good.  The force was divided into seven companies, the first entrusted to the ardent Nino Bixio, who acted in a general way as second-in-command through both the Sicilian and Neapolitan campaigns, and the seventh to Benedetto Cairoli, whose mother contributed a large sum of money as well as three of her sons to the freeing of Southern Italy.  Sirtori, about whom there always clung something of the priestly vocation for which he had been designed, was the head of the staff; Tuerr (the Hungarian) was adjutant-general.  The organisation was identical with that of the Italian army ‘to which we belong,’ said Garibaldi in his first order of the day.

One name is missing, that of Medici, who was left behind to take the command of a projected movement in the Papal States.  By whom this plan was invented is not clear, but simultaneous operations in different parts of the peninsula had been always a favourite design of the more extreme members of the Party of Action, and Garibaldi probably yielded to their advice.  All that came of it was the entry into Umbria of Zambianchi’s small band of volunteers, which was promptly repulsed over the frontier.  Medici, therefore, remained inactive till after the fall of Palermo; he headed the second expedition of 4,000 volunteers which arrived in time to take part in the final Sicilian battles.

Garibaldi’s political programme was the cry of the Hunters of the Alps in 1859:  Italy and Victor Emmanuel. Those who were strict republicans at heart, while abstaining from preaching the republic till the struggle was over, would have stopped short at the first word Italy.  But Garibaldi told Rosalino Pilo, who was of this way of thinking, that either he marched in the King’s name or he did not march at all.  This was the condition of his acceptance, because he esteemed it the condition on which hung the success of the enterprise, nay more, the existence of an united Italy.

The Thousand embarked at Quarto, near Genoa, during the night of the 5th of May on the two merchant vessels, the Piemonte and Lombardo, which, with the complicity of their patriotic owner, R. Rubattino, had been sequestered for the use of the expedition.  On hearing of Garibaldi’s departure, Cavour ordered Admiral Persano, whose squadron lay in the gulf of Cagliari, to arrest the expedition if the steamers entered any Sardinian port, but to let it go free if they were encountered on the high seas.  Persano asked Cavour what he was to do if by stress of storms Garibaldi were forced to come into port?  The answer was that ‘the Ministry’ decided for his arrest, which Persano rightly interpreted to mean that Cavour had decided the contrary.  He resolved, therefore, not to stop him under any circumstances, but the case did not occur, for the fairest of May weather favoured the voyage, and six days after the start the men were quietly landed at Marsala without let or hindrance from the two Neapolitan warships which arrived almost at the same time as the Piemonte and Lombardo, an inconceivable stroke of good fortune which, like the eventful march that was to follow, seems to belong far more to romance than to history.