The Roman Revolution in the Garibaldi Panorama

Massimo Riva

Garibaldi is Coming to Town

“Viva Garibaldi! Viva l'Italia! Two hours with Garibaldi at the Lecture Hall, Derby... The Defence of Rome and the Death of Annita [sic], are alone worth a visit.”

These words appear in an advertisement published around Christmas, 1860, in a provincial British newspaper, the Derby Mercury. Similar announcements followed a few weeks later, in the Nottinghamshire Guardian. It is not an appearance of Garibaldi in person that these advertisements herald, however, but a one-of-a-kind show: a performance of the Garibaldi moving panorama, a forerunner of cinematic newsreels and action-hero blockbusters.

A canvas almost 300 feet long, painted on both sides, the Garibaldi panorama is the only known example of this medium featuring the Italian hero to have survived into our times. Produced in Nottingham in the shop of a painter and impresario named John James Story, the panorama had a limited run in England, entertaining crowds between 1860 and 1862, at the height of the hero’s popularity in the UK (the “Garibaldi moment,” as Lucy Riall has called it).¹ Purchased by an American businessman named Robert Burford, it traveled to the new world, where we lose trace of it until it resurfaces first in Ohio, in the 1930s, then in Pennsylvania, in the 1970s, to be acquired finally by Brown University in 2005 from a private collector related to the Burford family.² The Department of Italian Studies and the Center for Digital Scholarship has developed a digital humanities project on the panorama, The Garibaldi and the Risorgimento Archive.³

The defense and fall of the Roman Republic and its aftermath—the adventurous escape of Garibaldi up the peninsula with his wife Anita, and the death of Anita near Ravenna—take up fifteen of the twenty-seven tableaux which compose the first side of the panorama. Side two (shown after an intermission that allowed the operators to turn the scroll around) illustrates the military enterprise that was riveting the British public in the months and weeks leading up to the Derby and Nottingham shows: the expedition of Garibaldi and his thousand red-shirted volunteers, which led to the liberation of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies from the tyrannical yoke of the Bourbon dynasty and crowned Garibaldi as a hero of Italian unification. The last scene of the panorama (tableau 49), as exhibited around Christmas 1860 in Derby and the following weeks in Nottingham, showed the triumphal entry of Garibaldi and King Victor Emmanuel II of Savoy into Naples, on November 7th, 1860.⁴ The Kingdom of Italy, including Naples and Sicily, was inaugurated in Turin a few months later, in March 1861.

The defense of Rome, with its tragic ending, and the Sicilian expedition, with its triumphal finale, compose the two acts of Garibaldi's “panoramic” story. This portrait of Garibaldi as a romantic hero was shaped by biographical and visual sketches that began to circulate widely at the time and in the immediate aftermath of the Roman Republic, thanks in particular to a new media genre which emerged in the 1840s: the illustrated news. As Riall writes, narratives of Garibaldi’s life had become “an essential aspect of [Garibaldi’s] self-fashioning as a nationalist hero after the events of 1848–49.”⁵ First sketched in the memoirs of eyewitnesses of the Republic, such as Gustav von Hoffstetter and Emilio Dandolo, Garibaldi's portrait was further stylized and immortalized in a series of biographies published over the following years: from Giovanni Battista Cuneo's first example of the genre, in 1850, to the 1860 “autobiography” of Garibaldi crafted by the French novelist Alexandre Dumas out of notes and documents provided by Garibaldi himself. Immediately translated into English, this book is a major source for the panorama, along with an anonymous Illustrated Life and Career of Garibaldi, also published in 1860.⁶ All these widely circulating biographical narratives consolidated “a standardized literary formula, the adventure romance...so that the life imagined enhance[d] the appeal of the real.”⁷ As the centerpiece of an emerging “infotainment” system, the panorama translated the literary formula into a theatrical display for the benefit of its provincial British audience.⁸

War Tourism

If the letters and documents retrieved from the Brown archives offer a glimpse at the diplomatic backstage of the Roman Republic, the panorama gives a taste of how this historical episode played out in the popular media of its time.⁹ In what follows, I will review some of the scenes devoted to the Roman Republic and its aftermath (tableaux thirteen to twenty-seven). I will look at their sources following the narrative found in the notebook “Panorama Lecture of the ‘Heroic Life and Care(er) of Garibaldi”.¹⁰ This script was used by the lecturer (presumably, John James Story, in the guise of an unidentified and probably fictional Italian impresario, M. Bianco, mentioned in the advertisements) to narrate the panorama scene by scene, accompanied by music and special effects.¹¹ The notebook contains two versions of the narrative: a first draft stops at tableau five; a second installment, dated September 7th, 1860, runs through the forty-nine tableaux shown in Derby and Nottingham. The Roman Republic episode follows a long sequence (from tableaux five to twelve) in which the spectators of the panorama, after being told about the South American battles that gained Garibaldi the epithet of “Hero of Two Worlds,” were taken on a perilous Alpine crossing, following the general and his “hunters.” This Alpine sequence, with its spectacular views, has little, if any, realistic reference to actual events of the first war of Italian independence (1848–49), but is certainly consistent with the making of a “panoramic hero.”¹² Indeed, the Alpine sequence shows another fundamental feature of panoramic storytelling that will be the focus of this review: Garibaldi’s story is visualized as a journey with the hero and his warriors.

As I argue in Shadow Plays, the panorama is an example of “war tourism,” an important dimension of the nineteenth-century popularization of the Italian Grand Tour (the rite of passage that took the scions of the British aristocracy across the Alps to Venice, Florence, Rome, and often further South, to Naples and Sicily), which evolved from aristocratic fashion to middle-class trend and mass-tourism marketing device. At the turn of the century, the Napoleonic wars put an end to the golden age of the Grand Tour, making travel across Europe and the Alps a perilous proposition. Around the same time, the panorama emerged as a new form of urban entertainment (the panorama format was first patented by Robert Barker, in 1786).¹³ Cityscapes and landscapes were the favorite subjects of the new “perspective machine,” in both its varieties—the large-scale fixed, and the scrolling, itinerant panoramas. However, another important dimension of this medium was the representation of historical events. Large-scale panoramas, housed in rotundas expressly built along the Champs-Élysées, memorialized the Napoleonic battlefields on which the post-revolutionary French nation was forged.¹⁴ A few decades later, the panoramic medium turned to the battlefields of the Risorgimento. If large-scale, fixed panoramas offered a representation of history “as it happened,” moving or "peristrephic" panoramas offered a performative view of “history in the making.”¹⁵ The Garibaldi panorama effectively retold, or re-enacted, for its audience the epic events of 1849, presenting them as part of a virtual journey that culminated in the Sicilian expedition eleven years later. Panoramic virtual travel contributed to shaping the “touristic imagination” of the peninsula as “a forceful analog” to the making of the modern Italian nation-state.¹⁶ From the Alps to Sicily, views of a virtual Italy provided the backdrop to the historical romance featuring Garibaldi as the protagonist. Yet, as I show in Shadow Plays, virtual war tourism can be also linked to the actual mobilization of transnational volunteers who rushed across the Mediterranean to the battlefields of the wars of independence, from Spain to Italy and Greece.¹⁷ Virtual and real “war tourism” can be considered two sides of the same historical phenomenon. The passions of the freedom fighters were often fueled as much by political ideals as by the adventure romance of which they wished, or imagined, themselves to be protagonists.

Transmedia History-Telling

The first scene of the Roman Republic sequence, tableau thirteen, shows the encampment of the Garibaldian contingent at Palestrina, overlaid with a "Western" flavor: a rider of the Garibaldian army is shown lassoing cattle in the plain, an image copied from the Illustrated Life and Career of Garibaldi.¹⁸ The corresponding description in the manuscript actually refers to the events of May 9th, 1849: the excursion of Garibaldi “with a small corps of light troops of between three and four thousand men” to reconnoiter the position of the advancing Neapolitan army threatening Rome from the south while the French were besieging it from the west. In its typical style, the panorama script describes the outcome—the Neapolitans breaking their ranks “despite their great numerical superiority”—as follows: “This easy victory was principally attributed to the terror the name of Garibaldi inspired in the Neapolitans.” This sets the narrative tone, and is followed by a closer look at Garibaldi among his companions in arms. With a stylistic device typical of visual storytelling, the panorama lecturer invites the audience to imagine the scene through the words of an eyewitness: "An Italian volunteer, Dandolo, draws the picture for us – Figure to yourselves an heterogeneous assembly of all sorts of people (lads from 12 to 14 years old). Attracted to this life of independence either by a noble enthusiasm or a natural restlessness; older soldiers attracted by the renown of the celebrated captain, some stimulated by a noble ambition – others desirous of finding impunity and license in the confusion of war, but yet restrained by the inflexible severity of their chief, in whose eyes courage and boldness were the only recommendations whilst the most uncurbed passions were bridled beneath his iron will [...] From a patriarchal simplicity which is so great that it might be believed to be feigned, Garibaldi resembles rather a Chief of a troop of Indians than a General."¹⁹

The passage is adapted from The Autobiography of Garibaldi edited by Dumas, but the “exotic” picture of the Italian hero, in his colorful attire, was already circulating in England at the time of the Republic. On May 19th, 1849, the same issue of the Illustrated London News that described "the French intervention in the Papal State" published a portrait of "the Roman General Garribaldi [sic]” with his plumed hat, based on a sketch drawn on-site by a Canadian artist, the first of a series consistent with Dandolo’s depiction.²⁰ The ILN issue of June 23 includes an engraving on the front page showing “the head-quarters of Garibaldi and the Convent of San Silvestri [sic], with specimens of his men...a very characteristic group” in their flamboyant attire and headgear. On July 14th, 1849, in an issue almost entirely devoted to "the recent events in Rome" (the battle for Rome was already over) an engraving shows a swashbuckling Garibaldian “lancer” galloping to deliver a dispatch. The engraving, we are informed, is based on a sketch taken by an artist “who is now at Rome sketching a large view of the City for our Journal.”²¹ The view in question is a full-page topographic “overview of the French operations in Rome”: a panoramic sweep of the city, with a numbered legend, in the fashion of the fixed panoramas' “explanations,” with battle hotspots replacing monumental points of interest. Thanks to these various illustrations, views of the city, maps, and portraits, the readers of the ILN could visualize the "recent events in Rome" while reading about them.²² “Battles are now fought in an amphitheatre with the eager public of a hundred nations, in a figurative sense, looking on,” the London Times would eloquently write ten years later, referring to the Sicilian expedition featured on side two of the Garibaldi Panorama.²³ This figurative sense becomes almost literal with the panorama. As a pivotal component of the nineteenth-century infotainment system, the moving panorama blends virtual travel, news formats, and biographical romance together, literally setting history-telling in motion.

The following scene, tableau fourteen, provides an example of this hybrid, transmedia mode: it offers a view of St. Peter’s Square and the famous Bernini colonnade admired from a virtual platform or terrace.²⁴ The 360-degree view from a platform, the equivalent of a terrace or a balcony, was typical of large-scale panoramas, such as, for example, the circular panorama of Rome exhibited in the famous Rotunda at Leicester Square around the same time the Garibaldi panorama was circulating (1860).²⁵ The 360-degree, bird’s eye view, according to its brochure based on accurate drawings taken from the top of Capitol Hill, and the Baedeker-like description of eighty-seven points of interest, were replaced in the Garibaldi panorama by images designed to scroll in front of the spectators accompanied by the lecturer’s fast-paced observations. To use a cinematic comparison, the long shot of the fixed variety is replaced by the traveling, or tracking, shots of the scrolling kind. The lecturer acts as reporter, narrator, political commentator, and tour guide.²⁶ Moving swiftly from map to street view, he evokes for the spectators the contrast between the past glories and the contemporary decadence of the Eternal City, setting the stage for the ensuing drama:

But independent of its particular objects of grandeur and magnificence modern Rome is far from being a fine city. The streets are generally narrow and the houses crowded together, and the dirt and filth which everywhere abound is a disgrace to a civilized country, and is what few would expect to meet with in the Eternal city of Rome—so long the mistress of the world.

The bird's-eye view from a platform is the shot which prepares the ground for Garibaldi's entrance as the true protagonist of the drama, the hero destined to revive the ancient Roman spirit humiliated by the corrupt papal regime. Against this monumental backdrop, the voice-over narrative draws the spectators into the scene, inviting them to reimagine and virtually relive the events of 1849. By our post-cinematic standards, the images scroll slowly, stopping for the lecturer to deploy the accompanying narrative and provide explanations or transitions between individual tableaux (not unlike the intertitles of silent films). What is more significant, however, is the impression that spectators seated in the stalls of the Derby Lecture Hall or the Nottingham Corn Exchange had–-of witnessing the action unfold before their eyes. The sketchy quality of the depictions contributed to the impressionistic nature of the experience. This quality was also a product of the speed with which moving panoramas had to be produced—as is the case for side two of the Garibaldi panorama—in order to translate the news of the Sicilian expedition into a newsreel, or a graphic novel, only a few weeks after the fact.

Providential Man

"On the twenty sixth of April 1849 the following decree was voted amid the applause of all Rome: 'The assembly after the communication recieved [sic] by the Triumvir, place in his [Garibaldi’s] hands the honour of the republic, and charge him to repel force by force.' Resistance being decreed, the streets were barricaded the elevated points were provided with cannon and the people in breathless anxiety awaited a great event."²⁷

The commentary to tableau fourteen abruptly shifts to a chronicle of the events, presenting Garibaldi as a military leader indifferent to political squabbles, animated by pure Republican ideals turned into romantic passion—as would be expected of a follower of the Republic's ideological and spiritual leader, Giuseppe Mazzini.²⁸ The latter, however, is not mentioned in the panorama manuscript: an omission that can be better understood within the context of the year 1860, when the panorama was produced, rather than that of 1849.²⁹ Garibaldi, instead, is hailed as the “providential man,” surrounded by a "mysterious" halo of predestination: "—It was then the providential man appeared.—Suddenly a great cry resounded through the streets of Rome of — Garibaldi—Garibaldi! It is impossible to describe the enthusiasm which took possesion [sic] of the population at the sight of him. This mysterious conqueror, surrounded by such a brilliant halo of glory, who,—was a stranger to the discussions of the assembly, —and ignorant of them,—entered Rome on the eve of the very day on which the republic was about to be attacked,—was, in the minds of the Roman people, the only man capable of maintaining the decree of resistance."³⁰

Somewhat ironically, the moniker “providential man” was later used by Pope Pius XI for il Duce, Benito Mussolini, at the signing of the Concordato in 1929—the agreement that marked the end of the sixty-year rift between the Catholic Church and the Italian state, after the breach of Porta Pia in 1870. "Roma o Morte" (“Rome or Death”) had been the rallying cry of Garibaldi since the time of the Republic, and later, in his renewed (and failed) attempts to achieve his life’s mission and avenge his 1849 defeat. In fact, the most likely source for this description of the fiercely anti-clerical Garibaldi as a “man sent by Providence” is an article published in the Nottinghamshire Guardian on May 31, 1860:

Among the mountains, traversing the oceans, or fronting the enemy on the plain, he beholds everything with the same discriminating and sagacious eye, sharp as a hawk’s and far-seeing as an eagle’s. Such is Garibaldi, whom Providence seems to have destined for the regeneration of the fairest land which spreads its velvet sward beneath the canopy of the sky.

A most appropriate description for a panoramic hero.

Action Hero

Other protagonists and martyrs of the heroic but doomed defense are introduced by the lecturer, Ugo Bassi, the Bolognese Barnabite whose "powerful eloquence not only roused the Italians to the love of Italy," but "drew from the most rebellious coffers numerous and rich offerings."³¹ And while spectators of the panorama still contemplate the view from the Capitoline Hill, with little if any concern for chronology, the lecturer summons for their imagination the ominous events of June 3rd, 1849: the French rushing into Villa Pamphili and taking the Villa Corsini, "an enormous loss to Garibaldi...that only a terrible but victorious assault...could restore to Garibaldi." As though single-handedly taking on the enemy, "he sprang into the middle of the road, heedless whether his white puncho [sic] and plumed hat might make him a target," rallying his men around him and rushing forward to retake the villa, soon lost again.

The following scene, tableau fifteen, positions the spectators at street level, among the Roman people hailing the Lombard Bersaglieri and other fighters "pouring…pell-mell" into the city under attack.³² We see them parading across Piazza Barberini, with the Fountain of Triton, another tourist landmark, roughly sketched but recognizable: "at the sight of Garibaldi cries of Viva l'Italia resonated on all sides."³³ Shifting perspective again from tour to action, the lecturer proceeds with his cursory description of the events: "Suddenly, and altogether, without order, pell-mell," (a recurring term used to evoke the mayhem of the battle) "[Angelo] Masina at the head of his Lancers, [Luciano] Manara at the head of the Bersaglieri, and Garibaldi at the head of all...rushed against that untenable Villa" (the Casino de' Quattro Venti, then part of Villa Corsini). What follows is one of the most memorable episodes of the heroic defense: Masina performing "an action that seems almost incredible": forcing his horse up the stairs of the Casino at a gallop "so that for an instant he appeared on the landing...which led into the grand saloon like a fine equestrian statue." Alas, the lecturer continues, "this apotheosis lasted but for an instant; a fusillade brings him down and his horse fell upon him pierced with nine bullets."³⁴

Perhaps none better than tableau sixteen illustrates the virtual "war tourism" formula of the panorama: the superimposition of narrated action and classic views of Rome.³⁵ The tableau shows Garibaldi’s “red shirts” against the backdrop of one of the most famous—and most often reproduced—views of Rome, first painted and engraved by Gaspar Van Wittel in 1690, and later by Giuseppe Vasi and Giambattista Piranesi, in the mid-1700s. The Garibaldians stand in the foreground like miniature soldiers, replacing the fishermen and their boats in the original prints. The commentary, however, brings the spectators again into the middle of the fray, focusing in particular on the doomed effort of the heroic defenders in the face of the overwhelming firepower of the French army, under the command of General Charles Oudinot, boasting “forty thousand men, and thirty six pieces of siege cannon.” The city “must one day or other fall; the only hope it has left is to fall – gloriously.”³⁶

Underscoring the uneven confrontation between the brave, but outnumbered and outgunned, defenders and the French contingent, the lecturer illustrates the scene with a series of anecdotes, almost all having Garibaldi as the protagonist: “It being known to the french [sic] that the Villa Savarelli was Garibaldi’s headquarters, bullet, obus, and cannon balls were all meant for him.” What follows is an act of bravado reported by the hero himself in his autobiography, and recited by the storyteller with a series of visual cues which, again, conjure up the scene for the spectators: "This was particularly the case when, in order to have a better view he [Garibaldi] ascended a little belvedere which surmounted the house, it [sic] really became curious to see the tempest of balls and says Garibaldi, “I can safely say I never heard a tempest make such a hissing noise in my life. The balls made the house shake as if by an earthquake; and frequently, to afford this amusement to the french [sic] artillery men, and Rifles I had my breakfast served in the belvedere, which had no other protection than a little wooden parapet –"³⁷

To complete the defiant provocation, a flag is raised on the belvedere by a member of the general’s staff with the sarcastic salutation “Good Day! Cardinal Oudinot!”—the words are underlined with purple pencil in the manuscript, signifying an emphatic delivery of this line. A break is also inserted—“//END”—a prompt for the narrator to execute a suspenseful interruption at this point.

The following tableau, seventeen, shows batteries in the open field, with the distant profile of the city against a stormy sky.³⁸ Shifting to the events of June 9th, the lecturer tells of the heroic death of Captain Rosas, an excellent marksman shot on the ramparts after bringing down a number of French soldiers; and of the "singular not to say comical plan" adopted by Garibaldi in order to avoid friendly fire in the “pell-mell” excursion designed to break the French stronghold. He "ordered his soldiers to put their shirts on over their uniforms," a maneuver that "created much laughter, on account of the state of some of the undergarments." The trick backfires, however, making the Romans conspicuous and, therefore, an easy target for the enemy, like "an army of [raggedy] phantasms." Leading the charge, Garibaldi fights like a lion, throwing himself among the enemy, "swearing and striking right and left with his Gaucho whip." Another anecdote illustrating the same scene brings Anita to the fore, with an act of defiance worthy of her husband. She and general Orrigeni [sic, a misspelling of Felice Orrigoni] join Garibaldi, who is having breakfast on his belvedere, and the following dialogue is reported by the lecturer: "Do you know how she has amused herself while coming here? General? – asked Orrigeni - - No; - how? - In stopping all along St Pietro in Montorio to look at the french batteries!! – Look how we are both covered with dust! – that was done by the bullets striking against the walls, - come along! come along! I kept saying, it’s no use to get shot here!!! and by good fortune we have at last arrived safe and sound."³⁹

With this anecdote, also taken from Garibaldi's autobiography, the lecturer effectively positions the spectators as though they were looking at the image of the French batteries shown in the tableau directly through Anita's eyes, in the heat of the fray, clouds of dust included. One could also imagine accompanying sound effects or dramatic music.⁴⁰

Apotheosis

Tableau eighteen, which follows, is a sort of pantheon of the Republic, with Garibaldi at its center seated on his horse “as calmly as firmly as he had been born there,” as one of the eyewitnesses and first historians of the Republic, the German Swiss Gustave von Hoffstetter, noted, "while the bombardment continues without intermission."⁴¹ In the manuscript, the panorama lecturer quotes von Hoffstetter's portrayal of Garibaldi, borrowed from Dumas’ Autobiography of Garibaldi, in which the hero is described as "cast in a mould of iron combining activity with strength, his countenance...scorched by the sun, but marked by lines of antique purity, his eyes pensive yet piercing," inspiring "a feeling of respect and confidence." A detailed description of Garibaldi's original attire is also provided by Dumas: "...beneath his hat - broad brimed [sic], with a narrow loop, and ornamented with a black ostrich feather, was spread a forest of hair. A red beard covered the lower part of his face. Over his red shirt was thrown an American Puncho [sic], lined with red like his shirt...Behind him galloped his groom, a vigorous Negro who had followed him from America."⁴²

The "vigorous Negro" is Andrea Aguyar, nicknamed “Garibaldi’s Moor.”⁴³ In the tableau, he strikes an impressive pose behind Garibaldi.⁴⁴ As in a double equestrian portrait, the freed Brazilian slave, who had followed Garibaldi across the ocean only to sacrifice himself in the battle for Rome, is depicted on a black horse, looming behind the general as a protective shadow—a striking visual counterpart to the Hero of Two Worlds on his white mount. Other heroes and martyrs appear, as in a mournful apotheosis: Ugo Bassi, who will follow Garibaldi in his escape from Rome only to be captured and executed by the Austrians; and dying Masina, assisted by Anita in the foreground, while his lancers loom like ghosts in the background. We can follow the various stages of composition of this image across media, from a sketch of Garibaldi on his horse made in Rome during the siege of 1849 by Illustrated News correspondent George Housman Thomas;⁴⁵ to the engraving based on that sketch published in July 21, 1849 issue (Garibaldi and his faithful orderly, Andrea Aguyar who died in the defense of Rome alongside the General);⁴⁶ to a small painting by Housman Thomas, circa 1850, in which the other figures surrounding Garibaldi first appear;⁴⁷ and, finally, to the tableau of the panorama which, clearly inspired by the painting, magnifies the scene to its panoramic scale (slightly changing the color scheme). Between the sketch drawn from life to the tableau, designed to bring the spectators back to the moment when the image was first recorded, the circle of history-telling is closed.

The scene is a prelude to the last act of the Republic. Notwithstanding the heroics of the Lombard “students,” "although thundered upon by the French artillery," Garibaldi soon realizes that on this day (June 21st) "a second third of June was about to deprive him of half the men he loved as his own children." The future father of the Italian nation knew that, from this hour, the fall of Rome was certain: "Rome was lost,” the panorama storyteller concludes,“but it was lost after a wonderful - a splendid defence. - The fall of Rome after such a siege was a triumph to Democracy to all time."⁴⁸ The official count put the fallen at 933 men and five women.

Tragic Epilogue

The following tableaux illustrate the demise of the Republic, unable to resist the overpowering assault of the French army. The narrative reaches its climax. Tableau nineteen focuses again on the destructive and indiscriminate effects of the French bombardment, with another sarcastic jab at General Oudinot: "General Oudinot, to show as he had said in one of his bulletins, in what reverence he held the city of monuments ordered bombs to be launched upon all the quarters of the city. - It was particularly during the night that he employed this means of exciting terror!!"⁴⁹ Celebrated works of art, such as "the famous fresco of the Aurora of Guido Reni" at Villa Spada were damaged; others, such as the Hercules of Canova (Hercules and Lichas, then at the Quirinale, now at the GNAM in Rome) were barely spared. Yet, "whilst the streets resounded with cries and lamentations - not a single voice spoke of surrender!!" The defenders remain defiant: "when a ball or an obus brought down the side of a house - 'Another benediction from the Pope." The mobilization is total: "all the artillery men - observe 'ladies and gentlemen,' all had been willed at their guns."⁵⁰ Its darkest hours are upon the city, and the narrative rises to apocalyptic tones: "the terrible night of the 29th [of June] fell upon Rome like a winding sheet," or a shroud, as "the tempest of the heavens was mingled with that of the earth" and "the thunder growled responsively to the cannon, the lightening [sic] crossed the fire of the bombs," while "the two armies maintained their duel to the Death." One can imagine the musical accompaniment providing a thunderous crescendo.⁵¹

Tableau twenty shows the French entering Rome. The battle is lost, yet, as the lecturer solemnly announces, it was more than just a battle but rather "something still more grand": a chapter in the eternal and historic "Struggle of good and evil - the Struggle of the Sovereignty of the People against the right divine -- of Liberty against Despotism - the religion of Christ against the religion of the Popes."⁵² The last heroic act of resistance, at the Porta San Pancrazio, again shows Garibaldi in the fray, at the head of the indefatigable Bersaglieri, yet, as he himself reports (the passage is quoted from his autobiography), "so completely...discouraged with regard to the future that I had but one wish, and that was to be killed." And this desperate desire would have been fulfilled, the lecturer underlines, had not a message from the assembly reached the general, summoning him back. It is then that "he learned that his poor Negro servant had just been killed." Covered with blood, his clothes "pierced with balls and bayonet thrusts, his sabre...so bent with striking that it was not more than half on its sheath," Garibaldi is hailed as he enters the chamber of deputies, to whom he announces that every resistance "was impossible, unless they wished to make Rome another Sarragossa [sic]."⁵³

The following scene, tableau twenty-one shows Garibaldi rounding up his troops at the Vatican, and the lecturer quotes him addressing them: "Whoever is willing to follow me shall be received among my people - I require nothing of them but hearts filled with love for their country, they will have no pay, no barracks, no rations, but continued alarms, forced marches, and charges with the bayonet: whoever is not satisfied with this - had better remain here. The gates of Rome once passed, every step backward will be a step towards death."⁵⁴

Such was the affection for their chief that "more than four thousand men responded to the appeal - the last stake of a desperate party." This figure is taken from Garibaldi's autobiography, which adds: "Anita, dressed as a man, Cicceruacchio, who would not stay to witness the degradation of his country, and Ugo Bassi, the saint who aspired to martyrdom, were the first to join me."⁵⁵ Anita remained undaunted, the lecturer adds: the “numerous dangers” awaiting them made her more determined than ever to accompany her husband, notwithstanding her advanced state of pregnancy, having already left their three young children back in Nice, in the care of her mother. Led by their chief, the Garibaldians leave the city before dawn, their march "firm - but gloomy as the grave" as the "dark column" takes "the Tiburtine road, silent as death."⁵⁶

Several tableaux illustrate the long march of the Garibaldian contingent up the peninsula through Umbria, Tuscany, and San Marino, threatened and attacked by the Austrian army that had been converging on Rome via the Papal states (tableaux twenty-two to twenty-three).⁵⁷ The story of this epic flight and pursuit has been recently retold and the itinerary retraced by Tim Parks.⁵⁸ Near San Marino, Ugo Bassi and Ciceruacchio are captured by the Austrians and transported to Bologna where they will be executed on August 8th. Garibaldi and the rest of his ragged army try to force their way through to Venice, besieged but still resisting in the name of republican ideals. The attempt fails, and the flotilla of fishing boats commandeered by the Garibaldians at Cesenatico is captured by Austrian war vessels near Comacchio (tableaux twenty-four to twenty-five).⁵⁹ Garibaldi, the suffering Anita, and a faithful one-armed officer, Giovanni Battista Culiolo, nicknamed Leggero, escape through the marshes, where they encounter another volunteer roaming the countryside. Here we come to the last two tableaux of side one—advertised as one of the highlights of the entire show.

As they enter the pinewood near Ravenna, "the unhappy Anita" who "had suffered too greatly from her rude trials by land and sea," all for "the pure love of her husband...almost insensible to pain," now "reduced to extremities...made a sign to stop and almost fell to the ground," supported by Garibaldi and his comrade Leggero.⁶⁰ Tableau twenty-six shows the scene as it was illustrated by Janet-Lange, the correspondent and artist who had also provided drawings of the battle for Rome for L'Illustration, the French equivalent of the ILN. Included in the Illustrated Life and Career of Garibaldi, and reprinted in the Illustrated Times, this image and the following dramatically conclude the first half of the panorama show. The last tableau shows Anita in agony, reclining on a chair in the farmhouse at Mandriole where the fugitives had taken refuge. The scene is reminiscent of the popular religious iconography of ex-votos. Her eyes closed, her arms extended, palms up as though to accept the stigmata of her sacrifice: "after asking for a drought with which her husband tried to refresh her parched lips, she expired!! victim of conjugal affection and marvelous zeal for the cause of the people."⁶¹ Garibaldi had quitted Rome with four thousand men and eight hundred horses, and now he was left alone, bereft of his love and, temporarily, of his dream to capture the eternal city for the Italian nation-to-be.

A note penciled in the manuscript says “Last Sunday, 1860,” accompanied by the words: "This is the end of the first section. An interval of five minutes will elapse while the second will be prepared."⁶² Fast-forwarding eleven years, the journey would continue in the second half. Spectators would be carried along, all the way from Lake Como down to Sicily: war tourists and eye-witnesses to history in the making, in the footsteps of the hero.