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They then showed me an excellent paper they had drawn up, containing the truth in regard to the armistice and present position of affairs. They were afraid to publish it, for Avezzana had told another story. I suggested that such a paper, published with the signatures of all the European Consuls, would have an excellent effect.
Avezzana allowed two days to pass without protesting against this menace: then he addressed to the aforesaid commander a letter of truly radical insolence, ordering him to vacate the harbour before 6 P.M. and declaring that if by that hour he were not gone he should be sunk by the batteries of the people, and so teach the Queen of Great Britain that it did not suffice to entrust her men-of-war to men of high lineage unless they were also men of judgment.
Whoever enjoyed Foresti's hospitality, in the conversations as well as the viands has found an epitome and reflex of his most genial hours in Italy: brave soldiers, like Avezzana and Garibaldi, scholars, artists, every form of the national character, were gratefully exhibited in reunions, of which he was the presiding genius, and to which his American friends were admitted with fraternal cordiality.
This Government consisted of Albertini, a scoundrel and a blackguard, Reta, and Avezzana. 'I contemplated the state of things with deep interest.
On March 27 a rumour that the Austrians were in the neighbourhood and intended to enter the city lit the fires of revolt which, fanned by the municipality and the clergy, broke out into open insurrection on the 29th. Arms were distributed and a Committee of Defence was formed composed of Constantino Rata, David Morchio, and Avezzana.
'By this time the lawyers had come, Avezzana the general had arrived, and it was hard work. I got all the clauses passed even to the disarming of the people, but the great tug was a general amnesty which they demanded. On this point I was determined. 'Imagine my debating this with the proscribed whose case was life and banishment, or death!
'The man now holding the military command was one General Avezzana, a Piedmontese, of low origin I should think; he was an adventurer, had been concerned in former revolutionary affairs in Italy, and had about twenty years ago gone to America, where he married a Miss Plowden, an Irish emigrant in New York.
Avezzana, war minister, from the top of the cupola of San Pietro in Montori, on seeing the first sentinel advance, gave the signal for the ringing of the tocsin, which brought the entire populace to the walls, the Roman matrons clustering there to encourage their husbands, sons, and brothers to the fight.
Here elbowing my way amid a host of armed brigands and people of the lower and lowest class of Genoese I found the general, Avezzana, seated at a table in a moderate sized room. As soon as I was offered a seat at his table, a crowd of armed folk filled the room and pressed hard upon us.
I found the General had lost his head, he hardly knew me, and so I rendered him the last service in Genoa, that of sending a carriage to take him the first stage to Turin, leaving his wife and three daughters in the hands of General Avezzana, the head of the revolt.
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