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Updated: May 29, 2025
General La Marmora, then Prefect of Naples, and commander-in-chief of the army in the south, reinforced the troops in Calabria to prevent Garibaldi's advance, but the direction of the decisive operation fell by accident to Cialdini, whom the Government despatched to Sicily when they tardily made up their minds to take energetic measures.
In the East, the Mediterranean fleet was ordered to pass the Dardanelles and to anchor in the Sea of Marmora; whilst at home, a vote of credit to the amount of 6,000,000L. was rapidly passed through Parliament, the navy was strengthened, the army reserves were called out, and the initial preparations were made for the despatch of an expeditionary force.
On March 1 a great allied fleet of forty British and French warships, having reduced the forts at the entrance to the Dardanelles, was on its way through the straits and the Sea of Marmora to Constantinople, with the object of capturing the city.
It looked very pretty, however, from my windows, sloping down towards the Golden Horn, beyond which I could catch a glimpse of Stamboul on the heights across the water. But I have not yet told you what Constantinople looked like when I first saw it." "You began about the Sea of Marmora, Cousin, and here it is. I've had my middle finger on it ever since we found it, to keep the place."
To the end, Fleeming professed his admiration of the Piedmontese, and his unalterable confidence in the future of Italy under their conduct; for Victor Emanuel, Cavour, the first La Marmora and Garibaldi, he had varying degrees of sympathy and praise: perhaps highest for the King, whose good sense and temper filled him with respect perhaps least for Garibaldi, whom he loved but yet mistrusted.
At night, another storm came up from the Sea of Marmora. Tremendous peals of thunder echoed in the gorges of Olympus and sharp, broad flashes of lightning gave us blinding glimpses of the glorious plain below. The rain fell in heavy showers, but our tent-life was just closed, and we sat securely at our windows and enjoyed the sublime scene.
The Marmora narrowed, we passed Gallipoli on the European side, where the English and French hostages had had their curious adventure the week before, and on into the Dardanelles proper and the zone of war. On the left were Lapsaki and the green hills of Asia, cultivated to their very tops; on the right Europe and the brown hills of the peninsula, now filled with guns and horses and men.
Next month the minister left Turin to breathe the fresh air of the mountains. He was not in high spirits. To La Marmora, the only man besides the king who knew the true motive of his journey, he wrote, "Pray heaven that I do not commit some stupidity; in spite of my usual self-reliance, I am not without grave uneasiness."
One day, about the time the Turkish ships dropped, as it were, from the sky into the harbor, when the store of powder was almost exhausted, and famine menaced the city, five galleys were reported in the offing down the Marmora. About the same time the Turkish flotilla was observed making ready for action. The hungry people crowded the wall from the Seven Towers to Point Serail.
It made no break with tradition. Soon after Turkey entered the war British submarines appeared in the Sea of Marmora, and in February a systematic bombardment of the Dardanelles began; this was continued intermittently for a month, the defenders profiting by their experiences and by spells of bad weather to strengthen their works.
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