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"The fusillade of the 1st Line Regiment against Monte-Rotondo was not very effective, I believe negligible. I do not refer to the moral result, which was great. "The Garibaldians were numerous about Monte-Rotondo. But the terrain like all that around Italian villages was covered with trees, hedges, etc.
Colonel Fremont of the 1st Line Regiment, after having studied the battle-field, took two chasseur companies, followed by a battalion of his regiment and bore to the right to turn the village. "Meanwhile the 1st Line Regiment moved further to the right in the direction of Monte-Rotondo, against which at two different times it opened a fire at will which seemed a veritable hurricane.
Due to the distance or to the terrain the material result of the fire seemed to be negligible. The moral result must have been considerable, it precipitated a flood of fugitives on the road from Mentana to Monte-Rotondo, dominated by our sharpshooters, who opened on the fugitives a fire more deadly than that of the chassepots.
"Mines which do not yield, which will never yield, as they exist only on paper; quarries which as yet know not pickaxe or powder; untilled, sandy moors, which they survey with a gesture, saying, 'We begin here, and we go way over yonder, to the devil. It's the same with the forests, one whole densely wooded slope of Monte-Rotondo, which belongs to us, it seems, but which it is not practicable to cut unless aeronauts should do duty as woodcutters.
Extract from the correspondence of Colonel Ardant du Picq. Letters from Captain C , dated August 23, 1868. "November 3, at two in the morning, we took up arms to go to Monte-Rotondo. We did not yet know that we would meet the Garibaldians at Mentana. "The Papal army had about three thousand men, we about two thousand five hundred. At one o'clock the Papal forces met their enemies.
The whole of a wooded hill in Monte-Rotondo belongs to us, it seems, but the felling of the trees is impossible unless aeronauts undertake the woodman's work. It is the same with the watering-places, among which this miserable hamlet of Pozzonegro is one of the most important, with its fountain whose astonishing ferruginous properties Paganetti advertises. Of the streamers, not a shadow.
But the detail that rejoiced the heart of the Chamber above all else was the description of a burlesque ceremonial organized by the Governor for driving a tunnel through Monte-Rotondo, a gigantic undertaking still in the air, postponed from year to year, requiring millions of money and thousands of arms, which had been inaugurated with great pomp a week before the election.
He is a tall old man of seventy-five, still very erect in his short cloak over which his long white beard falls, his brown woollen Catalan cap on his hair, which is also white, a pair of scissors in his belt, which he uses to cut the great leaves of green tobacco in the hollow of his hand; a venerable old fellow in fact, and when he crossed the square and shook hands with the curé, with a patronizing smile at the two gamblers, I never would have believed that I had before me the famous brigand Piedigriggio, who, from 1840 to 1860, held the thickets in Monte-Rotondo, tired out gendarmes and troops of the line, and who to-day, his seven or eight murders with the rifle or the knife being outlawed by lapse of time, goes his way in peace throughout the region that saw his crimes, and is a man of considerable importance.
A venerable-looking person in fact, and when he crossed the square, shaking hands with the priest, smiling protectingly at the gamblers, I would never have believed that I was looking at the famous brigand Piedigriggio, who held the woods in Monte-Rotondo from 1840 to 1860, outwitted the police and the military, and who to-day, thanks to the proscription by which he benefits, after seven or eight cold-blooded murders, moves peaceably about the country which witnessed his crimes, and enjoys a considerable importance.
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