte Carpegna and San Marino becomes clearly visible. It is one of the strangest regions of Italy: the higher mountains, naked

Illustration opposite is a view of S. Angelo in Vado, taken from this road by which Garibaldi escaped. Rug. 51-53; Hoff. 415-421; De Rossi, 254–256. Rug. 53, 54; Bel. 134 139; De Rossi, 255, 256; Hoff. 421, 422. Torre, ii. 400, 401. Letter of D'Aspre, July 31, to Oudinot, recounts that an officer and several men of Garibaldi's band were taken and immediately shot,' in 'the mountains of Borgo S. Sepolcro.'

peaks and tables, rear themselves on the sky-line in fantastic fortress shapes, hard to distinguish, except by their size, from the works of man-the old robber castles perched on their summits. The aspect of the lesser hills, skeleton ridges, washed bare of soil and corrugated by the rain-torrents, baked by the sun into a hard white grey, with patches of brown or of sparse verdure, is well known in the backgrounds of Piero della Francesca and other painters of the Umbrian school. The broad valley bottoms are white as snow-drifts, being filled from side to side with the polished stones of the dried-up river courses. The olive is no longer seen; thin vineyards and corn are the only cultivation. Such was the country through which the Tyrolese sharpshooters followed on the heels of the Garibaldians from Sant' Angelo in Vado to San Marino, killing all whom they caught, and sometimes treating even the wounded with revolting brutality. They were kept off from the main column by a handful of Manara's old Bersaglieri, commanded by Hugh Forbes in his top-hat, with a courage which won the admiration of his brother officers.1

After passing Pian di Meleto, with its beautifully machicolated castle, the army descended the Foglia for some miles; the fatigues of the way were great, for the road was not, as it is now, supplied with bridges over the numerous torrent-beds that cross it. Towards evening on the 29th, Garibaldi turned to the left out of the Foglia valley, marched up the gorge of the Apsa, and reached Macerata Feltria, which rises on the edge of the dried-up torrent.”

The troops could scarcely drag themselves along for weariness, but the enemy were too close to allow of any halt at Macerata, except to eat the food provided by the friendly inhabitants. Affairs were indeed getting desperate. Bueno, the commander of the cavalry, Garibaldi's South American comrade of the longest standing—a countryman

Rug. 55; Hoff. 423; Bel. 151, 152, 156.

2 See illustration, p. 272, below, in which the bed of the Apsa consists of white stones, not water. The photograph was taken in April, so, a fortiori, the torrent must have been dry in July.