There were great wars going on in Europe during that time.  When Giuseppe was a year old, the Russian and Austrian soldiers marched through Italy, killing and destroying everywhere.  Some of them came to Le Roncole for a few hours.  All the women and children ran to the church and locked themselves in for safety.  But these savage men had no respect for the house of God.  They took the hinges off the doors and rushing in murdered and wounded the helpless ones.  Luigia Verdi, with the baby Giuseppe in her arms, escaped, ran up a narrow staircase to the belfry, and hid herself and child among some old lumber.  Here she stayed in her hiding place, until the drunken troops were far away from the little village.

The babe Giuseppe was born among very poor, ignorant working people, though his father’s house was one of the best known and most frequented among the cluster of cottages.  His parents Carlo Verdi and Luigia his wife, kept a small inn at Le Roncole and also a little shop, where they sold sugar, coffee, matches, spirits, tobacco and clay pipes.  Once a week the good Carlo would walk up to Busseto, three miles away, with two empty baskets and would return with them filled with articles for his store, carrying them slung across his strong shoulders.

Giuseppe Verdi who was to produce such streams of beautiful, sparkling music,—­needing an Act of Parliament to stop them, as once happened,—­was a very quiet, thoughtful little fellow, always good and obedient; sometimes almost sad, and seldom joined in the boisterous games of other children.  That serious expression found in all of Verdi’s portraits as a man was even noticeable in the child.  The only time he would rouse up, was when a hand organ would come through the village street; then he would follow it as far as his little legs would carry him, and nothing could keep him in the house, when he heard this music.  Intelligent, reserved and quiet, every one loved him.

In 1820, when Giuseppe was seven years old, Carlo Verdi committed a great extravagance for an innkeeper; he bought a spinet for his son, something very unheard of for so poor a man to do.

Little Giuseppe practised very diligently on his spinet.  At first he could only play the first five notes of the scale.  Next he tried very hard to find out chords, and one day was made perfectly happy at having sounded the major third and fifth of C. But the next day he could not find the chord again, and began to fret and fume and got into such a temper, that he took a hammer and tried to break the spinet in pieces.  This made such a commotion that it brought his father into the room.  When he saw what the child was doing, he gave a blow on Giuseppe’s ear that brought the little fellow to his senses at once.  He saw he could not punish the good spinet because he did not know enough to strike a common chord.

His love of music early showed itself in many ways.  One day he was assisting the parish priest at mass in the little church of Le Roncole.  At the moment of the elevation of the Host, such sweet harmonies were sounding from the organ, that the child stood perfectly motionless, listening to the beautiful music, all unconscious of everything else about him.