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Updated: May 3, 2025
I regret that the French gentleman left Calatafimi so early next morning that I had no opportunity of ascertaining whether he slept well after determining that processions do not proceed. The next time I was in Palermo, Turiddu, the conduttore, who used to take me about the town, had returned after being for a year in Naples.
We gazed over the low, undulating country covered with villages, roads, fields and villas that lay all around us on the inland sides the country through which in 1860 Garibaldi marched to Calatafimi with his thousand volunteers after landing at Marsala. We saw Monte Inice and the heights above Segesta.
The Neapolitan fleet was not far off, but they did not dare to open fire on the little band of revolutionists on account of British warships nearby, as Great Britain was known to favor the revolutionary cause. With Garibaldi at the head of an indomitable little army, the Neapolitan soldiers were put to flight at the battle of Calatafimi and Garibaldi advanced upon the city of Palermo.
'In a few days, if the enemy's balls respect me, we shall be in Palermo. Meanwhile Garibaldi had occupied Calatafimi, and was proceeding towards Monreale, from which side he contemplated a descent on the capital. On the high tableland of Renda he met Rosalino Pilo with his reanimated band. That day the Garibaldian army, all told, amounted to 5,000 men.
As the figures on the stage were to interpret the drama to the public, so he was to interpret to me their interpretation. The ingenious French gentleman at Calatafimi would, perhaps, have classified him as an incarnation of the book of the words. The theatre was already full when we arrived.
As soon as he could after this discovery he went to Sicily to study the locality and found it in all respects suitable for his theory; indeed, it was astonishing how things kept turning up to support his view. It is all in his book The Authoress of the Odyssey, published in 1897 and dedicated to his friend Cavaliere Biagio Ingroja of Calatafimi.
I had picnicked in the temple of Segesta, climbed up through the site of the ancient city to the theatre and seen Garibaldi's monument over and over again and in all kinds of weather, before I knew anything of the processions which occur at Calatafimi early in May. I was there one year when the annual festa was conducted with more than the usual ceremony.
On the 14th we occupied Vita, or San Vito, and on the 15th came in sight of the enemy, who, occupying Calatafimi and knowing of our approach in that direction, had spread out the great part of their forces on the heights called Il Pianto dei Romani.
It is partly wrapped in a precious cloth and the Madonna, full of joy and lovingkindness, invites the people to kiss the holes from which the nails have been drawn. Calatafimi. A handsome, smiling youth in Trojan attire devoutly offering his heart to the crucified Saviour with these words: "Thy blessing be upon us evermore."
Here they at once attacked and defeated the royal troops, four times their number, and, raising the whole country on their route, pushed on towards Palermo. At the battle of Calatafimi, Menotti Garibaldi, the son of the general, received his first wound. With all Europe looking on, amazed at the sheer audacity of the deed, Garibaldi showed himself as prudent and as skilful as he was bold.
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